Florida Gators DOMINATE FAU - Jon Sumrall's Era Starts With a STATEMENT

The Florida Gators absolutely roll FAU, and for the first time in a long time, we break some records, but the good kind of records. Most points scored since 1988. Most points scored in a home opener for a coach. A lot of good things happened on Saturday. First drone show in the swamp. It was incredible. The energy was insane. Big time W. A lot to talk about. Let's get up after. Be sure to smash the like button and subscribe, and let's roll into the intro, baby. Come on. Hot diggity doll, boys and girls. What a game one for the Florida Gators. The energy was high. It was electric. They did something different. I talked about it on the call-in show. I don't know what it was, what changed. I don't know if they just had the radio turned up different nights. They handed somebody the aux cord, and it was bumping the entire time. It felt like we were at a club at some point because they just did not let the energy die. There wasn't a moment of silence in that stadium. If they weren't playing football, they were pumping music into that stadium, riling everybody up as much as they possibly could for as long as they could. I've been to a handful of Florida games. This is game one. It's FAU. Obviously, it's going to have just the natural energy of New Year, new coach, all of that. Been to plenty of first-game home openers. Nothing felt like it did last night. I'm telling you right now, between the music being pumped in, the halftime show with the drones, which we'll get into, which was phenomenal. They had fireworks going every which direction. We had a flyover. We haven't had a flyover in a while. Maybe I'm just feeling a little juicy, but it was all fantastic things on Saturday for John Summerall's first home opener in the Swamp. Again, rolling FAU 66-21. Great win. A lot of positives to go over here that we're going to talk about today. There is no question of where the concerns were. Even Summerall called it out a handful of times during the halftime pressure. At the end of the game, the defense, obviously, the big head-scratcher from yesterday. We're going to talk about that. I think there's a lot of people that had some great insight on the call-in show yesterday that I did enjoy. If you guys are new here and you're wondering, what is this? This is the Sober Recap Show. What I mean by sober is that the energy dies down, the excitement wears off. We're able to consume everything we did from yesterday and have a nice, healthy dialogue about what we watched and give our takeaways from it from there. Obviously, we have the call-in show, if you guys missed that on that. Right after the show, which is just, you're full of piss and vinegar. You're just spewing every little thing you got in your head at that moment, whether it's a hot take, cold take. You spit it all out. Then we get to come here and we digest everything. That's what we do here on our Sunday shows. I do want to take a talk about this for just a quick second because this was incredible. The drone show, I don't know what I thought it was going to be or if I had much expectations for it, but it was absolutely incredible. The music, the sound bites they had over playing, talking about going from Spurrier to Warfold to Tebow to now, obviously, John Summerall in the good. It was very, very cool. A lot of people, I think, had a phenomenal time and were completely blown away. You see all the blue lights. They handed everybody little wristbands. They had an emcee, which I've never seen that before, where they had somebody coming out on the field. Again, it was nonstop action all night. It was genuinely like a show. It just wasn't football. It felt like it was a show with a football game that happened to be going on at the same time. I can't put my finger on it. I know nobody may not care about it too much, but as a fan, if you haven't made it to the Swamp and you're like, man, should I go? I don't know if there's ever been a better time to go to the Swamp than this year right now because they got something clicking right now and they're fired up to be there. I tweeted out last night, but it felt like it was 06, man. It felt like we could lose anybody last night just by how things were rocking and rolling, but without further ado, let's get into the juice. Let's talk about some good stuff here. Record setting, 66 points, most ever by Florida and a head coach debut, so shout out to John again. Breaking all the right records, breaking all the right records, the most points in a season open since 1994. I thought it was 1988. Might have been wrong. I thought it was 84. Maybe it was 94. Maybe I misread the graph before and the most by Florida in any games is 2020, which was the Ole Miss game, I believe, during COVID, which was the Kyle Trask and Kyle Pitts game, so again, great company to be in. We have, you guys have known, we have been in some bad records as of late and finally we're sitting in and rocking and rolling with some good records here. Quick shout out to Alex Shepard. It'll be some of his photos that he has rocking through here. One of my favorite accounts on Twitter, go give him a follow. The guy is an absolute menace behind the camera. If you guys want to see some incredible shots from last night's game, go give him a follow. The guy absolutely crushes it day in and day out behind the camera. We had a guy ourselves there this past weekend, so hopefully we'll have some photos from him here shortly, but all in all, very impressed with the offense. Very excited