For Jon Sumrall and Eli Drinkwitz, Florida and Missouri is a prove it game in the Show Me State
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As Florida scored touchdown after touchdown in a jet-engine-loud Swamp last Saturday, dismantling No. 4 Ole Miss 52-28 in style, it was easy, if you squinted through the Florida sunshine, to imagine you were staring down at the Florida sideline in the proud program’s halcyon days, when Steve Spurrier or Urban Meyer piled up points and championships and left no doubt.
Whether Ole Miss was flat or not, the Gators were leagues better than the Rebels, overwhelming them behind star running back Jadan Baugh and offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner’s innovative, balanced offense (sound familiar, Florida fans?) and just enough timely defense against perhaps the nation’s best quarterback in Trinidad Chambliss.
It wasn’t just that Florida won. The Gators are good in The Swamp even in dire years, as last season’s stunning upset of Texas aptly demonstrates.
It was the way they won, rushing for over 300 yards and hanging half a hundred on a top 5 opponent for just the second time in program history (FSU, to win the national championship in 1997 Sugar Bowl).
Undefeated after September and ranked in the top 10 in the regular season for the first time since the Dan Mullen era, Florida fans are ready to hurt again, convinced they’ve finally found the coach they’ve been searching for after a decade and a half mired in mediocrity and lost in the college football wilderness.
Florida’s reward for a statement win over the Rebels is a trip to Faurot Field, a place the Gators have never played particularly well, and a date with No. 25 Mizzou, who is fresh off a disappointing 31-24 loss at Mississippi State.
The matchup might be the most fascinating football game of the weekend, with all due respect to the inevitable Ohio State vs. Iowa rock fight.
Two programs at inflection points, not yet clearly headed in different directions, but certainly playing a game that will have a lot to say about who they become or can be this autumn.
In Starkville, the Tigers snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, done in by stolid, unimaginative late game playcalling, a curious decision by Eli Drinkwitz not to challenge a key 4th-and-1 spot late in the game, and the continued sensational play of Mississippi State quarterback Kamario Taylor, who authored his second-consecutive comeback SEC win in as many weeks.
Missouri fans were rightly frustrated with Drinkwitz after the game, wondering when, if ever, Drinkwitz would turn the corner from simply fielding a consistently competitive product to a nationally contending one.
It’s never as bad as it seems.
Since 2023, only 4 SEC programs have won more games than Missouri (32). In that span, Missouri has been ranked for 32 weeks, including this week. That’s impressive.
The flip side is well-documented. Missouri’s last win over a top-10 opponent came in the 2023 Cotton Bowl (14-3 over Ohio State) and the Tigers are just 1-8 against ranked opponents since, losing their last 8 ranked matchups. Missouri is 20-1 against unranked power conference foes in that span, but only 4 of those victories have come against programs with winning records. The Tigers’ best win since upending No. 7 Ohio State in 2023 came over an offensively listless 8-win Iowa team in the 2024 Music City Bowl. Making matters worse, the Tigers are 0-5 against top 10 competition at Faurot Field under Drinkwitz.
Another defeat — this time to a program that, whatever its momentum, only won 4 games a season ago — and Missouri fans may feel the burn of a 7-year itch with Drinkwitz and the program’s direction. If not now, when?
Jon Sumrall’s team, meanwhile, looks like the Mighty Gators again, ahead of schedule in Month 2 of Season 1. Sumrall wasn’t Florida’s first choice. That was Lane Kiffin, now at LSU. But in the months since Florida was forced to pivot to Plan B, Sumrall’s won the battle-scarred Gators’ fan base over with his relentless recruiting, fiery attitude, and a refusal to accept mediocrity.
After years of the placid stoicism of Napier, Sumrall’s passion is refreshing to Florida fans who wondered if Napier was too calm to care as Florida lost game after game.
A fun, but illustrative, anecdote? Shortly after taking the job at Florida, Sumrall would often lift weights with his players, trying to cultivate relationships. He quickly learned that he, the head coach, could deadlift more than a handful of Florida’s offensive linemen.
“I made them promise that wouldn’t ever happen at my program again,” Sumrall quipped this summer. His offensive line, coached by Florida alum Phil Trautwein, has graded out as one of the best 3 units in the SEC through a month of football, per PFF.
How much of Florida’s turnaround is attributable to Sumrall’s hiring decisions, like plucking Trautwein, an industry rising star, or Faulkner, a universally respected offensive mind, is an intriguing question that may linger until Faulkner exits stage left, this offseason or next, for a head coaching job.
At Georgia Tech, Faulkner, along with battering ram quarterback Haynes King, combined to form one of college football’s most prolific offenses. But in Atlanta, Faulkner’s offenses never had the type of weaponry around King that he now has at Florida. In Gainesville, with an abundance of riches from Baugh and his backfield mate Duke Clark to wide receivers like Vernell Brown III, Dallas Wilson, and Eric Singleton, Faulkner has an offense that is as multiple as anyone in America. The Gators can stretch you vertically in the pass game, get the ball to playmakers in space in the alleys, or hammer you with the run game between the tackles, and they head into CoMo averaging over 50 points a football game.
They also head into the game in rarefied air the program hasn’t felt since the middle of the Mullen era. A top 10 ranking. National love. College Football Playoff chatter.
It’s all heady stuff for a group that won just 4 games. Sumrall knows it.
“You don’t hang a banner or get celebrated for where you’re ranked between game 4 and 5 in college football,” Sumrall told the media this week. “Like, the rankings mean absolutely nothing. And anybody that’s feeling really good about us being ranked wherever we’re ranked, it means nothing to me today. It really doesn’t mean anything until after the last game is played and it’s like, ‘All right, where were we? How did we do?’
“And so I realize in the public area, the fanbase, it’s exciting. There’s a lot of great, you know, morale, whatever, but here’s the deal, and I told the team this morning, you have to humble yourself or you will be humbled. Like, if we don’t look in the mirror and hone where we’re deficient still, somebody else will show it to us. And so we – I’m very happy that we won last week. I’m happy that we won each week so far. It beats the alternative. But I’m not, like, celebrating anything. Nobody in our building should be celebrating anything. If we are, then we’re totally off-base at how you find success over the long term. So, yeah, just, I think we have to keep a humble, hungry, gritty blue-collar mindset. You know, tough teams win, selfless teams win. Like, teams that have an edge about them and hunger about them, they win. Complacent, soft, entitled, lazy, selfish teams, they lose.”
If Florida shows up to CoMo feeling good about itself, it’ll go home with its first loss. If the Gators win, they’ll have demonstrated that a big-time win in The Swamp wasn’t a “one-off,” that they can handle success and that this elite offense travels. Talk about a chance to make a statement.
The opportunity exists for Mizzou, too, and after squandering a quality win in Starkville, the Tigers should play with desperation and urgency.
Missouri has an outstanding offensive line and the weapons in the passing game to test Florida’s notable month one weakness (1-on-1 coverage situations) and a defensive coordinator in Corey Battoon who excels in scheming up opposing run games. The Tigers rank 19th in the country in yards allowed per carry against the run and 20th in rushing success rate defense.
The ingredients are there for Drinkwitz to get the signature win that’s eluded his program since that Cotton Bowl evening 3 Decembers ago. Missouri just has to execute for 60 minutes.
It’s a prove it game in the Show Me State.
One team will win and make a statement. The other will be back to square one.
Welcome to meaningful October college football. The way it ought to be.
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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.
