Nothing seemed to go right for Florida football on Saturday night en route to a 23-7 loss to the Oklahoma Sooners inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
The offense sputtered for the second straight week, scoring just one touchdown, while the defense struggled to contain Jon Mateer and his offense. Oklahoma mounted a 13-minute drive in the fourth quarter that ultimately put the final nails in Florida's coffin, but the Gators failed to capitalize on a few opportunities before that run.
After the final horn sounded, head coach Jon Sumrall spoke with the media about his team's performance and other topics relevant to the loss. Here is a look at what he had to say.
Jon Sumrall's opening statement
Yeah, I appreciate y'all being here to cover the game. Unbelievable turnout by our fans tonight.
Regret that our performance different match. Our fans were amazing, created a fantastic home field advantage and we didn't match what they were like and we got to do a better job than that.
I don't have a whole lot of words that are going to make any of this right. There's nothing I can say that's going to make it better today. We have to go back to work. What we've been doing is not working good enough. We have to find new things to make us be successful. We're going to continue to work tirelessly to do so.
Am I frustrated? Yeah. Am I disappointed? Yeah. But I'm not going to whine and complain. It ain't gonna help us. I really feel really bad for the performance we put on. And so with that, we'll open it up to questions.
On QB struggles with the lack of execution across the offense as a whole
Yeah, I think we still have to continue to help whoever the quarterback is better than we have at times. As soon as it felt like we would get something positive started offensively, we had a penalty that would bring us back. We never could find our rhythm. Some of that was the things going around the quarterback. He missed a couple things, too, but I really felt like I wanted to give him the full game.
I don't know that -- it wasn't as fatal as maybe last week around the quarterback. Last week I felt like there was just so many free runners at the quarterback. We probably protected at times better tonight and even when they did get back there quickly, there were situations where we knew we were going to have to throw hot. I don't think we played good enough anywhere offensively to put ourselves in a position to win.
I thought Duke Clark flashed, but outside of that, I didn't really feel like we had a very good performance as a whole.
On John Mateer's performance on third-and-short situations
Yeah, I thought they did a nice job of staying on schedule, something I talked about us not having done recently and put themselves in more manageable third downs. Their quarterback run game was effective. They had answers.
Like I said, they didn't end up in a whole lot of third-and-longs it didn't feel like and I thought they had a good plan. They played the game in more 12 personnel like they had earlier in the year. That was more indicative of what they started the year doing. They'd kind of been a little different the last few weeks. It was a change of pace, maybe from what you've seen about the last month of them, maybe from a personnel standpoint, but their quarterback did a nice job of making some run game things stay on drives and keep their drives moving forward. They did a nice job.
On the decision to go for it on 4th-and-short and Tramell Jones' INT
Yeah, so the fourth and short, I felt like we were down 13-7. I felt like it was going to take 14 points at least. And we haven't been down in the red zone negative for me to feel real confident that we're going to get a bunch more trips.
And so I made the decision — the analytics that we use, the book we use that everybody uses, said fourth-and-three or -four kind of there, and so we felt like we were at the right line to go get it and just did not know how much more opportunities we were going to get in the red zone, so felt like with us down six, kicking a field goal when we hadn't had that many trips down there, we needed to try to get a touchdown there.
I could be wrong; I thought (Eric Singleton Jr.) might have gotten grabbed a little bit. I couldn't see it clearly. I'm sure it was officiated perfectly.
On difficulty in preparing for Oklahoma's offense this week
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, there's unknowns when you're walking into the week and they make a change on Monday; you can't just wholesale change everything. I thought they simplified maybe certain things that helped them be efficient at quarterback. I think conceptually what they did wasn't overly complex, but it was effective, and like I said, it kept them on the field; it kept them on schedule.