with how Philo performed. I think a lot of people were kind of taken back and surprised of what he provided. What I saw, I wasn't too surprised. These were a lot of things that I was talking about. His command of the offense, his control of the offense. Some things that did surprise me, his legs, his mobility. Had a rushing touchdown, knew when to use his legs properly and made good runs when needed to. Made great decisions, had great throws on third and 11. He had one interception, which everybody saw was nowhere near his fault. Micah Mayes hit him in the chest, popped out of his chest, tried to get too cute with it and got picked off by the defender. Other than that, 225 yards, very efficient, 15 for 21 I believe he ended up being. I think the entire crew passed for 76% completion as a whole, as a quarterback room. He had 20 of 26 passing as a team with a .238 rating. Again, 6.9 yards to carry. Jayden Ball was everything as advertised. North of 150 yards, rushing on 14 attempts, a couple of touchdowns for him. He was exceptional. I think there's obviously been some debates of who's the number one running back in the country. We know we got Mazzouz running back, Kawan Lacy at Ole Miss, and of course, Jayden Ball being your big three-headed monster, but we know Ahmaud Hardy's not playing at the moment due to his injury, so he's going to slide back in the ratings, and we got Kawan Lacy tonight against Louisville. We'll see how he shapes up, but Jayden Ball, man, I mean, I don't know how you watched that game last night. I don't care if it's FAU, your mom, or anybody else playing against defense, he made everyone out there on skates. At some points, just carried the game. The big thing that I loved from last night, again, we're always going to still have that comparison. We had a play where we, big drive down the field, final hits, T.J. Abrams for like, what, 65 yards? I guess the noodle of the arm worked every now and then. Hit some big throws last night, but hit some further bombs down the field, about a five-yard line. We have a bad snap. The snapping from Mr. Harrison, Warharrison, we got to lock that in, big fella. It was atrocious. Look, I think people are going to have complaints about defense and maybe some few other things. The snapping was my biggest concern last night. It happened way too much, way too often. That has got to get fixed. Has got to get fixed ASAP. It's something you can work on, but I assume they had been working on it for quite some time. So, maybe Jason Zimidele might be closer on those heels than we thought, because a lot of expectations for Harrison were, if he can snap off, big guy, you will not be seeing the football field. So, hopefully Harrison can get that thing figured out, but snapped it over his head and threw us all the way back. We were third and goal, second and goal, bound down to the 25-yard line, and the ball makes a special move, gets us back down to the 4-3, and we go 4-4 down and poke it in. So, just being able to bounce back in those situations. We had another one where we were, again, in the red zone, had a false start from Emeka. He was very disappointed in himself. Just seeing that emotion from an individual, that was really the only big hiccup, in my opinion. I think we may have had another penalty on the defensive side of the ball. But, from the offensive side, they push them back, go to third and 11, and Aaron Fiala hits an absolute stripe where he needs to be and gets the first down, continues to drive. We were perfect in the red zone, zero punts for this Florida team. So, we don't know how the punting is going to be, but I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Zero punts for the day. And again, a 53-yarder from our field goal kicker, Durkin, and I think there were some question marks of how this special team would perform. Big-time field goal, big-time kicks, I think they kicked almost everything in the end zone. And they had one little hiccup, and John even mentioned it. I love that he mentioned it, because it was such a small detail. The receiver, the guy catching the kick return, for whatever reason, went back into the end zone, was going to kneel, and then came back out. We should have had him down at like the two. And for whatever reason, we kind of just broke formation. And they were able to get up about 20, 25-yard line. And I was irate at it, and so was John, because he mentioned it later on in the show. But again, all in all, VB3, seven catches for 116 yards. I believe, what was the fun stat line? We had about, I think, six guys or something like that that had 20 or so catches. They got the ball around to a lot. We know Billy Stockton had himself a touchdown. Dallas Wilson had four catches for about 70 yards. Micah Jones got a touchdown. Who else caught the ball last night? Eric Singleton went down with an injury. On VB3's first touchdown of the game, that big, what, 40-yard touchdown, Eric Singleton got his ankle rolled underneath him. So I don't know the severity of that injury. Very unfortunate. So we had to go deep into the wide receiver room with Micah Mays. We saw Khalil Jackson as well. I hope Eric Singleton is OK. There was a couple times Eric was flying at the center of the football field where I swear we had a touchdown in play. But it was exciting to finally see the wide receiver utilized like we've been clamoring for. We've talked about the talent. We've talked about how electric these guys were or can be, and it was on full display. 