Winning on the road in the SEC is never easy but the Gators made it look fairly easy on Saturday in the season opener, beating Ole Miss 51-35 in Oxford.

It was a historic opener for Kyle Trask, who completed 30 of 42 passes for 416 yards and six touchdowns, as well as tight end Kyle Pitts, who chipped in eight catches for 170 yards and four touchdowns.

The Gators managed to score 10 or more points in all four quarters against the Rebel defense.

That was the good news.

The bad news? Todd Grantham’s defense had a rough outing.

Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral threw for 395 yards and three touchdowns while receiver Elijah Moore had 10 catches for 227 yards against Florida’s secondary.

Following the opening season win, Dan Mullen credited his veterans for stepping up their game on Saturday.

“Really proud of our guys. When you come into such a unique offseason, a unique game one, it’s great to have veteran players and you look at a veteran quarterback like Kyle Trask, that can come in,” Mullen said after the game. “We’re gonna see a new D-coordinator, a new defense, you’re not sure what you’re getting.

“When a guy with experience that has played a lot. Kyle Pitts, tough matchup on people. Our wide outs, tough matchup, and were able to just kind of stay in there, keep scoring. We knew they were explosive offensively and we had to keep score and we did that.”

The other side of the ball is a different story but, as Mullen noted after the game, the Gators anticipate getting players back in the weeks to come.

If you missed it, Florida had 13 players out for the game for unspecified reasons.

“We can get a little better in the red zone, offensively, but then defensively, we got to get some guys back,” the Florida coach said. “We had some guys out today and now we got a game under our belt.

“We’ve played, we got to get used to tackling, running to the ball, and playing football again.”