10 things I’ll remember most about Florida’s successful 2018 regular season
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Florida’s 2018 regular season wrapped up Saturday with a memorable, dominant 41-14 rout of rival Florida State.
The Gators finished the first regular season of the Dan Mullen era a surprising 9-3, a vast improvement on last season’s four-win regular season that saw the culture broken and head coach Jim McElwain dismissed before November.
The program’s first New Year’s Six bowl invitation awaits, and the Gators will have the opportunity to win 10 games for only the 15th time in more than a century of football.
The regular season wasn’t without disappointments. There was another loss to Georgia, the end of the program’s 31-season winning streak over Kentucky, and a deflating home defeat to Missouri. Nevertheless, most Gators likely will remember 2018 for the way Dan Mullen rebuilt and reshaped Florida’s culture, laying the foundation for what appears to be a promising future to come under his leadership.
From the Kentucky loss to the “reclaim the state” win over FSU, here are the 10 things I’ll remember most about Florida’s successful 2018 regular season:
1. Streak Over, Part I: Kentucky 27, Florida 16
When it was over, and the Kentucky flag was planted at midfield of Steve Spurrier Field, Florida’s fall from national prominence seemed to be in freefall and the rebuild felt like it could take forever.
The game wasn’t just memorable because of Kentucky’s justified, wild celebration over ending 31 years of futility against the Gators.
The game introduced the nation to Kentucky running back Benny Snell Jr, who arrived in Gainesville as one of the nation’s most underrated football players and one of the SEC’s best kept secrets. He left having paced a Kentucky rushing attack that gashed and gutted Florida for 303 yards on its homefield.
It also showed how much work Florida’s roster needed to again become nationally elite.
Kentucky’s ability to run the ball so well exposed Florida’s personnel deficiencies, led by years of underachieving recruiting by the McElwain regime. They also put a wart on film that this Florida defense spent the entire season trying to shake, with only occasional success. Florida also lost perhaps its best defensive football player, Marco Wilson, for the season on the game’s first drive. Florida’s lack of secondary depth would catch up to the Gators later in the season, especially against Georgia.
But the loss also gave Florida a chance to come together as a team and respond to adversity.
That they did defines what this football team came to be in 2018.
2. Forcing six turnovers on Rocky Top
After the Benny Snell carnage and Kentucky loss, the Gators traveled to Rocky Top uncertain about themselves, especially on defense.
Florida set the tone from the opening possession, when Jachai Polite forced a fumble (this would become a theme) that was recovered by David Reese, setting up a quick Gators score. By night’s end, Florida had compiled one of the season’s strangest statistical combinations: 47 points, 10 completed passes, 6 forced turnovers. A season ago, Florida didn’t recover a fumble until November.
This season, the ability of Todd Grantham’s defense to create takeaways and short fields for the offense was a defining characteristic of the football team. That started on Rocky Top against Tennessee.
3. Jachai Polite
Jachai Polite was perhaps the largest reason Florida’s defense was one of the nation’s most opportunistic in 2018. Polite led the nation with five forced fumbles, the last coming in a still-tight 20-7 contest Saturday in Tallahassee.
Polite spent most the season living in opposing backfields, even late in the year when he commanded double teams, chips and running back help.
https://twitter.com/DylanADeSimone/status/1066471516001452033
Polite keyed Florida’s wins over Mississippi State, LSU and Florida State, and became the first Gator since perennial All-Pro Carlos Dunlap in 2009 to finish the season with double-digit sacks.
Polite’s Twitter name is @RetireMoms, a football dream that through hard work and talent seems likely to become reality this spring in the 2019 NFL Draft, should Polite decide to forgo his senior season.
4. Don’t need more cowbell
Most Gators fans and analysts circled Sept. 29 before the season and suggested it was probably a loss.
After all, Dan Mullen had left a stacked roster for Joe Moorhead at Mississippi State, was taking a four-win culture to Starkville in the first month of his first season on the job and had a run defense that was absolutely obliterated by the only power run game they had faced prior to playing the bruising rushing attack of State.
Further, Mississippi State and Starkville figured to be frothing at the mouth for the return of Mullen to Mississippi, especially after all of Mullen’s talk about Florida being a “lateral move” when both Scott Stricklin (who left Miss State to become Florida’s AD) and Geoff Collins (who left State to become Florida’s defensive coordinator) left Starkville for Gainesville.
That’s why you play the games on the field, not paper.
Florida delivered a defensive performance for the ages, capping a 13-6 win with a gutsy safety blitz on fourth-and-10 that got home just in time.
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For Florida, it was the first true sign that the players were buying into what Mullen and his staff were selling about “relentless effort” and “the Gator standard,” and it was just what Florida needed heading into an immense home tilt with LSU.
5. Gators reclaim The Swamp in thrilling win over LSU
On a perfect October day for football, Florida inducted Tim Tebow, its most perfect football player, into its Ring of Honor, the most elite fraternity Florida football has.
