Know Your Foe: Can Kentucky football bounce back vs. revenge-minded Florida?
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Preview: Kentucky at Florida
Click below to read more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s preview coverage ahead of Saturday’s Kentucky-Florida football game in Gainesville, Fla.
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Scouting Kentucky football’s next opponent, the Florida Gators:
Game details
Kentucky (3-3, 1-3 SEC) will play Florida (3-3, 1-2 SEC) at 7:45 p.m. EDT on Saturday, Oct. 19, at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium (capacity 88,548) in Gainesville.
The game will be telecast by the SEC Network.
Coach Billy Napier’s Gators lost at No. 8 Tennessee last week, 23-17, in overtime.
History and trends
Florida leads the all-time series with Kentucky 53-21 and won 31 games in a row over the Wildcats from 1987 through 2017. UK, however, has now won three straight and four out of the past six meetings with the Gators.
As Kentucky coach, Mark Stoops is 4-7 on the field vs. Florida.
Gators head man Billy Napier is 0-2 vs. Kentucky.
After losing 19 straight games in Gainesville, UK has won in two of its past three appearances in “The Swamp.”
Most recent meeting
On Sept. 30, 2023, Kentucky running back Ray Davis turned in one of the greatest individual performances in Wildcats football history and led UK to a 33-14 pasting of No. 22 Florida at Kroger Field.
Davis rushed for 280 yards and three touchdowns on 26 carries and also scored on a 9-yard pass from Devin Leary.
The Kentucky defense held the Gators to 313 total yards — only 69 of those on the ground.
Pride of the program
Stephen Orr Spurrier starred at Florida as a quarterback in the mid-1960s, winning the Heisman Trophy in 1966.
From 1990 through 2001, Spurrier coached his alma mater to a transcendent era, winning six SEC championships and the 1996 national title.
As a quarterback from 1964 through 1966, Spurrier directed Florida to a 23-9 record while playing for coach Ray Graves. While a senior in 1966, Spurrier led the Gators to a 9-2 mark that ended with a 27-12 win over No. 8 Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl.
For his college career, Spurrier threw for 4,848 yards with 36 touchdown throws vs. 31 interceptions.
Serving as Florida coach, Spurrier made the Gators mighty, leading UF to SEC championships in 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 2000.
The 1996 Gators, quarterbacked by Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel, beat archrival Florida State in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship.
After 12 seasons, Spurrier departed Florida with a 122-27-1 record as head coach.
Three things to know
1. Like Kentucky, Florida has been playing two quarterbacks. However, after veteran Gators QB Graham Mertz suffered a torn ACL in the loss at Tennessee and was lost for the season, true freshman DJ Lagway will be “the guy” for UF vs. UK.
A 6-foot-3, 239-pound product of Willis, Texas, Lagway was ranked the top quarterback prospect in the class of 2024 by 247Sports. Lagway chose Florida over scholarship offers from a bevy of schools with big football brands, including Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma, Penn State, Texas A&M and USC.
As a true freshman, Lagway has appeared in all six Florida games. He is completing 65.3 percent of his throws and has thrown for 765 yards and five touchdowns. The frosh has been a tad interception prone, however, having thrown four picks.
Most of Lagway’s statistical output came from his starting in place of an injured Mertz in Florida’s second game of the season vs. FCS foe Samford. In a 45-7 Florida rout, Lagway threw for 456 yards and three touchdowns and completed 18 of 25 passes.
A 6-3, 216-pound senior who began his college career at Wisconsin, Mertz has completed 76.6 percent of his throws this season and thrown for 799 yards and six touchdowns with two picks.
Last season, in Florida’s 33-14 loss at Kentucky, Mertz completed 25 of 30 passes for 244 yards with two touchdowns and one interception.
2. It is likely bad news for Kentucky’s pass protection — which has struggled to block edge pass rushers — that Florida has two players who are good at pressuring QBs from the flanks.
Tyreak Sapp, a 6-3, 272-pound redshirt junior from Fort Lauderdale, leads the Gators with 3.5 sacks and three quarterback hurries.
George Gumbs Jr., a 6-4, 249-pound junior who transferred from Northern Illinois, has added three sacks and a hurry.
3. It is widely thought that Florida head man Billy Napier is coaching to save his job in 2024.
After going 40-12 in four seasons (2018 through 2021) as Louisiana head man, Napier was named to replace Dan Mullen as Gators coach.
It has not gone well. Through two and a half seasons running the Florida program, Napier stands 14-17 overall, 7-12 in the SEC.
Under Napier, Florida has been significantly better at home than on the road. In games played at “The Swamp,” Napier is 11-6. Away from Gainesville, Napier is 3-11.
After Kentucky, Florida will finish with a brutal five-game stretch of Georgia on a neutral field in Jacksonville, at Texas, LSU, Mississippi and at Florida State.
Beating UK probably does not guarantee Napier survives as UF head man. However, it is hard to imagine any realistic path to job retention for Napier if he drops to 0-3 vs. Kentucky.
This story was originally published October 14, 2024 at 7:26 AM.