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If you win, that line up for brand new users and take advantage. Ride with the crowd. Use the great features that Price Pick has to offer. Price Picks. It is good to be around. On full display, getting the ball in space. The other thing that I loved, they threw in a couple of screens. There's a lot of motion. We saw pistols. A lot of things that we would be used to from the previous regime. But the big thing, again, I know you're going to love when I say this, execution. They executed the screens very well. And I saw these in the spring game. I was like, man, if they hit these blocks, I can see why this screenplay and how a proper screen can really torch you. They had great blocking on the outside, the perimeter blocking with the wide receivers. One of the screens I remember vividly, you saw it unfolding. And it's not very sexy when you see it happening, but I saw the other wide receivers clearing the space. We had a tight end rollout. And again, VB threw. They were able to cut through the center and able to make a 15, 20-yard play off of just a nice little screenplay because of the blocking. So all those things I was very happy with. Clean pocket for Aaron Filo. Obviously clean holes for Jaden Ball. I don't know. It's hard to tell if they blocked well because Jaden Ball is just that damn special, dude. Watching it in person is insane. Watching somebody that is, what, 6'1", 220 pounds, stop like he's just a ballerina and just spin around everybody, unbelievable, unbelievable. The big run he had where he almost scored was like, what, 60, 70 yards down the field. He could have just fell forward towards the goal line, cuts back, gets another five yards, I mean, really trying to get it in there versus just falling forward and letting the play die, just exhausting the defense. And I love how they just give it to him one more time to pump it in and knock it in for the rock. That was another thing that I noticed, right? Don't overcomplicate the simple ----. You know what I mean? You're fourth and one. What do you do? Line up and go. Don't think about it. Don't hesitate. Don't get clinky with it. That was just disastrous last year. We would get into like fourth and two, fourth and one, and there was just hesitation. You just felt like, are we going to do this, coach? Like, what are we going for? Oh, here we go. We're going for it. All right. Y'all ready? It like hyped it all up. It's like, no, you just got to go, dawg. Like just make it happen. Don't let anybody think about it. You should be ready to go. So many times last night, again, it was ran so smoothly. Everything was just so efficient last night that the things we are picking apart, we were able to pick apart, because usually we're complaining about too many men on the football field. Lastly, we've been complaining about just, again, the efficiency, not running things smoothly, delay of games, unnecessary timeouts, right? Too many guys on the football field. None of that happened. And tempo was insane on both sides of the ball. One of the plays I remember vividly was fourth and one, QB sneak, a beautiful QB sneak. Like, I had no idea what was coming, because I'm like, oh, they're just going to give it the ball, of course, right? Because why wouldn't you? It's fourth and one. Nope. Get on the center. Hype. In. Right in. Boom. No problemo. Same thing. Jane Ball after his big yard run. All right. Hey, we're just going to run it again. Go. Get down there. Let's rock and roll. And that, to me, is the biggest thing that I was very high on Aaron Filo coming into this season, right? Very experienced quarterback from his time just playing in college football, a junior behind Haynes King with Buster Faulkner. This guy showed, in my opinion last night, why he was named the starter and excited to see what he's going to do. But here's the thing. Tramiel Jones came in and looked exceptional. I believe them cold-heartedly when they say, hey, we got two quarterbacks that we believe in. We got two quarterbacks that I think we can go out there and win with, and I saw that as well, too. Tramiel Jones looked very good, very effective, had some big throws. Again, beautiful ball. Again, nobody ever questioned that at any point, but very happy for Aaron Filo. A couple of stats here, total yards, 624 yards, 624 yards for the boys last night. I mean, that is just something we haven't seen in four ages. It took us four or five games to get to that at some point. We had one turnover, obviously, at the interception. We had three turnovers on our side, which we turned into 21 points. So I know we're going to be a little critical of the defense here, but three turnovers, a couple of interceptions, obviously, and all good stuff. Florida, we had nine touchdowns, they had three touchdowns, penalties, okay, so we had three penalties. We had the false start. I know we had an off-sides one. We may have had, oh, I think we had a face mask. I think we had a face mask as well. So those were the three penalties that we had. Again, the false start, not the end of the world. It was bound to happen. We were kind of right there getting ready to score, and the off-sides, it was a little sus. Could have been a false start, could have been a false start, to be honest with you. Face mask, look, you're playing out there, you're trying to get somebody. That quarterback, man, was tough to take down at times. Six foot four, 245 pounds, he was a unit. So let's get into the defense for a little bit. I know that there was some complaints, and some people feel actually very happy about it. Here's