The Gators honored the Heisman Trophy and national championship-winning quarterback by playing to his standard, using their physicality, heart and a tenacious defense to clip then No. 5 LSU, 27-19.
There were plenty of performances to remember from that game, from Lamical Perine going over 100 yards rushing to Jachai Polite and Vosean Joseph dominating at the point of attack to Brad Stewart’s sterling play in the secondary. But for the 90,000-plus fans who were there, the lasting memory of the game will be The Swamp, a boisterous, broiling cauldron of roaring sound, urging the home team onto victory.
Few plays in the building have ever been as loud as the game’s most critical one, which came when New Orleans native Brad Stewart stepped in front of this Joe Burrow pass and broke his home state’s heart.
The roar heard 'round Gainesvillepic.twitter.com/kdziMnRBxt
— Florida Gators Football (@GatorsFB) October 6, 2018
For one brilliant day, The Swamp was back. The sense is there will be more days to come under Dan Mullen.
6. The Comeback, Part I
A year ago, if I told you that Florida’s character, effort and can’t-quit culture would save it from two humbling losses next season, you’d have laughed me out of the building.
Florida in 2017 was a culture as broken and toxic as any in college football, it’s hard to imagine.
Florida in 2018 could fall behind 21-3 to a solid Vanderbilt team in Nashville and rally for a huge win anyway behind an offense that started slowly but ultimately compiled 576 yards and 37 points.
Florida won because they took over a game at the line of scrimmage instead of rolling over when things got tough. That mental resolve wasn’t anywhere near where the program was a year ago and is a testament to Dan Mullen and his staff.
7. Lamical Perine and Jordan Scarlett
The Lamical Perine and Jordan Scarlett duo formed one of the best one-two running back punches in all of college football this season, each tallying over 600 yards rushing on 100-plus carries and collectively rushing for 8 touchdowns.
“We did a great job executing and we practiced and competed and pushed each other,” Scarlett said Saturday of the duo’s season-long performance after Florida’s win over FSU. “Coach (John) Hevesy improved our offensive line and they did a great job of getting leverage and creating a push all season.”
There’s no telling if one or both of these juniors will head to the NFL this spring, but both run hard, protect the football and have bright futures at the next level.
“They are both NFL running backs,” an NFL front office executive told me about the pair earlier this season. “They have differences, but both run hard, have excellent vision and high-leg turnover and lower body strength. It’s a matter of when, not if.”
8. Another flop against Mizzou
Maybe Florida will finally stop talking down to Missouri. And while they are at it, maybe Florida will stop scheduling Missouri for Homecoming.
Cece Jefferson made fun of the atmosphere at Mizzou at SEC Media Days, an odd decision given the Tigers had beaten Florida by four touchdowns at Faurot Field the prior season. Quarterback Drew Lock and Missouri remembered the insult.
Despite suffering a devastating loss on the final play to Kentucky a week earlier, Missouri and Lock rolled into Gainesville for Homecoming and clobbered the Gators 38-17 in a game that felt less close.
Mullen was still upset about how his team performed against the Tigers this past Saturday.
Speaking to media after the FSU win, Mullen praised Missouri for having a “hell of a football team.” Mullen then noted that his team didn’t respond to adversity the way the Tigers did. Instead, the Gators, dealing with their own heartbreaking loss to Georgia the week prior, played flat, “in some ways allowing Georgia to beat them twice.”
Missouri fans and writers have been stoking the flames, bizarrely suggesting that Mullen calling Mizzou “a hell of a football team” is a slight.
I say let the Tigers have a year where they do the talking.
Here’s the reality: it would have taken Florida’s “A-game” to beat Missouri anyway. A flat version had no chance against the Tigers, who put the Gators on blast for a second consecutive season.
Maybe next season Florida will worry less about talking with Missouri and more about playing with them. I’d imagine Faurot Field would be lit if the game were actually competitive and Missouri actually challenged.
9. The Comeback, Part II
Down 31-14 against South Carolina in the waning moments of the fourth quarter, Florida appeared to be going in the tank in November for the fifth consecutive season. The Gators couldn’t move the football against a soft Gamecocks defense and couldn’t stop a suddenly prolific South Carolina offense.
Florida woke up just in time, and powered by Perine, Scarlett and electric playmaker Kadarius Toney in the ground game, Florida racked up over 300 yards and 21 points in the final quarter-plus to snatch a victory away from the jaws of defeat.
10. Streak Over, Part II: Gators rout FSU
Perhaps the most important memory of Florida’s 2018 regular season came on the season’s final Saturday. That’s when Dan Mullen and Florida emphatically ended FSU’s program-best five-game winning streak in the rivalry with a dominant, leave-no-doubt 41-14 rout of the hated Seminoles in Tallahassee.
It was a victory Florida had to have, and Mullen and the staff delivered in a way Florida hasn’t seen in this rivalry game since the halcyon days of the Urban Meyer era.
The 27-point win reclaimed the rivalry and the state for the Gators, who will now get to recruit as the premier in-state program in the most fertile recruiting state in the country for the first time in several seasons.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
