Everything Jon Sumrall said after Florida’s 27-8 loss to Georgia.
OPENING STATEMENT
“Alright, clearly not good enough by us today. Really disappointed and hated it for our football team. I apologize to our fans. What the Florida Gators standard is, and do not shy away from the fact that we have to be a lot better across the board. It starts with me as the head football coach here. I have to have our guys more ready, more ready to play and more prepared. And grateful for our fan turnout, grateful for our fanbase. They should be pissed off. I hope they are. I am too, and we’re gonna get this right. Like, I promise you we’re gonna get this right. Commit to giving everything I have for us to freaking get this right. And I’m freaking not okay with today, I’m not gonna whine and complain. We gotta, we gotta get better. And so, sick over it. Nobody cares. Everybody’s pissed off and should be. And we gotta go back to work. And so the only way, the only way this gonna’s make us better is to pick ourselves up and go 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.”
It sounds like Aaron took the majority, if not all, the first-team reps throughout the week. When did you decide that he was gonna end up being the starter, and what did that process look like:
“Yeah, so, rewind to the bye week. Tramell, really, on Thursday in the bye week, our last practice, was not anywhere near 100 percent.. He was – I’m not gonna disclose his injury – but he could not come out of the 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 clearer earlier in the week, Monday, Tuesday. Tramell really didn’t look great with his health. I’m not gonna tell you all his injury, ’cause I’m not trying to help other people right now, but he’s got a real injury, like I think some people are probably 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, Tuesday, so we shifted to getting Philo the majority of the one reps on Wednesday was when it was kind of like, that was the direction we’re probably going here. I let both of them know on Friday, and then we just worked through as a staff. I said, hey, look, here’s the situations where we would make a change after a few drives. It’d either be, A. Philo’s not playing great. B. really the other one is. He could be playing fine, but we just felt like we needed a spark or something different. Philo’s first interception clearly on him, 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 fifty-fifty reps total in the week Tramell did, just maybe not as many with the ones, 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 and get the same exact block of plays. So preparation on knowing what to do really doesn’t change.”
On what do you think didn’t translate for Aaron early on? Obviously you mentioned the first interception being on him, but what’s not clicking for him? Is he still bothered by anything too, or:
“I don’t think he played like he had anything lingering from the injury. The first interception was really disappointing, ’cause it’s just like, hey, the journey’s over, I’m okay 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, and we just kind of gave them a gift there. So, when the other team makes a great play, and that happens in this league, there’s really good DBs that are gonna make great plays at times, then it doesn’t bother me as much, but we can’t give them plays, and that, the first one was on him. I don’t know outside of that. I’m not gonna sit here and say he played great, but I don’t think he, outside that one play, anything catastrophic. The other interception, like I said, was it maybe a perfect throw? I don’t know if it was perfect. Was it 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 like physically holding him back. I think he looked like he had enough velocity and touch upon the football.”
On how problematic were the penalties today, especially you guys forced a three and out after first turnover, and then the roughing the punter was critical:
“It’s catastrophic. We liked the block we had called. We don’t leave our feet to block the punt. We want to hand block it 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 gift them a new set of downs gave them life. You can’t do that against anybody in sleep, much less a team like that.”
On how did you feel about the way the second half started? You guys had an opportunity, Eric drops the ball on the sideline, and then the pick in the end zone. But if you guys score on those two possessions, and you had 2 three-and-outs, it’s a different ballgame:
“Yeah, we responded out of the halftime in a competitive manner, which I’m not okay 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, you know, 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, that’s what he did. And so, when that situation happens, you either you have to throw it away or run 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 out. So three touchdowns and two points you’re tied. So they scored there, we’re going to go for two, 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.”
On if Vernell had any setbacks this week in practice because he was downgraded from probable to questionable:
“That’s a good question, Kevin, I knew it’s going to come. So Monday, Tuesday, he looked like old VB3, like the guy that we saw the first three or four weeks, 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 of what, at the time we thought was just a little bit of a setback. And so we pulled him just 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, I feel better. And then the next day when he woke up, it was a little bit swollen on him. You know, got the swelling down, but as he tried to come back, we, so we listed him probable on Wednesday, because Wednesday when he left the training room, 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 earlier in the week. It’s really frustrating. He hates it. He’s frustrated. I’m frustrated for him. You know, we’ve played five snaps of football all year with number one, number two, and number six on the field at the same time, because E 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 VB’s still, man, I hate it for him. It’s bothering him, and we clearly need him back, but it, you know, 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.”