the thing. Florida football, and Florida fans love to score points. So you score points, a lot of people will overlook everything else. If they're putting up 100 points a game, it's like, hey, this is fun, I really don't care. And I hear that part of it. Everyone's like, hey, the defense will be fine. And I get that. But I think that Coach Summerall has definitely changed the expectation, and the accountability aspect. What is refreshing, is I would feel, like doing this show, I feel very calm and collected to be able to criticize anything on this football team. I know it may sound weird, but before, if you said anything bad, there was the risk of being blocked. And not that I really care about being blocked, but it was like, man, are we gonna, you know, if we say something wrong, everyone gets their feelings hurt, and it's a whole ordeal, right? What I'm saying right now, Coach went to the presser and said it himself. So it's like, alright, cool. Everybody sees it. It's no secret. Like, this is how it should be. Accountability at its finest. Look, and he said it, and we said it on the show last night. The defense, in my opinion, had moments of flashes. It had players that looked exceptional. They had times where they stepped up, but there were times where they were just getting absolutely throttled. And he said it. He goes, look, they were out-tempoing us. And on the offensive side of the ball, they ran 90 plays. There were times where we were just hanging on by the seat of our pants. But even with all of that, with the tempo that was happening, I thought for sure we were gonna get an offside because we were gonna get back to the position. We would have a blown play because somebody was just laxadaisical. We were gonna have too many men on the field because we were trying to sub in at a horrible time. None of that happened. This was the number 22-ranked offense last year overall in the entire college football world, and I think the fastest-moving offense in the country. Now, I understand all that has to be taken into consideration of who they play, but facts are facts, numbers are numbers. This offense is very efficient. And I said this going into it before this week that, hey, they're gonna score points. Like, I know we want to goose egg, I know we want to smother these guys, but this team is going to score points. They're just not gonna score. They are way too effective. You got a good quarterback that threw for almost 3,600 yards last year. They're gonna play well. You've got an experienced guy back there, and that's exactly what they did. And I think that we shut them down when needed to. There was times where they couldn't even get past the 15. I was like, this is what I'm talking about. But they figured it out. They adjusted offensively. That's clearly their strength, and they made their adjustments, and they were able to dink and dunk their way down the football field. Made some great throws, made some great catches. So it was a combination of both, right? Where I think that this offense played, at times, very efficiently, and then there were times where the defense just was getting bullied, was getting pushed around. And he said it perfectly. And I said this last night. We've been critical of the offensive line. We've been critical and concerned of what the quarterback play is gonna be. Hell, we've even been a bit critical of the wide receiver room because, look, you've been good. We've seen flashes, but can you be consistent? Can you maintain this success? And they were exceptional. I mean, the offensive line, right, was nobody talked about it. Nobody talked about it. Outside the snapping and Emeka having the false start, those are kind of, I would say, just one-off situations that you can work on. As a whole, though, played very well. Played very well. The defense was the highlight all offseason. And he said, he goes, some guys thought they had arrived already, and they got humbled pretty quick because we haven't arrived. We got a long way to go. And that's kind of how I felt, right? We've talked about how LLJ's been fantastic and how good he's looked. We've talked about McLeod. And look, these guys had moments. Let's not get it twisted. We've talked about Jaden Woods and these guys getting multiple sacks. I think we had two sacks yesterday. We'd love to have seen some more. So, again, being ultra-critical here. I think, all in all, I think it was still a healthy night. I think it was a positive, as a whole, phenomenal night. I mean, 10 out of 10, 9 out of 10, because we would have loved to have a few more stops in there. But, again, a couple of picks. I think the cornerbacks played good, not great. I don't think they played a lot of soft coverage. Again, not too many blown coverages. They weren't drawing up a lot of blitzes, so maybe that was part of it, too. Again, I'm excited to talk with Steve on Monday night. That'll be interesting to get his opinion. I know he's going to be very supportive of his defense and pro of what he believes they can become. The one thing I will say is that this defense is one of the most consistent units on this floor team. And we've seen these guys bounce back. We've seen them come together. I think Miles Graham, Aaron Childs, Britton Bett, that defensive line, they're going to take this personal and adjust. And that's why I'm not too concerned about it. I know that Chapman's going to be hearing about this as well. He's not going to like it either. And I think these guys are going to be just fine moving forward. Again, I think we have to not