I had a pretty strong feeling they were going to try to play the game the way they did where they were going to bleed the clock at times. They had the one drive that was 12:45. It took the air out of the football there. We kind of knew that was probably going to be in at some point in this game. I think situationally at times we didn't do a good enough job defensively of being aware of that, even when we would bring it up, I think, just our understanding of what maybe the four-minute offense looks like even when it's not four minutes left in the game.
So when there's maybe a lead that they had of 13-7 where they're going to treat it like — and there's the whole fourth quarter still to play — that they were going to treat it like it was 13-7 with three minutes left in the game, but how they played the game to some degree. I don't know that we did a good job of adjusting to that.
On what went wrong on the 13-minute drive
Yeah, I think defensively you have to continually respond and in a game like that, their defense outplayed our offense. I thought our defense did some good things, but we got outplayed by their defense. It's not so much about you stopping their team's offense in a game like that. Our defense's got to outplay the other team's defense and we did. They found ways to get third-and-shorts, fourth-and-shorts and just convert and keep converting.
Situationally, I go back to we didn't have a real good awareness or feel for what that looked like and how they were going to call it. It was really already a four-minute drill in their mind, which means they're trying to run the clock out to some degree. They weren't looking for explosives right there. They were just looking to kind of keep getting enough yards to convert and nothing down the field as much.
But situationally, there's a couple of things I'd like to do differently as a coach there and it has to be better and our staff has to be better for our guys on defense next time.
Are you guys lacking in attitude and toughness?
I think our attitude has been, for the stretch we've been on, relatively good, if you will. I define attitude as your demeanor, your drive, and your desire. Demeanor is your body language. Drive and desire is how badly you want to do something. I think we're learning that right now.
I told our team tough things, when you go through really tough things, that reveals what you're made of. I'm frustrated. Our whole team is frustrated. If you're not -- our fan base, I know they're frustrated. I'm appreciative that we have a fan base that's pissed off that we played the way we did tonight.
But my attitude is unwavering to the long-term build that we're going to do here. I can't speak for everybody, but my attitude, while I'm pissed off, I'm also maybe more hungry than ever to get this right and that's not going to change.
I do think when things are going really, really bad, your toughness gets challenged, mental toughness. We have to respond. You're either built for this or you're not. I'm a competitor. I'm going to challenge our guys every day to keep bringing it. We're not where I want us to be. I don't think we're where anybody wants us to be.
And sometimes failure is not fatal unless you allow it to be. It doesn't mean I'm okay failing forever. We got to get this right. We gotta stop the train going the wrong direction and make it go back the right way, but we have to, more importantly, for the long-term build of what we're trying to get done, we've got to agree and keep responding when things aren't going good.
So I think I can't speak for every individual. I'm sure there's certain guys that their attitudes are great right now and they understand what's ahead of us and certain guys that are wired the right way from a toughness standpoint and maybe some guys we have to grow. Not everybody's a finished product. There's a lot of development needed in so many different areas of this football team and that's work that's always in progress.
Do you feel at a loss when you watch this kind of offensive performance unfold?
Yeah, I do at times. I mean, we're the same offense that scored 50 in an SEC game earlier this year and has found ways to maybe answer the bell when the other team has done things, going back to like the Texas game. We responded. We got down 17-3 and found a way to dig out of it.
Right now, we're stalling and there's not a whole lot of things that we're making look easy. I think they data nice job tonight offensively of executing some things that seemed easy, not real challenging. We're making some things harder than they need to be I feel like at times. I don't really have an explanation for it right here right now.
I did feel like last week, obviously, the turnovers were so critical. This week it wasn't turnovers; it was just penalties earlier in the game on a drive really set us back. We're moving the ball forward. And then not converting a couple of third-down situations.
I think there's probably a lot of things that go into what's keeping us from being successful offensively and stalling out.
What's it like when the team is just chipping away like on the long drive?
Yeah, it did. They took the air out of the football and they bled it. When you get in those situations, we have to be in calls, which I think at times we were to get us aggressive to the box. They did a nice job of maybe being a little bit keeping us off balance. We would get maybe too aggressive; they would hit somebody in the flat and maybe make us pay for it.
