Jon Sumrall walked into Florida's locker room at halftime of its homecoming game three weeks ago against South Carolina and immediately sensed there was something wrong.
The Gators trailed 17-10, but you'd have thought Florida was down by several scores. "I'm like, 'Hey boys! We're right in the middle of this thing,'" Sumrall told CBS Sports.
The message didn't stick. South Carolina, winless in the SEC at kickoff, pulled away for a 38-19 victory in The Swamp. It was Florida's second straight blowout after a 45-17 loss at Missouri, and boos rolled through Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. The Gators' 4-0 start and rise to No. 8 in the AP Top 25 suddenly looked like a mirage.
At the team meeting that Monday, Sumrall made a prediction and challenged his team.
"It's gonna be 17-10 at some point again, and we're gonna be on the wrong side of it," he said. "Well, you fast forward ..."
Five days later, Florida went into halftime at No. 7 Texas trailing 17-10.
"And at halftime we did respond differently," Sumrall said.
The Gators outscored the Longhorns 17-7 in the second half, sacked Arch Manning five times and held on for a 27-24 win behind quarterback Tramell Jones Jr., who made his first career start for an injured Aaron Philo. It was Florida's first road win over a top-10 opponent since 2012.
That three-week swing from unbeaten to reeling to giant killer is all that we know about Sumrall's first season in Gainesville. Beyond that, Florida fans are accustomed to hot starts under first-year coaches that quickly turn into fool's gold. Will Muschamp was 4-0, then lost four straight in 2011. Jim McElwain opened 6-0 and lost the last three games in 2015. Dan Mullen's success spanned two seasons, with 21 combined wins, but he then lost 9 of his last 11 games against power-conference teams and was fired near the end of his fourth year.
Is this good start, led by Sumrall, built to last week to week and year over year?
Sumrall gets an up-close look Saturday at what that winning consistency looks like against No. 3 Georgia.
"I would say this: I don't know that we really started that hot," Sumrall said, pointing to the disappointing losses to South Carolina and Missouri.
The Napier conundrum
Billy Napier, like Sumrall, came from the Group of Six via the state of Louisiana. He didn't start hot. Every season was mediocre or worse. He went 22-23 and was fired seven games into the 2025 season.
When Sumrall emerged as Florida's candidate, members of Florida's search committee hesitated, and staffers worried about how fans would react.
As Sumrall headed toward a third conference championship in four years as a Group of Six head coach -- an impressive feat -- it stirred déjà vu for Gator fans. They remembered the initial optimism around Napier's arrival after four consecutive conference title game appearances and back-to-back championships with the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns.
Sumrall realized it might be a non-starter for Florida supporters after careening off the track with Napier.
"I'm fairly self-aware," Sumrall said. "I may not be the smartest guy in any room I walk into, but I have the most common sense in a lot of rooms I walk into."
So, Sumrall asked Stricklin: "Can you really hire G6 Jon?"
"I was like, hey, if you decide to hire me, how's that play with your fan base? He's like, yeah, it may not play real well early," Sumrall said. Stricklin recognized it, too, because fans might immediately wonder: "Do we just have the same guy now?"
"I have a ton of respect for Billy," Sumrall continued. "But I'm myself. I'm nobody else. And I'm not taking a shot at anybody there, but no two people are alike. It's no different than you can be a disciple of Nick Saban, but that doesn't mean you're Nick Saban."
Many Florida fans wanted Lane Kiffin, who chose LSU. Kiffin cooled on the Gators just before Ole Miss traveled to Florida and defeated the Gators 34-24 on Nov. 15, sources told CBS Sports. Stricklin said Florida had landed on Sumrall around Thanksgiving and let word of the pivot leak on Black Friday, before the regular-season finale.
"It's because I didn't want Sunday to come and everybody be waiting for one guy and it'd be Jon and then Jon would take the brunt of that," Stricklin said. For 48 hours, he said, he was OK with the athletic department taking the brunt of the criticism, but he knew that once Sumrall got in front of a microphone, Florida fans would see what everyone else involved in the coaching search saw.
