Five Key Takeaways From Florida's SEC Championship Loss to Alabama
If I told you at around 10:00 PM ET on Saturday night that the Florida Gators would lose to the Alabama Crimson Tide by just six points less than two hours later, you would have laughed at me.
At that point, UF was down three scores - 18 points - at halftime of the 2020 SEC Championship game, against the winners of five of the last seven league titles. A commitment to quarterback Kyle Trask, through the air and on the ground, resulted in 249 yards and 29 points in the second half, and only a six-point deficit as the clock struck zero, while UF had the ball in its possession.
Florida looked like a team that belonged in the SEC Championship by the way it played Bama in the second half. It certainly didn't in the first half, though, and in the end, a loss is a loss. Florida competed this entire season with goals of winning the league, not coming up six points short.
Below, you'll find my five key takeaways from the loss, where this program is, and where it's going from here. There is negative to draw from the game itself, but plenty of positive to absorb and build upon moving forward.
Take a bow, regardless of the result, Kyle Trask.
4,125 yards (the first 4,000+ yard passer in UF history), 43 touchdowns, and a Heisman Trophy campaign. Take a bow, Kyle Trask.
After a decade of misery at the position, Trask has restored good quarterback play as a staple of UF's offense. Head coach Dan Mullen promised that in his return to UF given his track record of developing players at the position, but no one quite saw this level of success coming, this soon, from this quarterback.
Trask's story of a former backup-turned-star may get old and repetitive for Florida fans, but it's truly one for the ages and one that shouldn't be soon forgotten. Less than two years ago, Trask was entering his fourth year at Florida with strong odds of never earning a start in orange and blue.
Now, Florida is, or at least was this season, a legitimate contender in this league thanks to Trask's production and leadership. How UF will go about replacing Trask's production will be important in sustaining that, but behind the 408 yard, three touchdown effort of Trask via development from Mullen, the Gators proved they belonged in Atlanta on Saturday.
New week, same story: Florida starts slow, and suddenly flips a switch. It wasn't enough, but it was oh-so-close.
Stop me if you've heard this before: Florida looked like a bad football team in the first half.
Alabama held two separate three-possession leads in the first half, literally scoring at will with five touchdowns in five drives. The Crimson Tide nearly doubled Florida's time of possession in the first half (19:10 to 10:50), more than doubled UF's number of plays run (51 to 25), won the yardage battle (366 to 213), and led 35-17 as both teams entered the locker room.
Florida came out firing offensively with Trask attempting several down-field shots. Without a run game to throw Alabama off, the deep passing was extremely hit or miss until the second half while inconsistent pass protection gave way to two sacks and a good amount of pressure.
Remarkably, Florida looked totally different in the second half. We've seen UF come out of halftime strong before this season, but perhaps not to this level or with this amount of motivation. UF outscored Alabama, 29-17, over the final two quarters, running 41 plays to Alabama's 32, slightly winning the TOP battle (15:11 to 14:49).
Florida rode with Trask as their entire offense to get into that position, not only trusting his arm but depending on his legs to become two-dimensional. At first, it was asinine (more on that later), but Trask ended up moving the ball just well enough on the ground to open things up.
UF scored on four of five second half drives, burning just 12:45 of the game clock to do so and playing, for the most part, much more efficient football. Meanwhile, UF's defense even held Alabama scoreless in the third quarter. It just wasn't enough in the end.
Ultimately, Florida couldn't handle Alabama's star power.
Even though Florida's offense was able to get it together as the game went on, the duo of Najee Harris and Devonta Smith were simply too much for UF's lackluster defense to handle. As if Smith, and Alabama quarterback Mac Jones, weren't already headliners in the Heisman conversation along with Trask, Harris might have emerged as one as well with a five-touchdown showing against the Gators.
The star running back sliced his way through gaps and bruised his way through UF defenders en route to a 178-yard, two touchdown performance on the ground. Harris also served as an excellent complement to Smith in the passing game, with five catches for 67 yards and three scores through the air, including one TD where Harris was lined up as an outside receiver and found a way to the endzone on an in-breaking route.
Smith, meanwhile, caught 15 passes for 184 yards and two touchdowns of his own with all sorts of different UF defenders attempting to cover him throughout the night, to no avail. Kaiir Elam was able to track Smith across the field and tackle him short of a fourth-down conversion one time, but that was the only time UF limited the star receiver at all.
At the end of the day, two guys combining for seven touchdowns is inexcusable. Even considering the talent gap, allowing that type of production from two players would be grounds for systemic and/or personnel change for a defense, from top to bottom. We'll see if Mullen agrees with that sentiment as we enter the offseason.
Coaching deserves its fair share of blame for this loss.
