You don’t have to look far to find critics of Florida football’s Week 0 performance.
Twitter mentions and message boards are filled with vitriol toward the Gators. My colleagues and I at alligatorSports have focused on some of the negatives rather than the positives, so I’m here to change up my tone a little bit.
UF beat in-state rival Miami on a neutral site, and it should be treated as exactly what it was: a win.
The Hurricanes were the Gators’ first test, and UF passed. The same can’t be said for last season when Florida dropped its contest against Kentucky at home, marking the first time in 31 years the Gators lost to the Wildcats. Florida, however, still managed to finish the season as a top 10 team. So in the words of Aaron Rodgers, “R-E-L-A-X."
UF didn’t look polished or particularly dominant against UM, that’s for sure. But I’m quite positive Gators fans would prefer to pick apart quarterback Feleipe Franks’ performance and coach Dan Mullen’s play-calling with their team 1-0, rather than 0-1.
Criticism comes every Sunday morning, but wins don’t necessarily come every Saturday.
Miami came out and smacked the Gators in the mouth on the opening drive. UM quarterback Jarren Williams looked better than I’m sure even many Miami fans hoped. However, UF’s defense stood resolute and held the Hurricanes to a field goal and largely limited UM’s ability to march down the field again the way it did in that first drive.
In fact, most of Miami’s points followed mistakes by Florida’s offense. It wasn’t lapses by UF's defense that necessarily yielded points, rather UM capitalized on mistakes — like Malik Davis’ fumble.
The Gators defense excelled, getting to Williams 10 times. Jabari Zuniga and Jonathan Greenard, playing his first game in orange and blue, combined for 12 tackles, five tackles for loss and three sacks and dominated in Miami’s backfield.
In what was largely a defensive battle, Florida’s defense shined, and its offense did what it had to do. Franks, in classic fashion, played the villain and the hero, but when it mattered most, he delivered an absolute dime to Josh Hammond and capped off the go-ahead drive with a three-yard rushing touchdown.
Then, his defense made sure that drive was in fact the game-winning drive by making a stop after Franks threw an inexplicable interception.
The game got a little off the hinges, especially in the final five minutes. How off-course it became made it somewhat difficult to draw conclusions from either team’s performance so, if nothing else, take away this: Florida beat a fringe top 25 team in spite of fumbles, interceptions, missed tackles and repeated pass interference fouls.
The Gators now have an off week to address those issues and then a cupcake game to translate its practice into performance. And they have the cushion of being 1-0 all the while.
Follow Kyle Wood on Twitter @Kkylewood. Contact him at kwood@alligator.org.
Quarterback Feleipe Franks hit receiver Josh Hammond on a 65-yard streak in the fourth quarter. It set up Franks' game-winning touchdown run.
