Sumrall apologizes after Florida's ugly loss to Georgia

Jon Sumrall didn’t offer excuses for Florida’s performance against Georgia. Instead, the Gators’ first-year coach apologized to the fans and promised to address the problems that contributed to Saturday’s 27-8 rivalry loss in Atlanta.

Florida committed four turnovers, surrendered 17 points off those mistakes and struggled to protect either quarterback(s) against the Bulldogs. Sumrall explained why Aaron Philo received the start over Tramell Jones Jr., revealing that Jones has been dealing with an injury that could require surgery after the season. He also left open the possibility of another change at quarterback next week.

Despite the result, Sumrall identified progress on defense and praised Bailey Stockton’s determination to play through an injury. He was far less complimentary of Florida’s offensive execution, emphasizing that the Gators must improve around their quarterbacks before either can succeed consistently.

Here’s everything Sumrall had to say after Florida’s loss to Georgia.

Opening statement

Clearly not good enough for us today. Really disappointed. Hate it for our football team. I apologize to our fans. Wasn’t what the Florida Gators‘ standard is, and I do not shy away from the fact that we have to be a lot better across the board. Starts with me as head football coach here. I have to have our guys more ready to play and more prepared.

I’m grateful for our fan turnout. Grateful for our fan base. They should be pissed off. I hope they are. I am, too. And we’re going to get this right. I promise you, we’re going to get this right. I commit to giving everything I have for us to freaking get this right. And I’m freaking not OK with today.

I’m not going to whine and complain. We gotta get better. And so I’m sick over it. Nobody cares. Everybody’s pissed off. They should be. And we gotta go back to work. And it’s the only way that’s going to make us better, is us picking ourselves up and going back to work.

So there’s a lot of things that went wrong in the game. Not a lot that went right. And I’m sure y’all got plenty of questions about all of it. So y’all got it. Let it rip.

When did you decide to start Aaron Philo, and what went into that decision?

Rewind to the bye week. Tramell really, on Thursday of the bye week, our last practice, was not anywhere near 100%. I’m not going to disclose his injury, but he could not come out of run-action, play-action plays full speed with the injury he had. It presented worse later in the bye week.

And then on the Monday practice, just from an execution standpoint, Philo was a lot cleaner earlier in the week, Monday and Tuesday. Tramell really didn’t look great with his health. I’m not going to tell y’all his injury because I’m not trying to help other people right now, but he’s got a real injury. I think some people probably are questioning what’s going on.

He’s got an injury that may require surgery after the year, but he didn’t look really good until Wednesday. Honestly, Philo looked better this past week, the entire week. We talked through, as a staff, after the first three days of practice how they looked. We talked every day about it, but through three days, Philo was executing better on Monday and Tuesday.

So we shifted to getting Philo the majority of the one reps. Wednesday was when it was kind of like, that’s the direction we’re probably going here. I let both of them know on Friday, and then we just worked through it as a staff.

I said, hey, look, here’s the situations where we would make a change after a few drives. It would either be Philo’s not playing great, or really the other one is he could be playing fine, but we just thought we needed a spark or something different.

His first interception, clearly on him. A bad decision with the football. The second one hit the receiver in the hands, so we gotta catch that football. But I just felt like, hey, let’s give Tramell a shot.

He got probably almost 50-50 reps total on the week, Tramell did, just maybe not as many with the ones. So they got about the same number of reps if you did a pitch count. Because what we do in practice is we usually give the ones a block of plays and the twos get the same exact block of plays. So preparation on knowing what to do really doesn’t change.

What wasn’t clicking for Philo early, and was his injury still affecting him?

I don’t think he played like he had anything lingering from the injury. The first interception was really disappointing. I’m OK with the sack. I tell our quarterbacks all the time, I want every drive to end in some sort of kick, and a punt is one of those that I can live with.

We just kind of gave them a gift there. So when the other team makes a great play, and that happens, there’s really good DBs. They’re going to make great plays at times. Then it doesn’t bother me as much, but we can’t give them plays.