On how do you feel like the OL performed and how tough was it to operate when both quarterbacks are under pressure like that:
“Yeah, I felt bad for both quarterbacks at times because they, you know, I don’t know that either one of them independently played good enough for us to win the game, but I also 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 misaligned today, not run the right route, or run the wrong route a handful of times. The timing on things were 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 and give ourselves an opportunity. Their third down pressure package is really good. They got good guys doing it too. And I don’t think we gave our quarterbacks a real fair opportunity to play on that level.”
On if it was a wasted defensive effort in some ways:
“There’s nothing wasted about it. We didn’t use it properly as a team. We got to grow in every area. You know, Edgar, 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-to-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’s a lot of growth from a defensive standpoint. Still wasn’t good enough. Like I said, there was 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 defensive kids tonight, which is encouraging to me. We continue to build upon that.”
On seventeen points coming off turnovers, that and the penalties, as a head coach how do you curtail that stuff:
“I’ll show it all on Monday. All the self-inflicted stuff I’ll show on Monday. Like, I think Cormanii got, well, it 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. I’m not going to, like, 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 that’ll get, all that stuff gets shown on Monday in our 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 got to play better football.”
On what happened on that sideline call:
“That was on me. Head coach is a dumbass. 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 in the white, I just stayed in the grass and was ready to go tackle the guy. I couldn’t make it there fast enough because I’m not, 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.”
On the two-point play, if Baugh has shown that in practice as well?
“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’ve practiced it with the defense out there and maybe them applying some pressure and make the throw happen, but we’ve never put anybody on his legs and try 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, it this Dallas in an opportunity to go catch that football. So nice job by Jadan there.”
On who will be the starting QB:
“I think we’ll assess it as we go forward. I don’t, like, 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 Trammell play some extended football there, because I just want to see how it goes. He did it, obviously, in 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. I don’t, 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 a quarterback competition, which that’s real. Both of them want to be the starter. If they didn’t, we’d 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.”
On if given the mistakes you’re talking about, the roughing call and the interceptions, is it possible the game could have turned out differently, and your impressions on Georgia now:
“Well, certainly the roughing was critical one, because they’re not going to get a touchdown there 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, seventeen points off of turnovers when they scored twenty-seven. 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 got a lot of respect for them. They, I said this earlier 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. A lot of respect to them. They didn’t need our help tonight, but gave it to them, too. And they won the game, but the Gators didn’t help the Gators enough tonight.”
On if Tramell will get a larger share of first-team reps after today:
“I don’t know that I’m ready to make a decision or anything today. I think the reps that they’ve gotten is about fifty-fifty. Who gets more with the ones is usually something we deem Tuesday, Wednesday about who’s handled the game plan install better.”
On if the first-team reps could change:
“That could change. As we: whoever we’re gonna start’s gonna 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 gonna 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 wanna 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 now. 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 playing really good. We have to help him. And so we’re gonna consider everything. I consider everything every day about our football team. And I thought a lot all week last week about who was going to go out with the ones. It wasn’t just a foregone conclusion, it was Philo. Like I said, early in the week, Tramell still wasn’t right-right. Like he was coming out of the backside of nakeds, 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 able to go ‘That’s our starter’ because he’s limping. I’m not going to tell you what his injury is, but he was limping. Alright, 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 at handling just as well, or better. And so I am for both of them. I’m most 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 of how they’ve performed. So I’m married to starting nobody. I’m married to starting whoever gets Florida the best chance of being successful.”
On Bailey Stockton:
“He’s tough, he’s tough as hell, man. We need to recruit more dudes like that. He did not run all week. On Friday, when he – so he saw VB’s injury and kind of re-flare up and was like, alright, I got to do whatever I got to do to find a way to go. And so, like, I think he just understood the assignment, like, if I can go, I got to go now. And so he, Paul, credit, and another thing I’ll tell you, credit to Paul Silvestri 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 insul things for his shoe-footing, his shoes. And on Thursday – sorry, Friday morning – he comes to me and 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 build-up 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 started to go over there and started learning, like, really being more dialed in the game, like, because he’d been in the training room most of the week. So we threw him out there. We got to 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.”