make excuses, because there's going to be two sides to this. One side of the fan base is going to be like, it doesn't matter, we were fine. One side is going to be like, it was soft. I think it's reasonable to criticize and be critical of what happened, but also take into consideration that, look, I said it last night, man, watching that offense had me in a blender. I swear to goodness. It was the first time in a long time where I'm watching the game, and I don't know where any offense is going. Usually, we all know what we're doing, okay? I could tell you from left, right, and center what's happening. There were a few times where I could see what was happening, and I was like, here we go, watch this. And we did it. Just because there obviously is some familiarity with some of the play calling and what you're hoping to get out of it. But man, what had me on the edge of my seat was like, I'm watching this, and I was like, I don't know where this offense is going to go. I'm watching our defensive setup, I'm like, I think we're going to be good, and they had ways to get around it. We didn't play enough press, I felt like, but again, you press, and you get burned on the edges. So, I don't have the answers on that. I'd be crazy to tell you that I knew what I was talking about on every which way, but offensively, again, for us, what was so fun is that we'd be lining up in a pistol. Maybe we're in an I formation. Maybe we got five wide. We got guys running motion. I thought I knew what was coming. At no point did I know where the ball was going to go, which was so refreshing. So refreshing. And the other big thing, too, is that it was never really clunky. Everything had a purpose. Everything was moving efficiently, and that's what excites me is for this offense, man. I think we've talked a lot about Buster and what he's able to do, and he showed it last night. He showed it last night, to say the least. Now, I will say, the last play of the game, the big defensive stop was incredible on the goal line. I needed that. That was huge for me. They got a timeout. They settled it in. And I think Coach was like, y'all better stop these boys, or you're going to have a long week of practice. And they showed them real quick who was the strongest and who was the best out there at that moment. So, that was a big moment for them. But again, all in all, hell of a night. Hell of a day. The tailgate was fantastic. Shout out to everybody that came to the tailgate, that said hi. We had our first annual tailgate game, which was really cool. I couldn't have asked for a better day. And shout out to our guy, Edds, and more than that, those guys helping us out and helping us put on the tailgate. Quality Clutch, coming in clutch again with just phenomenal, exceptional food. Shout out to Fine Pig Media. Those boys, once again, impressed me day in and day out with what they're able to do and produce such an incredible show. So, again, it's always blessed and honored to be able to do this and put these shows on and it's a blast. The amount of people that come up and say, hey, we appreciate you, we enjoy the show. And a lot of people that are going through stuff, right, just personal things, and they're able to escape when they come and watch this show, means the world to me. Because that's what sports have always been to me, and what I hope it is for you guys is that, hey, it's a sense of entertainment, it's a sense of release. You look forward to turning this thing on because you're going to get a laugh, you might cry a little bit because we are frustrated, but ultimately, we have a good time, we have fun. That's what we kind of came together last night. Look, that's why I always get so fired up and emotional at these games, man. They're a beautiful thing. There ain't nothing better than the Swamp, and it proved it again, once again, last night. We've got Campbell coming up this Saturday at 5.30. Can't wait for a good old asshole, but that team better not score. That team can't score. I said that. I was okay with FAU scoring. I was very adamant about that. Make sure we, hey, you guys, if you follow Bozeman on Twitter, okay, or have any type of following for him, make sure you remind him who he picked to not cover on Saturday. He picked, he didn't think Ford was going to cover. So make sure we remind him of his fair weather fanness, okay? Make sure we let him know in his Twitter, all right? Please be sure to do that, but hope you guys enjoyed it. I'm sure I may have forgot some things that I wanted to talk about. We'll have plenty of shows. We have a show tonight live on Gator Summit at 8.30. I think we'll have another show later dropping today, breaking down the PFF scores of these individuals, more from a player-by-player individual. And then Monday, we're going to have a three-hour show. Can't wait. We got to talk LSU, Clemson. I tried telling y'all, going to be a bloodbath, and I think that was worth it, a bloodbath. I think it was. That was embarrassing for Clemson. The SEC's undefeated. The Big Ten looked a little wobbly. So a lot of good stuff. One day morning should be a blast, 7.30 to 10.30. We're going for three hours strong. We're going to have plenty of football to talk about. So if you guys want to come hang out with us, stop in, tune in, you know the drill. Then, of course, Monday night live for Champs Corner. But y'all be good. Have a great Sunday. Again, tonight live on the Gator Summit YouTube channel, 8.30. We'll be there. Me and myself, Allie Peek and Gator Dave. Y'all be good, baby. Peace and love.