The Florida Gators took on the No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday afternoon, and on Monday of game week, we already saw our first dose of trash talk. Those comments are below.
2 Florida players talked trash about Georgia ... and then the Dawgs won by 35
These comments have not aged very well.
Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
The first shots came from Florida defensive back Chauncey Gardner, who was asked about Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm.
Let’s just say he isn’t all that impressed:
“I mean, you say they have a great quarterback — I get it,” Gardner said via 247Sports. “He’s throwing simple passes — I get it. Anybody can throw a slant — I get it. If you call him the best quarterback, so be it, but he has to play Saturday. We’re going to see what his best attribute is. If he can beat us with his arm, whoopty do. But we’re not focused on what he can do, what he can’t do. We’re just going to go out and focus on us and just play football, like I said, the past three or four weeks.”
But it doesn’t stop there — Florida wideout Josh Hammond also poked some fun at Georgia losing the last three years, too
”We haven’t lost to Georgia in the last three years,” Hammond said via 247Sports. “Our seniors have never lost to Georgia so I think that mentality that they bring, being that they’ve never lost to Georgia, that brings a lot of confidence to us, just knowing that Georgia isn’t a team that we lose to. So I think that’s the message in the locker room right now: They might be the No. 2 team in the country, but they can’t beat Florida. That’s our mentality going forward and we’ll come out and be ready to play.”
How’d that go?
Well, the Dawgs scored 21 points in the game’s first eight minutes, which is about as many points as Florida averages in entire games, and led 42-0 until Florida got a garbage-time touchdown to avoid the shutout.
Waylp. Georgia center Lamont Gaillard was asked about Hammond’s comments on Monday.
“I don’t really care too much about that,” he said in response.
Georgia’s J.R. Reed also downplayed what the Gator players said.
“That’s Florida. That’s what you expect from some teams,” Reed said. “Some teams you don’t expect it. But it doesn’t bother me that much.”
So you do expect that from Florida, Reed was asked?
“No,” Reed said, laughing. “It’s just trash talk. It’s no big deal.”
UGA linebacker Lorenzo Carter said it’s a motivating factor, having the Florida players say things like that.
“Yeah, that’s what it does. That’s what bulletin-board material is. It’s just a little extra fire,” Carter said via Dawg Nation. “But we don’t need that. We have enough fire and intrinsic motivation with the team, that anything else outside is noise that we block out.”
As for Gardner’s remarks, Fromm has thrown for 1,162 yards and 12 touchdowns and just three interceptions, and he’s averaging 10 yards per throw.
While it’s true that Fromm having running backs Nick Chubb and Sony Michel in his backfield means he doesn’t have to air it out all that much, there have been some nice deep throws from the true freshman. There was this beautiful flea-flicker that gave Georgia a touchdown on its very first play against Mississippi State:
And this one, from Georgia’s game against Missouri:
Fromm took over for an injured Jacob Eason during Week 1, and it’s been his offense ever since. While Dawgs coach Kirby Smart could have played Eason at the end of UGA’s blowout win over the Tigers a couple of weeks ago, Smart said he never considered putting him in.
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