The first one was on him. I don’t know, outside of that, I’m not going to sit here and say he played great, but I don’t think he, outside that one play, did anything catastrophic. The other interception, like I said, was it maybe a perfect throw? I don’t know if it was perfect, but it was a catchable throw. I think it probably was. And so I don’t pin that one on him as much.

And so I don’t think there was anything that was physically holding him back. I think he looked like he had enough velocity and touch on the football.

How costly were the penalties, particularly the roughing-the-punter call?

It’s catastrophic. We liked the block we had called. We don’t leave our feet to block the punt. We went hand block in that situation. We worked on it the only way we’ve worked on it.

Critical mistake. That was a turning point from a momentum standpoint in the game, because our defense had gotten a stop after the pick. And then to give them a new set of downs gave them life. You can’t do that against anybody in this league, much less a team like that.

What did you think of Florida’s response coming out of halftime?

We responded out of the halftime in a competitive manner, which I’m not OK just with us having competitive spirit. But that is something that we’ve lacked at times in some rough spots this year, in my opinion.

I don’t think we responded well at halftime in our previous two losses to Missouri and South Carolina. I thought we responded out of the half with the right mindset.

The interception, the corner fell off. Tramell didn’t see him. We’re saying on the headset, like, we see it before it’s happening. Buster actually called it out on the coach-to-player to him. Like, hey, watch the corner falling off here, and he did.

And so when that situation happens, you either have to throw it away or run it and get what’s there. They made a really good play, and we just didn’t see it. That was another big momentum shift.

Because you go in there, we’re going to go for two down 24-nothing. For the rest of the game, if we score three touchdowns and two points, we’re tied. So if we score that, we’re going to go for two to try to climb our way back in that thing. And that took the air out of us a little bit because it was a missed opportunity.

Did Vernell Brown III suffer a setback during practice this week?

So Monday, Tuesday, he looked like old VB3. Like the guy that we saw the first three or four weeks, three, three-and-a-half weeks of the year.

Wednesday, the second half of Wednesday’s practice, he had one movement on a cut in a two-minute drill period that we do every Wednesday that had a little bit, what at the time we thought was just a little bit of a setback. And so we pulled him from some reps the rest of that practice on Wednesday.

But after he went to the training room that day, Kevin, he said, hey, I felt really good. I feel better. And then the next day when he woke up, it was a little bit swollen on him. Got the swelling down, but as he tried to come back, we listed him probable on Wednesday because Wednesday when he left the trainer, he was like, I feel pretty good. I feel like I’m gonna be able to give it a go.

And then sometimes you sleep on things like that. Woke up Thursday morning and had some swelling in it, and got the swelling calmed down, but just wasn’t able to get back to where he was early in the week.

It’s really frustrating. He hates it. He’s frustrated. I’m frustrated for him. We’ve played five snaps of football all year with No. 1, No. 2 and No. 6 on the field at the same time because he got hurt the seventh play of the first game, and we miss those three guys being on the field all at the same time.

Bailey Stockton has stepped up and played good when he’s been available, but still, man, I hate it for him. It’s bothering him, and we clearly need him back. But when he’s injured and that happens, I don’t know what else to do. And so it’s a frustrating deal for him and for everybody in our program because he’s trying like hell to get back.

How did the offensive line perform, and how difficult did the pressure make things for both quarterbacks?

I felt bad for both quarterbacks at times because I don’t know that either one of them independently played good enough for us to win the game, but I don’t know that it’s really fully fair to evaluate either one of them fully because I don’t think there was enough help around them.

Not just the offensive line. We had receivers misalign today, not run the right route. We ran the wrong route a handful of times. The timing on things was off.

I didn’t think we played up front good enough, though, on the offensive line to help them. And we knew coming into this game we needed to stay ahead of the chains to give ourselves an opportunity there.

Third-down pressure package is really good. They’ve got good guys doing it, too. And I don’t think we gave our quarterbacks a real fair opportunity to play at a high level.

