In the 2016 SEC Championship Game, the last time Alabama and Florida met in the SEC Championship Game, the Crimson Tide scored 54 points.
By Matt Zemek
No one would be all that surprised if Mac Jones, DeVonta Smith, Najee Harris, and the rest of the 2020 Alabama offense slapped 54 points on beleaguered defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and the rest of the Florida Gators on Saturday.
The plot twist which greets this latest Bama-Florida meeting in Atlanta – the 10th time these schools have met for the SEC title, more than any other two schools in the conference – is that Florida played its worst game of the season the week before against LSU. Alabama is 17.5-point favorites according to the NCAAF odds.
Florida and LSU hate each other. Anyone who follows SEC football knows this. Usually, when rivals meet and one team is in an unexpectedly strong position, it doesn’t pass up the chance to bludgeon its opponent. This was a time for Florida to hang a huge number on a 3-5 LSU team wobbling to the end of a miserable season, one year after LSU went 15-0 and dominated every SEC opponent in its path.
Yet, at home in The Swamp, the Gators didn’t merely fail to score big on LSU; they failed to even win the game as a 22-point favorite against a freshman quarterback, Max Johnson, who was making his first collegiate start.
Kyle Trask made a lot of poor decisions, torching his chances for the Heisman Trophy or, at the very least, forcing him to have to score 50 points on Alabama and win the game if he is to have any realistic shot at the award.
It’s true that tight end Kyle Pitts was out with an injury, but Florida and Trask have distributed the ball to lots of receivers all season long. The offense is obviously better with Pitts, but it doesn’t break down and collapse without him. LSU’s defense under Bo Pelini has been a clown car for most of the 2020 season. Dan Mullen against Pelini was a mismatch on paper. Even with Florida’s defense being well below average, Florida should have had no problems putting at least 42 points on the board and doing whatever it took on offense to compensate for its defense’s limitations.
Nope.
The mistakes kept coming for Florida, and although Marco Wilson’s shoe throw gained national and even international headlines (the Iraqi man who threw a shoe at United States President George W. Bush in 2008 was shown the video of Wilson’s shoe throw, creating a global sensation), Florida made tons of mistakes in the 58 minutes before Wilson’s idiotic act.
Florida had been dragging through the back end of its schedule. The Gators were far better than Vanderbilt and Tennessee, but they did not play anything close to their A-game. The prevailing thought in the UF-LSU game was that the Gators would finally play with the urgency needed to ramp up and prepare for Alabama.
Instead, they didn’t ramp up; they fell down. They regressed in a big way, which brings us back to the start of this conversation: It is easy to think that this Florida-Alabama reunion in an SEC Championship Game could be a lot like 2016, when Jim McElwain – for all his many flaws as a coach – was able to guide the Gators past Georgia and back to Atlanta for a second straight season. Kirby Smart had not yet rode into Athens to rescue Georgia. Florida was still the unquestioned top dog in the SEC East.
It is very realistic to imagine a scenario in which Florida’s defense gets absolutely eviscerated. The Gators could get depressed and lose faith early in the contest. An Alabama snowball could develop and roll downhill, creating a rout every bit as massive as the 2016 demolition seen in the Georgia Dome.
Now, with Mercedes-Benz Stadium being Atlanta’s new SEC title game venue, the pregame chatter is less about the possibility of Florida pulling an upset, more about the possibility of Alabama creating the worst Atlanta tour of destruction since General Sherman in 1864.
I get it. It makes logical sense… but when viewed in a fuller context, I think 2016 is the wrong comparison for this 2020 SEC Championship Game.
The better and more likely comparison: 2013.
This was the year when Missouri surprised everyone by making the SEC Championship Game in just its second year as a conference member under then-coach Gary Pinkel. Auburn, meanwhile, produced The Miracle On The Plains (the deflected fourth-down catch to beat Georgia) and then the Kick-Six against Alabama to win the SEC West and return to Atlanta with a shot at the BCS National Championship Game.
Missouri and Auburn lit up the Georgia Dome with a fireworks display greater than anything ever seen on the Fourth of July. The score after three quarters was 45-42 Auburn. The Plainsmen then pulled away with 14 points in the fourth quarter. They didn’t have a great and dominant defense, but they had at least a small pinch of it, enough for a 59-42 win which sent them to the national title game versus Florida State.
That seems like the apt comparison here. Alabama doesn’t have a tremendous defense. The Tide were okay versus Texas A&M and Auburn, but hardly special. Blown coverages and missed assignments are part of Alabama’s overall collection of tendencies. The Ole Miss game was the foremost embodiment of all of Alabama’s defensive limitations in 2020. Other opponents, such as Arkansas and Mississippi State, simply lack the weapons or talent to threaten the Tide at its weakest points.
Florida – though having spent a month playing below-average football – has been waiting for this contest and this chance to show what it can do on offense. Kyle Pitts returning to the lineup, and Kyle Trask having a miserable film study session, should create a focused and galvanized offense which should do better than any non-Ole Miss offense Alabama has seen.
The key for Florida will be to take every realistic chance on Saturday. Maybe not 4th and 8 from one’s own 30 in the first quarter, but on fourth down and anything less than five yards, the Gators need to seriously consider the notion that they will need to extend and preserve every possession they get, knowing that the Bama offense is likely to torch Grantham’s defense. Trask and Pitts and Kadarius Toney will need to make stacks and stacks and stacks of plays. Taking the ball out of their hands on a 4th and 3 near midfield, in order to pin Bama deep, doesn’t seem very useful when the Tide can simply throw one pass to DeVonta Smith and hit a 90-yard touchdown just like that.
If Florida plays poorly, yes, this WILL become 2016 all over again. If the Gators are willing to give themselves a chance, however, this SEC Championship Game could become like 2013… and maybe Florida could pull the upset of the SEC West champion, unlike Missouri seven years ago in Atlanta.
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