It’s time for the Florida Gators to take this program seriously. (Photo credit: LG Patterson, Associated Press.)
With all necessary respect and apologies paid to Kyle Whittingham and the Utah Utes, Billy Napier needs a big win to truly announce his presence as the Florida Gators’ head coach.
Sure, Utah was a top ten team when Florida beat them, and yes, the Utes are still ranked in the top fifteen a month later. Any one game in isolation can be a fluke, though. And of the five games that the Florida Gators have played so far, only one has truly elevated the program’s status.
Kentucky proved that Florida was not, after all, “back.” South Florida proved that Florida was so far away from being back, in fact, that this program was still closer to the state of ruins that Dan Mullen left it in than the place where Napier intends to lift it to. Tennessee proved that Florida would not be in the SEC East race in Napier’s first year. And Eastern Washington proved nothing at all, other than that Florida could at least bury FCS opponents in a way they couldn’t in 2021.
None of this is to say a word about Billy Napier’s job security, by the way. Any such talk is, and let’s make this very clear, ridiculous. It’s unfounded, it’s reactionary, and it’s way, way, way too soon. But he does need to start collecting wins where he can get them.
Missouri would be a great place to start.
Florida and Missouri are two programs that do not recruit the same caliber of athlete. That’s not a knock on Missouri; that’s a fact. And if anything, it’s simultaneously a credit to Missouri and a knock on Florida, because despite this talent advantage, Missouri keeps beating Florida anyway. The Gators are Tigers are exactly .500 against each other since Mizzou joined the SEC, splitting the ten games right down the middle.
Most noteworthy is the fact that virtually none of these games are even close. Florida and Missouri take turns smashing each other to bits for eight quarters at a time. Florida won 14-7 in 2012, and Missouri won last year 24-23 on a two-point conversion in overtime; each of the other eight games was decided by at least three scores (17 points or more). Missouri took the first turn in 2013 (36-17) and 2014 (42-13), Florida retaliated with 21-3 and 40-14 beatdowns in 2015 and 2016, respectively, Missouri came back with 45-16 and 38-17 routs in 2017 and 2018, and Florida responded to those routs with 23-6 and 41-17 blowouts in 2019 and 2020.
The teams don’t really particularly care for each other, either.
Trajan Jeffcoat, who touched off a brawl in 2020 with a late hit on Kyle Trask, is still around. That brawl resulted in three players getting ejected, Mullen getting fined, and a whole bunch of bad blood on social media. It was after that same game, by the way, that Mullen went to his postgame press conference dressed as Darth Vader for Halloween. And in a direct clapback, after beating Florida in overtime and dropping the curtain on Mullen’s tenure in Gainesville last year, Missouri coach Eliah Drinkwitz concluded his postgame press conference by pulling a hoodie over his head, whipping out a toy light saber, and snarkily declaring, “May the force be with you!” before walking out.
It wouldn’t be accurate to label as Missouri as a rival, because the teams are separated by over 1,000 miles and because they had played exactly one time ever before 2012. And it wouldn’t be accurate to say that beating Missouri would be a statement win, because Missouri is far from a blue blood program and staring a non-winning season square in the face for the fourth straight year.
But at the same time, the Florida Gators need to do something about Missouri. I’m simply not interested in hearing about how “Missouri makes Florida their Super Bowl,” or “we just didn’t play well against them (for the fourth time in six years),” or anything of the sort. At some point, you have to go out and beat them, or else you lose the right to look down on them.
Keep losing to Missouri, and it’s suddenly not an issue of Florida having a bad day anymore; it becomes what this program is. If Florida cannot figure out how to start beating Missouri, you can forget about Atlanta, and the College Football Playoff; the Florida Gators will be a program that is, at least in the present tense, right on par with a Missouri Tigers program that is 43-47 since the 2015 season. And yes, that 43-47 record is inflated by nonconference cupcakes.
It’s not like beating Missouri is such a Herculean request, either. The Tigers do have two strong running backs in Nathaniel Peat and Cody Schrader, and former Florida linebacker Tyron Hopper teams up with defensive lineman Trajan Jeffcoat and promising safety Kris Abrams-Draine to provide respectable leaders on each level of their defense, but the praise for the Tigers’ 2022 team ends there.
Sure, Georgia struggled mightily against them, but that was the anomaly. Kansas State hammered this exact team we’re talking about by four touchdowns less than a month ago. Even Auburn beat them. And although yes, the Missouri run game probably will cause Florida’s defense fits, the game tape does not leave me convinced that Mizzou has a real position-on-position matchup advantage anywhere else on the field.
So it wouldn’t be a statement win, per se. It would be more like an “opening statement” win. Beating this Missouri team would not be an announcement that the Florida Gators are “back” by any stretch of the imagination. But it would go a long way towards demonstrating that Billy Napier takes this Missouri program seriously.
This would be a stark departure from the previous three Florida coaches, each of whom took at least one major beating from Mizzou. And thus, it would be just one data point in Billy Napier’s favor- a data point that suggests he might, just might, be better than them all.
