Florida played hard for 60 minutes on Saturday. After being wiped out in the first half at Utah to open the season and whipped physically all afternoon at Kentucky, that was a welcome change in and of itself for the Gators.

But after 3 1/2 quarters at Williams-Brice Stadium, it looked as if the result would be the same: another road loss for Florida under Billy Napier. Florida trailed 37-27 to the Gamecocks, who appeared to be pulling away late behind a marvelous Spencer Rattler and a Florida offense that couldn’t finish enough drives to keep up.

This time, the Gators had a different ending in mind.

This time, Florida rallied furiously, scoring 2 touchdowns in the game’s final 5 minutes to cap an improbable, immensely necessary 41-39 win over an equally desperate South Carolina. 

The comeback was authored by Graham Mertz, the transfer whom most head coaches cast aside to the island of misfit toys after a tumultuous 4 seasons at Wisconsin. Billy Napier saw something, though, the same way he did when he identified, recruited and helped sign a kid named Tajh Boyd at Clemson as a young coordinator over a decade ago. Boyd changed a program. Mertz may get to help change one, too.

As a warm October Saturday afternoon turned to Saturday evening in South Carolina, what Mertz did Saturday was change a football game.

Unflappable under intense pressure most the afternoon, Mertz marched the Gators 75 yards twice for touchdowns on consecutive drives to help the Gators reclaim the lead. The final touchdown came on a drive where Florida had no timeouts, and it closed with Mertz delivering a thread-the-needle laser to Ricky Pearsall, just as a Gamecocks defender barreled in to inflict more punishment on the Florida quarterback.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of Graham Mertz,” Napier said in an interview with ESPN following the game. “The amount of work to start 32 games at Wisconsin. To show up at Florida to start over. The work ethic applying all the things he learned at Wisconsin. The leadership he’s shown. What a competitor. Are you kidding me? That was incredible. Kid’s got grit, man. He’s fun to coach. You show up every day excited to be around the guy. He’s what the University of Florida football should be.”

Rattler, terrific in his own right all afternoon, had one more chance, but the Florida defense, on its heels most the afternoon, came up with a huge play when freshman Kelby Collins pressured Rattler up the middle and sophomore Miguel Mitchell intercepted Rattler’s off the back foot heave.

As Mitchell collapsed to the ground with the football, the Florida sideline erupted, an orange and blue flash mob of joy. It was a celebration you don’t usually see when you beat a 2-3 football team with plenty of warts. But when you are 1-7 on the road under your current head coach and just 5-12 in road games this decade, you have to start somewhere.

When the game expired on a failed South Carolina lateral a handful of plays later, Florida celebrated some more. Players stayed and sang the alma mater, a tradition that started under Steve Spurrier and reached its zenith in the halcyon days of Urban Meyer. Florida’s always large contingent of traveling fans swung and swayed and sang with them, savoring every moment of a Saturday that felt like an inflection point.

Time will tell if this was truly a turning point for Florida, but make no mistake, if the Gators do return to national prominence under Napier, these Gators chomping victory from the jaws of defeat in Columbia will be a day people point to and remember.

Oddly, it’s an old quote from Bobby Bowden, the Florida State coaching legend and longtime nemesis of Florida’s favorite son Spurrier, which was hard to get out of my head watching the Gators celebrate their win on Saturday evening.

“First you lose bad. Second, you lose close. Third, you win more close than you lose. And then you start winning big. That’s the journey,” Bowden said of program-building.

Napier has lost bad, and did again, just 2 weekends ago, when the Gators were pummeled in Lexington, plunging the famously impatient Florida fan base into frustrated delirium.

Bowden, however, understand that sustainable success sometimes happens slowly. It did for him at Florida State. It did for Dabo Swinney at Clemson. A slow build may be in the cards for Napier, too. 

To get there, his teams will have to win on the road. Saturday’s game, a narrow win over a team Florida would probably beat 7 times out of 10 on talent alone, does not represent sea change, or signify that Florida’s road woes are over.

What it does is teach these Gators that if they fight and are physical and play clean football (Florida committed only 6 penalties, a road game low under Napier), there can be more Saturday celebrations away from The Swamp. What a win like Saturday also does, to Bowden’s point, is help Florida take the next step on their journey under Napier.

The Gators are the youngest team in the Power 5, with freshmen and sophomores in 21 of the 24 spots on the 2-deep, and only 1 senior starter. While Florida relied on 2 of its upperclassmen in Mertz and Pearsall to win the game late, Florida also received huge performances down the stretch from a number of Napier’s baby Gators.

From Kelby Collins’ late pressure of Rattler to Mitchell’s interception to Arlis Boardingham making 2 huge catches, including one on fourth down, to pull the Gators within 3 late, Florida freshmen and sophomores were immense factors on Saturday. They will continue to be down the stretch this season, too, as the Gators face at least 3 more ranked opponents, including archrival Georgia and bitter in-state rival Florida State, both ranked in the top 5. It won’t get any easier. But winning, as Florida was reminded again on Saturday, is hard.

That lesson just feels different when your team is the one doing the winning.