There’s no excuse this time around. No injured players, no bad breaks.
Just bad football.
That was Florida somehow finding a way to navigate a triple overtime victory over Kentucky, celebrating on the field like they just won the SEC Championship.
Beating a Kentucky team that hasn’t beaten Florida since 1986. A Kentucky team that hasn’t won in Gainesville since 1979.
A Kentucky team that hasn’t won an SEC game since November of 2011.
“We’re 1-0 in the SEC,” said Florida quarterback Jeff Driskel. “We’re going to correct the mistakes.”
So there’s that.
These are your Florida Gators under Will Muschamp, everyone. Outcoached, outplayed and out of excuses.
In a season where Muschamp needed to show significant progress to keep his job, his team showed it might only have one team below it in the SEC East Division. And Vandy, which won in Gainesville last year, doesn’t even count anymore.
So what now at Florida? What happens to a coach who has to win — yet his team looks no different than last season’s group that produced the program’s worst record since 1979?
What happens to a coach who won four games last year at one of the top three programs in the country, then followed that up with yet another embarrassing, inconceivable victory that may as well have been a loss in the second game of a make or break season?
Before we get all Zook-crazy, understand this: Muschamp won’t be fired Monday. But with Florida staring at a five-game stretch of at Alabama, at Tennessee, LSU, Missouri and Georgia (in Jacksonville), it’s not a stretch to think Muschamp could be out of a job before November.
Kentucky has no business being a play away from beating Florida. Kentucky doesn’t have the personnel that Florida has. Kentucky doesn’t have the recruiting base or the support Florida has.
Yet somehow, some way, the Wildcats got hosed on a no-call delay of game against Florida that allowed the Gators to keep a game-tying touchdown in the first overtime. Somehow, Kentucky, with an inexperienced quarterback and a team that won all of two games last season, rolled into Gainesville and dominated the game from the first series.
It never should have come to overtime; Kentucky made enough mistakes in regulation to keep the Gators in the game. It doesn’t matter how it ended, in regulation or overtime.
There are no more excuses for Muschamp.
Just bad football.