{"id":349077,"date":"2025-11-01T23:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T23:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/349077\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T23:47:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T23:47:11","slug":"florida-football-grades-following-loss-to-rival-georgia-in-jacksonville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/349077\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida football grades following loss to rival Georgia in Jacksonville"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;right:0;bottom:0;width:100%;height:100%;z-index:2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/86841903007-helmet.jpg\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"vidplayicon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/appservices\/universal-web\/universal\/icons\/icon-play-alt-white.svg\" alt=\"play\" style=\"height:40px;margin:auto 18px auto 27px;width:40px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Who will Florida football hire as its next coach? Swampcast discusses?<\/p>\n<p>The Sun&#8217;s Kevin Brockway, Andrew Abadie and Noah Ram break down the aftermath of Billy Napier&#8217;s firing and the search for a new Florida football coach.<\/p>\n<p>JACKSONVILLE \u2212 New coach, same result for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gatorsports.com\/story\/sports\/college\/football\/2025\/10\/27\/when-florida-football-will-kick-off-at-kentucky-on-nov-8\/86846463007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Florida football<\/a> in its matchup with No. 5 <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/ncaaf\/teams\/georgia-bulldogs\/3473\/\" data-autotag=\"3248d159-97eb-4f61-bd09-3a6f38114d58\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Georgia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gatorsports.com\/story\/sports\/college\/football\/2025\/10\/22\/what-former-florida-football-standouts-think-about-whats-needed-in-next-coaching-hire\/86485790007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Florida Gators<\/a> (3-5, 2-3 SEC) played hard enough to pull off an upset but couldn&#8217;t finish the game off in a 24-20 loss to the rival Bulldogs before 76,131 at EverBank Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>In UF&#8217;s debut under interim coach Billy Gonzales, the Gators took a 20-17 lead with 14:52 left in the fourth quarter on a 54-yard Trey Smack field goal. But Georgia regained the lead on a seven-play, 82-yard TD drive, capped by a 36-yard TD run by Chauncey Bowens with 4:36 remaining.<\/p>\n<p>From there, Georgia&#8217;s defense held UF scoreless and ran out the clock.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/ncaaf\/teams\/florida-gators\/3472\/\" data-autotag=\"5f17983d-3ab8-4b35-9954-23714ad248dd\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Florida<\/a> lost for the eighth time in its last nine meetings with the Bulldogs and dropped to 44-57-2 in the overall series between the border schools.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how Florida graded out in its loss to the Bulldogs:<\/p>\n<p>Florida football offense: C<\/p>\n<p>Florida was unable to convert in short yardage when it needed to most. On a fourth-and-1 play from UGA&#8217;s 18-yard line, running back Jadan Baugh was stuffed for no gain, resulting in a turnover on downs with 7:54 remaining and setting up Georgia&#8217;s go-ahead TD drive. Quarterback DJ Lagway completed 15 of 24 passes for 166 yards and used his legs a little more, rushing for 24 yards. Florida again struggled on 3rd down, going 2-of-11 on third down conversions and 0-of-2 on fourth down conversions. Florida receiver J. Michael Sturdivant slipped and was unable to come up with a catch after getting behind the defense on a critical third-down play in the fourth quarter. The pass also was underthrown by Lagway.<\/p>\n<p>Florida football defense: C<\/p>\n<p>UF&#8217;s defense again played hard for three quarters before wilting in the fourth, allowing the Bulldogs to march on a go-ahead 82-yard TD drive, capped by a 36-yard TD run by Chauncey Bowens. Florida made Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton uncomfortable at times with two sacks and five quarterback hurries. But when Stockton had time to throw, UF&#8217;s secondary had issues covering, as he completed 20 of 29 passes for 223 yards with 2 TD passes and 1 interception. Cornerback Devin Moore recorded his second interception of the season, which set up three points for UF in the first half.<\/p>\n<p>Florida football special teams: A<\/p>\n<p>Trey Smack went 2-for-2 on field goal attempts, including a 54-yarder that put the Gators up 20-17 early in the fourth quarter. It was Smack&#8217;s ninth career field goal of 50 or more yards, which is a new Florida record. Jadan Baugh returned a kickoff 36 yards and Tommy Doman averaged 47.8 yards on five punts.<\/p>\n<p>Florida football coaching: B<\/p>\n<p>Gonazles&#8217; decision to go for it on fourth-and-1 from UGA&#8217;s 18 with UF up 20-17 didn&#8217;t pan out. The decision was the right one, but perhaps UF could have dialed up a play-action to catch the Bulldogs by surprise. All and all, Gonzales and his staff devised a decent gameplan and stayed competitive with one of the top college programs in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Kevin Brockway is The Gainesville Sun\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/ncaab\/teams\/florida-gators\/1407\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Florida<\/a>\u00a0beat writer. Contact him at kbrockway@gannett.com. Follow him on X @KevinBrockwayG1. Read his coverage of the Gators\u2019 national championship basketball season in \u201cCHOMP-IONS!\u201d\u00a0\u2014 a hardcover coffee-table collector\u2019s book from The Sun. Details at Florida.ChampsBook.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who will Florida football hire as its next coach? Swampcast discusses? The Sun&#8217;s Kevin Brockway, Andrew Abadie and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":349078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,8015,8019,51014,2871,1369,2074,3189,3188,171121,723,1382,26595,1318,18125,4353,3919,44840,11652,7310,942,50,1539,450,950,2973,113886,24118,3190,62,1458,67,586,132,5230,4280,14644,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-349077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-american","10":"tag-american-football","11":"tag-bulldogs","12":"tag-college","13":"tag-college-sports","14":"tag-conference","15":"tag-content","16":"tag-fl","17":"tag-fl-content-sharing-gators","18":"tag-florida","19":"tag-florida-gators","20":"tag-florida-gators-football","21":"tag-football","22":"tag-gators","23":"tag-georgia","24":"tag-georgia-bulldogs","25":"tag-georgia-bulldogs-football","26":"tag-hub","27":"tag-jacksonville","28":"tag-neutral","29":"tag-news","30":"tag-of","31":"tag-overall","32":"tag-overall-neutral","33":"tag-sec","34":"tag-sec-conference-football","35":"tag-sec-hub","36":"tag-sharing","37":"tag-sports","38":"tag-sports-news","39":"tag-united-states","40":"tag-united-states-of-america","41":"tag-unitedstates","42":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","43":"tag-university","44":"tag-university-of-florida","45":"tag-us","46":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}