A year after Florida fired football coach Jim McElwain for failing to prove his claims that he had received death threats, this season for the Gators has been only slightly less wacky.
Booed during the early stages of last Saturday’s 35-31 comeback triumph over South Carolina in the Swamp, redshirt sophomore quarterback Feleipe Franks followed a 10-yard touchdown run by raising his finger to actually shush the home crowd. Florida first-year coach Dan Mullen said afterward in a news conference that Franks made a mistake but he had a bigger problem with Franks getting in a Twitter spat last week with former Gators quarterback Luke Del Rio, who posted that Mullen would be “in serious risk of losing the fan base” if he started Franks against the Gamecocks.
Mullen then admitted in the same news conference that he would go home and check what fans were saying about him on Twitter.
“I’ll read a coaching commentary on my performance by somebody who’s got six followers and follows 27 people,” Mullen said. “Obviously he will be an expert in the game of college football.”
These are not dull times in Gainesville.
Saturday’s win over the Gamecocks was hardly Florida’s biggest of the season – the 27-19 stunning of LSU on Oct. 6 takes that title – but it may have prevented another November fade. The Gators entered this month coming off a 36-17 loss to Georgia in Jacksonville that eliminated them from the Southeastern Conference Eastern Division race, and they followed that with their poorest performance, falling 38-17 to visiting Missouri on Nov. 3.
Florida entered last Saturday’s game with a 9-14 record in November contests since 2013, and 9-15 appeared quite likely until the Gators closed with a 21-0 surge and finished with a whopping 367 rushing yards, with Jordan Scarlett amassing 159 and Lamical Perine adding 107.
“When you lose a couple of games back to back, it’s hard to keep up the mentality of knowing how good you are,” Franks said Monday during a news conference. “When we’re all on the same page and doing what we’re coached to do, we’re a really good football team.”
The Gators are fourth in the SEC with 203.1 rushing yards per game and are averaging 5.1 yards per carry.
Franks was benched for the third time in two seasons during the second half of the Missouri game and was replaced by fellow redshirt sophomore Kyle Trask. It appeared that the Gators were showcasing yet another quarterback controversy in the post-Tim Tebow era, but Trask fractured his foot last Wednesday in practice and is out for at least the rest of the regular season.
A rest of the regular season that is far from taxing.
The Gators are 7-3 overall and have completed their SEC schedule at 5-3, which is a solid rebound from last year’s collapse that yielded a 4-7 record and a 3-5 league mark. All three losses have occurred by double digits, including Kentucky’s ending of a 31-year series losing streak with a 27-16 win on Sept. 8 – but Florida does possess a No. 15 ranking with a chance to sneak into the top 10.
Florida is hosting Idaho this week, with the Vandals standing just 4-7 with wins over Western New Mexico, Portland State, Southern Utah and North Dakota.
“You’ve got to respect your opponent, and you can’t get complacent,” Franks said. “I think this week will be a confidence-builder for us leading into Florida State week. It’s the last home game for the seniors, which is where most of the focus should be.”
Florida’s fourth-year seniors arrived with McElwain and experienced SEC East titles in 2015 and 2016 before last year’s plummeting. They have yet to taste a win over the Seminoles, with FSU having won five consecutive series meetings and the past three by the average score of 32-12.
With the Seminoles struggling to a 4-6 record in Willie Taggart’s first season as their head coach, the opportunity is there for Florida to close out 9-3 and seek a potential 10th win in a respectable bowl, but the Vandals are up first.
“This is the last game of the season for them, so they’re going to treat it like a bowl game,” Mullen said. “They’re going to let it all go and hold nothing back.”
Just like the comments Mullen can expect to read on Twitter after the game, whether his Gators have prevailed or not.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.