But that's a frustrating deal. It's nagging because you're wanting to get off the field so bad to get our offense another shot of making it a game and we couldn't find an answer for getting off.
What did you like from your team tonight and what do you want to improve on going into next week?
The like, that list is not terribly long. I did like our defensive response a lot tonight at times. I didn't love the long drive, but I think what I felt it there last three weeks at least is a mentality shift on defense to where those guys are continuing to compete regardless of situation.
I go back to the Texas game. Our defense gave up 17 points, which I'm not saying it's a shutout, but the one touchdown was a punt return. You go back last week, and we put our defense in some awful spots, and really our defense gave up 20 because seven of the points last week were a fumble recovery for a touchdown.
Then tonight, we gave up too many points, but I think our defense fought in a manner that made the game competitive probably longer than it should have been with how we were playing on offense at times. So I think the defensive trajectory right now feels more positive to me. Offensively, I just don't see us finding our rhythm and our footing.
That's what's so frustrating is we're unable to really hang our hat on what is our identity? I think earlier in the year, there were some things that you could see were our identity. Right now, we feel a little bit lost. I don't really know that I can pinpoint what I know that we're good at day in day out.
There's going to be tough games, but you have to be able to know, hey, this is what we're good at and this is how we're going to hang in the game and right now, we don't have that identity clear enough offensively, which is frustrating.
And then the punt return tonight was a positive play to give us some momentum to get the offense started. So that was a positive, but too many negatives really for me to think about, to really accentuate a whole lot of positive.
On Jeramiah McCloud's suspension and preventing the team from spiraling
Yeah, I'll start with Jeramiah. I love Jeramiah. I love every guy on our football team. My heart is for every individual young man on our team.
There's certain things, standards, that you ever to live by and do to be part of the team. Jeramiah just had a couple things that had occurred that at some point there has to be accountability. He knows that he's cared for. We met multiple times earlier in the week to discuss the direction things were going and had to make that decision on Tuesday last week with him after a couple things that occurred.
He and I will meet tomorrow. I'm hopeful that he can return. It's going to be more on his mindset than mine because I'm not changing. We're not going to bend the rules or change the ground rules for anybody.
He's played the second most snaps, I think, on our defensive line, so he's a good football player. He's a good young man that just has to maybe learn through this accountability and hopefully he does.
So I was stuck on Jeramiah, what was the second part of your question?
Just to keep this from spiralling the rest of the month
Yeah, to some degree it feels like the spiral's already started, right? We haven't been on the longest stretch that I would like to see us on. To me, what really dictates whether it's a spiral, though, for the long term is do we show up? Do the guys come in tomorrow and do wellness check and then get back to practice on Monday with a mindset of, like, let's pick ourselves up and let's go? Nobody is going to feel sorry for us.
I think from an execution standpoint, there already is a spiral. We have to be more detailed in what we're doing to make improvements and adjustments.
On the two holding penalties, never regaining the momentum
Yeah, they — I watched them on the iPad. I thought one of them was a really good call. I can't really say a whole lot about the other one, but I didn't love it. Maybe it was a good call. But those take the wind out of your sails. When you have a positive play that's going to get you on track and then it's a 10-yard penalty and then it's a 10-yard penalty.
They were both on Caden. We took him out. I thought one of them was a really good call. The other one I would challenge a little bit, but when we pulled him out, we said, "Look, man, we're going to take you out. You're probably going to go back in at some point but you need to kind of calm down." We can't shoot ourselves in the foot there.
The Gators can't beat the Gators. As soon as we get something positive going, it felt like offensively those situations sort of derailed drives. It's hard to overcome holding penalties that are for ten yards that really put you behind the chains.
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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Jon Sumrall discusses Florida's miserable Week 10 loss to Oklahoma
