r/FloridaGators

Two losses after a 4-0 start and the fanbase is already ready to fire Sumrall. The team gives up at the littlest sign of adversity. This isn’t the Gator brand and it starts with us as fans. The players see the kinds of things going around on social media and of course it will affect their play. These are young impressionable kids.

I have noticed it over the years but the culture surrounding the program, particularly the fan base, has just gone off the rails. I blame it partly on social media because now everyone wants to get paid for engagement so you get idiots like IAKOW posting nonsense almost daily. However, we as a fanbase have become so toxic that I, even as an alumnus and die hard Gator for decades, can’t even stand talking with some of you. It needs to be toned down a notch. We need to give Sumrall a fighting chance or else we are going to be even more years behind the rest of the pack. We need to be supportive at this stage. This isn’t the time to go calling for a 6 game coach to lose his job and particularly not after demolishing the #4 team in the country 3 weeks ago.

Our first 2 SEC games are hard to reconcile with the last 2 games. Caveat: it’s hard to accurately judge in the first year. Lost 32 players to the portal from last year and brought in the same # of transfers plus 20 high school recruits. So about 60 guys came back and 52 are new.

Still, it’s interesting how it seems like Faulkner’s creative magic evaporated so quickly. Losing VB III shouldn’t take an above average offense to completely ineffective, should it?

Brad White’s D has been mostly embarrassing bad. The CBs are poor and we may not have much talent on the D line, but Brad was Sumrall’s first choice for DC. He’s making too much $$ to be this bad. It’s definitely too early, but if it doesn’t improve next year (or ugh year 3), Sumrall’s willingness to fire his friends could be telling. Sumrall knows better than we how good the position coaches are, and maybe having bad players at underperforming positions keeps good coaches around for year 2. Still, keeping coaches, especially a DC, even a year too long would give off major Stricklin and Napier vibes.

As an aside, I maintain Strick should have been fired after not firing Napier after his second year. Giving him 4 years was inexcusable.

The final 4 games this year look A LOT different than they did 2 weeks ago: Oklahoma, at Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and at Florida State. None of those are sure-fire wins. On the flip side, we could win 3 or all of them, and we usually play UGA tough. To win 7-8 games, the Gators need to coach and play a hell of a lot better. Hopefully the staff will do great things in the last half of the season.

We all stick together. I know its tough, but dare to be an optimist. What are you gonna do? Be a bandwagon canes fan? I know nobody is jumping ship to FSU. Its great to be a Florida Gator no matter what. F everyone else

Today was awful. There’s no defending a 45–17 type performance. The defense got embarrassed, Missouri was clearly the better team, and the staff deserves criticism for it.

But before we decide five games into Jon Sumrall’s tenure that the rebuild is dead, Florida history is worth remembering:

In Steve Spurrier’s first season in 1990, Florida started 5–0 and reached No. 9. Then they went to Tennessee and got absolutely destroyed 45–3. Sound familiar?

Florida responded by beating Akron 59–0, Auburn 48–7, Georgia 38–7, and Kentucky 47–15. They finished 9–2.

Spurrier obviously turned out okay.

In Urban Meyer’s first season in 2005, Florida started 4–0 and reached No. 5. Game five was at Alabama.
Alabama 31, Florida 3.

Meyer’s first team eventually finished 9–3. The following season (as you know) Florida went 13–1 and won the national championship.

None of that means Sumrall is Spurrier or Meyer.

And it absolutely does not mean today was acceptable.
It means one catastrophic road loss early in a coach’s first season does not tell us what that coach’s tenure will become.

There’s a huge difference between:

“This loss exposed serious problems Florida needs to fix.”
and “We’re fucking frauds; the season is over”.

The first is fair. The second is pretending we know the future.

Today sucked. Adjust expectations if you want. Fucking criticize the hell out of the defense. But maybe give the new staff more than five games before writing the obituary. Spurrier was once 5–0 and lost 45–3. Meyer was once 4–0 and lost 31–3.

We have been here before.

In all kinds of weather.

Sumrall better not let his guys be as sleepy as you lot! We’re going to have to come out of the gate firing on all cylinders to avoid being sucked into the trap game trap. I for one will be absolutely Mizzourable if we lose to these schmucks again. So let’s GET UP AND GO. Trekking out there to play them is always a headache, you say, and we find ourselves in a big letdown spot? Good. It’s one more test. So shake off the Columbia malaise, and GO GATORS.