Was the defense’s improvement wasted because of the offensive struggles?

There’s nothing wasted about it. We didn’t use it properly as a team. We gotta grow in every area. With where we are as a program, every part of our team has to get better.

And it was improvement. I think defensively, it wasn’t enough. Still has to be better than what it was because they scored more points than we did. So sometimes defensively, as we grow as a program, we need to figure out a way to win some games 8-7 maybe. That may be a reality, but we have to get there faster.

But I don’t feel like anything’s a waste because what we’re trying to do right now, and I’m not letting us off the hook for everything we do right now, we’re trying to build a sustainable program for the long term, and every little thing we do matters.

And so, to me, there was a lot of growth from a defensive standpoint. Still wasn’t good enough. Like I said, there’s a couple of times we hopped out of blocks up front and gave them some run lanes that shouldn’t have been there, but I felt like, as a whole, you felt a lot more competitive character out of our kids tonight, which is encouraging to me.

We gotta continue to build upon that.

How do you address the self-inflicted penalties, including your sideline penalty?

I’ll show on Monday all the self-inflicted stuff. Like, I think Cormani got what ended up being a facemask call, but I thought it was going to be a DPI call. He’s competing for a ball down the field. Those are going to happen.

It’s the self-inflicted ones, the things that we do that are reckless, that hurt ourselves, that I really highlight. And all that stuff gets shown at our Monday team meeting. We have a penalty report tape. We show the ones that are egregious or self-inflicted, that are not football plays that I have a problem with, or that are maybe alignment mistakes.

And we have to clean that up. We gotta play better football.

What about the sideline penalty?

That was on me. Head coach was a dumb-. I wanted to run out and make the freaking tackle, is what I wanted to do, quite honestly.

I was on the grass. I saw the official run down the field. The field judge was coming down the sideline, and instead of walking back into the white and running him over, I just stayed in the grass and was ready to go tackle the guy.

I couldn’t make it there fast enough because I don’t have that kind of speed anymore. But I just lost my mind and was ready to go walk out on the field, and for a second, probably lost my cool.

Had you practiced Jadan Baugh’s two-point conversion pass?

We’ve practiced it. We have not done it where they are tackling him and him throwing the football. That’s not ever been practiced.

So we practiced it with the defense out there and maybe them applying some pressure to make the throw happen. But we’ve never put anybody on his legs and tried to twist him around and get him to the ground and him throw it.

So no, I didn’t. That was a hell of an individual effort for him to give Dallas an opportunity to go catch that football. So nice job by Jadan there.

How will you approach the quarterback situation moving forward?

I think we’ll assess it as we move forward. I like both guys. I don’t think either guy, maybe it’s hard to fully, fairly assess either of them because I think the performance around them was not good enough by any position group on offense.

I thought they both did some good things. I thought Aaron did some good things before we put Tramell in. I just wanted to see Tramell play some extended football there because I just wanted to see how it would go. He did it, obviously, at Texas.

I don’t know that either quarterback right now is playing on a level that’s going to take over the game and win it by themselves. We have to play a hell of a lot better around them.

So who will we start next week? I’m not in that headspace yet. I’m going to watch this tape tonight, and we’ll watch it as a staff tomorrow as a group. We need both of them to be ready to go play football to help us win.

Like I said, I don’t think either quarterback cost us the game. Neither one of them obviously played well enough for us to win the game. I believe in both of them, and we’ll continue to figure out who’s going to play each week.

I will say this, I’m grateful for both of their mindsets and both of their approaches. They support each other. I know externally, a lot of people probably want to create some narrative about quarterback competition, which that’s real.

Both of them want to be the starter. If they didn’t, then we would have a real problem. We’d have a competitive problem with them. But they’re for each other. They care about each other. They want to see each other be successful.

How much did the mistakes change the game, and what were your impressions of Georgia?

Certainly the roughing was a critical one because they’re not going to get a touchdown off that drive if we don’t rough them. And we did, so they got a touchdown. So that’s going to keep one touchdown off the board.

