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Florida Gators’ head coach Jon Sumrall, quarterback Tramell Jones Jr., and linebacker Myles Graham met with the media after Saturday’s 27-24 win over No. 7 Texas.
JON SUMRALL
Opening statement…
“Obviously, I’m happy to get to win. Proud of our guys. You know, we’ve had some setbacks as of late. The last couple weeks did not feel like we fought the way you have to fight when you’re in the middle of the game, it’s going to be a competitive battle. Today, the game didn’t start out very good for us. We played really sloppy early, you know, getting to several situations where we just kind of shot ourselves in the foot. They played good early. But the thing that I’m most grateful for. Our guys fought today. And we happen to win the game too, which is huge, but the most important thing that happened today was that we fought. And winning the game matters. I want us to always win. But how you play the game matters as much to me, and we today showed a lot of character, a lot of growth, and the fact that we fought, and maybe things have not been going our way, and a lot of it was self-inflicted, but just grateful for our guys’ response, and the mental toughness and resiliency to fight.”
On Tramell Jones’ performance after the fourth and-12 play…
“Yeah, he is like a shooter in basketball, if something goes good, it makes maybe something else go good later. Like you have a little confidence. He would tell you; he’d be the first one to tell you, he by no means played perfect. Missed plenty of opportunities and throws, but for his first opportunity, even when he didn’t make some throws, he needed to make, he kept battling and kept fighting, and that’s when good things happen. And so, I’m proud of him for staying resilient, through going back to training camp when he didn’t win the job. And still being ready, and did a really nice job today of just, you know, the thing I’m probably most going for is maybe no crazy, dumb decisions. I grabbed him yesterday morning and I said, ‘Hey this is going to be your game.’ He already knew that. We knew it all week, pretty much. I’m not trying to tell y’all we didn’t, we kind of knew. Yeah, everybody kind of knew, you know, all you had to be able to do figure that out was have a pulse. But what I would say is, threw maybe some things that didn’t go well for him in the game, he stayed steady, and responded, and he would miss a throw, and he’d come back and make a throw. And that’s going to happen at the quarterback position. That’s going to take place, you’re not always going to make every play. And, um, so, yeah, I think he did a really nice job. I thought that throw did give him a little confidence. You know, the other one on our sideline, that we didn’t give Dallas a chance. There are certain times, it’s just learning from the misthrows that you have to grow from. But, man, I’m so proud of his approach to going back to really, post-spring. During the spring, we did our exit meetings. I was like, man, you haven’t been in there, a whole lot of extra, and you haven’t learned the offense the way you need to, and I never see you do more on your own. And in the summer, you know, he did a little bit more on his own. He started to do extra. And then this training camp, he started to do more on his own, and spent more time on his own. And so now, you get your opportunity today, and you’re prepared to help the team win a game. When, if he had handled all that, the situations poorly, he wouldn’t have been as ready as he was for his opportunity. And so, very proud of him, grateful for his approach, and happy for his success today.”
On converting third down more efficiently in the second half…
“Going into the first half, some of the things we missed were on third down and were pretty clean, like some stuff, but it wasn’t real complicated. I think you shake the cobwebs off, you go through the first half, don’t maybe execute the way you want to. And then you recalibrate. And then, well, we talked a lot this week about doing simple things better. I think he started to do some things simple, better in the second half, and just take what’s there. Don’t have to do anything crazy. Put the ball in play, give guys opportunities and get the ball in the hands of our playmakers, and that helped out. Then, too, I would say we were better on the O-line today. Like, that’s another thing, you know, it’s a whole lot easier to play quarterback when the O-line plays good. And so no matter who’s at quarterback for us, when the O-line plays better, it’s a lot easier to play quarterback. And the last couple weeks, no secret, we haven’t played very good in the O-line. This week, we play better on the O-line, so it made everything tick, just a little bit cleaner the third down, as well. We also ended up in less, what felt like third and crazy extra longs today, at times where in the past, I don’t have all the stats in front of me, but last week, I felt like every time we looked up it was third and 12 and we were trying to block that number six. And it was like, we couldn’t get a glove on him. So today, I really only felt a couple of situations, I didn’t feel as many of them.”
On winning the middle eight…
“It was huge. Momentum shifts. The middle eight, success in the middle eight is not like a huge indicator winning the game. To be quite honest with you, statistically, scoring more points is. But the flow of the middle eight today, we needed that momentum, because we had not played very clean early. And yeah, you want to win. I want to win every part of the game. But we did finish the half well, and then we started the half well. And with the way the game started, that was pretty vital, because if it did not finish well for us or start well for us, we weren’t going to win today.”