Former Florida coach Urban Meyer helped close the deal. Stricklin asked him to watch film of Tulane's games for weeks, and when he finally did, he called Sumrall. Meyer told Stricklin the entire call focused on special teams, Tuesday practice logistics, and off-season workout schedules. "That guy's a ball coach," Stricklin recalled Meyer telling him. "You got to go get him."
'Equally yoked'
The fan base Stricklin worried about has been every bit as loud as advertised. Sumrall doesn't mind.
"You know, some people might say the Florida fans are crazy. The good news is so am I. We're equally yoked in that regard probably," he said.
The boo birds could be heard when Florida lost to South Carolina. He didn't hear them, he said, but he understood the reaction. His job, he said, is to run against the current. When Florida is winning, and the public is high-fiving his players, he's the one dog-cussing them. When it's losing, he's the one patting the players on the back and showing them love.
The steadiest voices have come from Florida's biggest donors, a group he said includes Gary Condron, whose name is on the indoor football practice facility and the baseball stadium, and Hugh Hathcock, whose $12.6 million pledge in 2022 was the largest single gift in Gator Boosters history.
"The people that have contributed the most to help us build this financially are the ones that probably are the most encouraging to me when things are a little bit sideways because they understand what we've taken on," Sumrall said. "That's been one of the things I've been most positively blown away by."
Previous school: Georgia
Sumrall spent part of the bye week studying the Gators' upcoming rivalry game against Georgia. When he examined Georgia's roster, one column on Florida's personnel report stood out: previous school. The school listed was almost always "Georgia." The Bulldogs' roster lists only 16 transfers, the fewest in the SEC.
"That's how you create consistency," Sumrall said.
Florida is nowhere close. "This past year, we had to go out and get guys out of the portal just to be able to field a football team that could practice," Sumrall said Monday.
Florida's roster has 38 transfers, including 32 Sumrall brought in. He told CBS Sports that depth is the biggest obstacle to sustaining anything. Georgia has layered one high school recruiting class on top of another and developed those players for years.
Sumrall spent Tuesday and Wednesday of the bye week preparing for 2027 and beyond. The target moving forward is to add 6-10 difference-makers each year from the portal.
"It better never again be high 20s, 30s, or we got a real problem," Sumrall said.
Half a roster new to the rivalry
That roster churn complicates rivalries like Florida-Georgia, which will meet in Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium after playing in Jacksonville since 1995.
"It's our job to educate the guys about what the game means now," Sumrall said. "Roughly half our roster has not played in this game."
Georgia has dominated the series, winning five straight and eight of the last nine. Kirby Smart is 8-2 against the Gators.
Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC) arrives with bruises two weeks after its 27-24 home loss to unranked Auburn, the Bulldogs' first loss to an unranked team since 2019.
"We're higher in missed tackles than we've been in years past. That's a big target area for us," Smart told reporters.
No. 17 Florida (5-2, 3-2) has its own questions, and none bigger than the one at the most important position on the field. Sumrall declined Monday to name a starting quarterback, saying both Philo and Jones are available. Receiver Vernell Brown III practiced last week and looked normal Monday after missing the last three games with an injured knee.
Built to last?
Building on the first half of the season and ending on a high note is important, and Sumrall believes the long-term plan will hold up.
"We're trying to build upon the mentality of how we play and what that looks like day in and day out," Sumrall said. "I feel really confident we can do it, but it's not going to be easy. It's hard work in this league, and now that we're at nine (SEC) games, it's only gotten harder; it hasn't gotten easier."
What he's learned in the first half of a season as an SEC head coach is that the challenges don't differ much week to week. "We got ready to play South Carolina, I go into a personnel meeting with our advanced scouting group, and I'm like, 'Holy cow! These guys are freaking loaded," Sumrall said.
"That's probably been the biggest challenge for me: what you're competing against week in and week out," he explained.
So far, Florida's locker room has responded to their new coach. They learned a lesson from their 17-10 deficit against South Carolina and reacted differently to the same margin at Texas.
"Teams take on the personality of their coach," Stricklin said. "And usually in football, if you have more energy and you're more competitive and you're more physical, you should win."
Georgia has spent over a decade building that personality and consistency under Smart, who now owns two national titles and four SEC championships.
"They're in Year 11," Sumrall said this week. "We're in Year 1."