And so I think the turnovers were costly as well because, as was mentioned a minute ago, 17 points off of turnovers when they scored 27.

Our defense, I don’t know that we absolutely played great, but we played good enough football on defense to give our football team a chance to win tonight.

And then Georgia, I think they’re really good. I think they’re well coached. I’ve got a lot of respect for them. I said this early in the week on Monday, I think you can see the layered development of their roster and the way they’ve recruited over time.

It’s a model that we’ve looked at because where they’ve been most recently, we want to go, and we got some work to do to get there, clearly. But I think they’re a really good football team, and I respect them.

They didn’t need our help tonight, but we gave it to them, too. And they won the game. But the Gators didn’t help the Gators enough tonight.

Could Tramell Jones Jr. get more first-team reps or start next week?

I don’t know that I’m ready to make a decision on anything today. I think the reps that they’ve gotten is about 50-50.

Who gets more with the ones is usually something we deem Tuesday, Wednesday about who’s handled the game-plan install better.

Oh, yeah. That could change, the one reps, as whoever we’re going to start is going to get more reps with the ones.

And we could give Tramell the start next week. I’m not saying we are or we aren’t. We’re going to evaluate that the next couple of days about what we saw tonight.

I don’t know that I saw either one of them play well enough for me to go, that’s our starter forever moving forward. I saw both of them do enough good things that I want to keep both of them alive and give them opportunities to grow.

But neither one of them played so good that it’s like, oh, that’s the guy forever. We still need better quarterback play.

My biggest concern, though, right now is the people around the quarterback. I don’t care who we put at quarterback, if we don’t get better on the offensive line, tight end, running back and receiver, our quarterback has no shot, like no shot in hell, of playing really good.

We have to help them. And so we’re going to consider everything. I consider everything every day about our football team.

And I thought a lot all week last week about who’s going to go out with the ones. It wasn’t just a foregone conclusion it was Philo. Like I said earlier in the week, Tramell still wasn’t right. Like he was coming out of the backside of naked play-actions and not able to run full speed.

So when he can’t, when he’s limping in practice, I’m not going to be like, oh, that’s our starter because he’s limping. I’m not gonna tell you what his injury is. But he was limping.

So the guy that wasn’t limping, I felt better about starting him, and Philo early in the week was executing the shifts and motions and play calls better.

Now we have to coach Tramell where he’s handling it just as well or better. And so, for both of them, I’m for what helps our team win. I got one objective: help our team win. That’s the most important one.

And we’re going to start whoever positions our football team to win, that we think, off how they’ve performed. So I’m married to starting nobody. I’m married to starting whoever gives Florida the best chance of being successful.

What did Bailey Stockton show by playing through his injury?

He’s tough. He’s tough as hell, man. We need to recruit more dudes like that. He did not run all week.

So he saw VB’s injury kind of flare up and was like, I gotta do whatever I gotta do to find a way to go. And so I think he just understood the assignment.

Like, if I can go, I gotta go now. And the other thing, I’ll tell you, credit to Paul Sylvester on that because there was not one chance in hell I thought he was going to play on Wednesday or Thursday, to be quite honest with you.

And then on Friday, him and Paul had worked together on a couple of different tape jobs, a couple of different insole things for his footing, his shoes.

And on Thursday — sorry, Friday morning — he comes up to me. He goes, coach, are you good if I run some routes? I’m like, yeah, if you’re good with it, let’s go.

And so Will Griffin, we pulled Will off to the side. Bailey went and ran a few routes on air after doing some buildup running to get ready to run some routes.

And I said, what do you think? He said, I’m ready to play, let’s go. And I said, all right, we’ll go over there and start learning, like really being more dialed in in the game plan, because he had been in the training room most of the week.

So we threw him out there. We gotta recruit a lot of dudes like that because tough guys in this game, they win.

I love Bailey Stockton. Love all our guys, but I’m very grateful for his determination to try to find a way to play.

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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Sumrall apologizes after Florida’s ugly loss to Georgia

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