My word, it was ugly. The Florida Gators and Tennessee Volunteers put on a clinical display of horrendous football on Saturday afternoon, and the Gators escaped with a 10-9.
Florida vs. Tennessee final score: 3 things we learned from Florida’s 10-9 escape
The Gators take top honors after an afternoon of ghastly football.
Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports
Both offenses were inept all day. The defenses played well, to be sure, but stopping their opposition did not exactly call for a Herculean effort. The Tennessee offense was incapable of doing anything more than three Aaron Medley field goals, and it took a late change from Jeff Driskel to Treon Harris for the Gators to do anything positive.
The Vols had a chance late to scrape together a win, but Justin Worley overthrew his receiver down the middle and was picked off. Tennessee had control of the game for almost the entire time, but was able to cobble together their 10th consecutive loss to the Gators.
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Three things we learned
1. The Jeff Driskel era may be at an end. The Gators finally pulled the plug on Driskel at the end of the third quarter, and the offense moved considerably better with Treon Harris pulling the strings. It still wasn’t great, but basically any movement was an improvement. With Will Muschamp firmly coaching for his job, it would be pretty staggering to see him go away from Harris barring injury.
2. The streak lives. The Gators have not lost to Tennessee since 2004. This was their best chance to beat Florida in years, and they blew it. You can clearly see that the Vols are making progress as a program, but this is the type of thing that happens to teams that haven’t put it all together yet. This is going to sting for a while.
3. This is a microcosm of the SEC East. This game was a bum fight next to a burning oil drum. The downfall of the SEC East can be traced pretty directly to the decline of these two programs, which were the class of the division for years and years.
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