A big reason why Florida lost this game was poor coaching, on both sides of the ball.
It wasn't from start-to-finish, but UF's decision makers and talent developers on the sideline left you scratching your head at some points and audibly yelling "WHAT?" at others. Florida began the game with an offsides penalty on the opening kickoff, and an offsides by Marlon Dunlap Jr. on the first drive cut a 3rd and 10 for Alabama in half, which was converted and led to a touchdown two plays later. As offsides penalties have plagued UF's defense all year, that falls on coaching.
As seen throughout the entire season, UF missed tackles at an alarming rate as well. Three missed tackles, two by Marco Wilson and another by Jaydon Hill, set Alabama up with its first double digit lead, early in the second quarter. Wilson had at least three missed tackles on the night and remained on the field despite that and his struggles throughout the year - including the notorious shoe throw against LSU just last week. Another season-long occurrence, missed tackles falls on coaching as well as the issue hasn't been corrected this year. It doesn't even look like it's been addressed.
A first quarter third and three, which ended in an incomplete pass from Mac Jones, turned into a first down due to a personal foul on UF's Zachary Carter. Alabama ended up scoring a touchdown on that drive. A 3rd and 8 on the next drive was cut to a 3rd and 3 as UF had 12 men on the field - which was converted, and you guessed it, led to a touchdown just a few plays later. Penalties on crucial downs, like the earlier Dunlap penalty, is bad situational football and a result of poor coaching.
While those issues fall on defensive coordinator Todd Grantham, Mullen, the offensive play caller, certainly wasn't innocent either. UF consistently subbed its running backs in and out and the leading rusher of the three, Nay'Quan Wright, had just four attempts (11 yards).
Instead, Mullen depended on Trask to establish the run, which notably began with a failed 3rd and 9 rush (a poor block by Stewart Reese didn't help, but this never should have been the call). Florida had to settle for a field goal on what could have been a game-tying drive at 14 points.
Mullen continued to run with Trask, which resulted in a measly 10 carries for 19 yards and a touchdown when you remove sacks. After Elam's fourth-down stop which set UF up at their own 37 yard line down 11 points in the early third quarter, Mullen called back-to-back QB keepers with Trask on first and second down (after a resetting-first down penalty on Alabama), that resulted in a total of one yard. One incompletion later and UF was punting, having failed to take advantage of a rare Alabama failure offensively.
As UF has failed to create a run game all season long and looked to its 240-pound, pocket-passing QB in hopes of rushing the ball, the lack of a two-dimensional offense when it was needed most falls in the hands of coaching.
Then, after UF scored a late fourth quarter touchdown to narrow Alabama's lead to eight points, Mullen burned one of UF's final two timeouts in order to set up a two-point conversion. The two-point try was good (a penalty on Alabama created two attempts for Florida), but the play should have been previously scripted. Burning a timeout that late in the game, down one possession, as the clock was already stopped, was another inexcusable decision.
It came back to bite UF as the Gators got the ball with 16 seconds left in the game, with 88 yards to go to at least tie the game. Trask was sacked on first down, and without that timeout remaining, the game clock expired and UF walked off the field defeated.
It's fair to say Alabama was simply the better team on Saturday night, which led to their win over Florida despite a tough fight at the end. That showed, on the field, and when it mattered most, it showed on the sideline as well.
Is Florida for real under Mullen, or a one-year wonder in the SEC?
Despite the negatives to pull from the game in the moment, the long-term picture for Florida appears bright after the loss. The fight UF showed as the game went on and the ability to narrow such a lead against the Goliath of the SEC proved that UF at least belonged to be there on Saturday night.
The biggest question is how will UF build upon this?
Even after piling on Mullen and his staff for a poorly-coached game, that isn't the norm, at least for Mullen and his offensive staff. Florida has one of the most efficient and all-around bets passing offenses in the nation this year behind Trask's growth and Mullen's scheming. As long as Mullen is calling plays and developing QBs at UF, they'll be able to score points.
But what happens now? Was the loss enough for a change defensively as previously alluded to? Or will Florida run it back with the same staff - at least in key positions - across the board? With that, as talents such as Trask, tight end Kyle Pitts, wide receivers Kadarius Toney and Trevon Grimes, are likely off to the pros, who will step up next year to replace such key contributors, and will they play up to the par that these stars have set for the course?
I tend to believe UF is more than a one-year wonder when it comes to competing for the SEC, but it will require shuffling. The defense is in need of serious revamping, while the offense is about to go through a major transitional phase.
Fortunately, barring something going totally wrong in the world, UF should have spring practice in 2021 to paint a picture of what next season's team will look like. After not being able to do that in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and falling just six points short of an SEC Championship victory as a result, you have to figure the Gators are trending in the right direction.