On the future of the starting QB job…
“I know that’s going to be everybody’s question, probably. I would say this. I’m going to watch the tape. The whole staff will. I am happy for Tramell and his success. He missed plenty of things today; he did some good things today. The success of our team today had more to do than just a quarterback. Our defense played a hell lot better. Our O-line played a lot better. So I’m not taking anything away from Tramell. Today was a team win, not a quarterback win. It was a team win. And so we evaluate each week, how do we get to 1-0 that week? That’s sort of our job. And I would tell you, the god honest truth, like, looking back, the last two games, Philo didn’t cost us the last two games. I’m not going to point fingers there, but individually Tramell did not go and win the game by himself. I’m glad we got two guys that I believe that we can go win football games with. We will, you know, through the tape, I’ll watch the tape on the plane today, and then I’ll watch it again tomorrow, and then we’ll figure out how we move forward. Some of it, too, is, Philo has an injury. So when he’s ready from the injury, that matters. But that’s a word salad. Basically, to tell you, there’s going to be no decision, like, tonight, of what I’m doing moving forward. Philo has been our guy, and he won us some big games, too, just like Tramell helped us win a big game today as well. So I like both guys. I love both guys. I believe in both guys. I’ve said that about Tramell for several months now. Since I saw the shift in the summer, I really felt like we could win with both guys, and that proves that we did it today.”
On Ty Jackson’s performance…
” Yeah, it was great. He was our special teams player of the week last week internally for our team. He was the one that forced the punt block last week, late in the game. I showed it to our team. It was the only play I showed from our game last week. Everything else was all about how we need to take care of the locker room better, and all this other stuff. The only real play I showed last week, and the team meeting was Ty Jackson‘s punt block. I said, ‘Guys, here’s the score, it’s 38 to whatever.’ Not good last week. I said, ‘Here’s Ty Jackson, the amount of snaps he’s getting on defense. He’s playing his tail off, and he goes and makes a play because he’s still playing hard. He’s still fighting.’ And so this week as a defensive staff we went in there, and I’m like, ‘guys we need a little juice. We need a little spark.’ And Ty, sometimes your fear as a coach is, like, is the guy ready? The only way to find out if he’s ready is by putting him out there. And they may not be ready for everything, which is fair. What are they ready for and how can we make them useful and lean into their strengths and offset their weaknesses? Ty’s a tremendous kid. You know, last night when I met with the four captains [for] today, because we do game captains, we do season captains at the beginning of the year. When I informed him, Harrison Moore, Bailey Stockton and DK Kalu, they were today’s game captains, and I said, ‘Alright, who is comfortable being the speaker at the coin toss, who is not?’ I actually did not have to ask Ty if he’s not because he doesn’t like to talk. Like, to get him to say two words, like a big deal. And they all kind of chuckled and were like Ty is not doing it. But, man, I’m so proud of his growth. He’s a tremendously talented player. He reminds me of a couple guys I’ve had that were really high draft picks that maybe early were trying to figure out how to communicate it, how to execute it. He has got the physical to go be a big-time player. I think he showed strides at the end of last week’s game, but as it fell into this week as well.”
On the offensive line…
“I thought there was a better strain and a better finish and a better urgency. It wasn’t perfect, never is, but I felt like we had a little bit different mentality. Kind of more similar to what we had against maybe Ole Miss, at least in how we tried to play the game. You know, that number one’s a good player. Their front was big. They’re built a little bit different up front. Their interior guys are bigger and more stout and strong. They play with more knockback than they make movement. But I thought, guys just played with a mentality that you have to play with up front in a way, which is physicality and with edge.”
TRAMELL JONES JR.
On the boost the fourth-and-12 completion provided …
“Definitely did. It gave the team a spark, and that’s what we needed. Started off slow, didn’t play nowhere near perfect, but the team was behind me. The offensive line played great. Jadan played great. And we finished the football game.”
On how big of a win this is in this kind of environment…
“It’s pretty big, but I’ve been playing football all my life. I just took it in as another football game, coming in here and playing the game I’ve been playing all my life.”
On when he found out he would be starting…
“Friday morning, Coach Sumrall gave me the green light. I mean, I was preparing like I was the starter every week. So, this week was no different for me. But just preparing, taking reps 100%. He told me Friday morning I was going to be the starter, so I was stoked.”
On his fieriness after his first touchdown pass at the end of the first half…
“I mean, it just gave the guys a spark. And then, we came back out of halftime with the football. So, we had the momentum, coming out of halftime, so that’s what we needed as a team.”
On missing WR Eric Singleton on a deep ball and locking in thereafter…
“I take every play as one page in a book. Every play has its own story. I overthrew Eric in practice, so I was kind of aiming it. And I can hit those kind of footballs. I just got to lay it out there. Eric’s a fast guy; he can go get it. I got to trust him. But then later on, just taking it play by play, hitting Dallas [Wilson], trusting him to go flat on a flood route, and we converted.”
On whether it’s safe to say that was the turning point for him…
“I guess it’s safe to say. I feel like I was comfortable, we just started off slow. I just had to stay the course. Offensive line played great; protected their butt off. Defense showed up on the back end and the front seven with D-line.”
MYLES GRAHAM
On what got into the defense today…
“It was really just believing in ourselves. With all of the nay-sayers, talking down on us, we really just locked arms. We have had a thing with Coach White where we have just been linked in. We had a link chain and we all grabbed it, we touched it when we stepped on the field. We made a big emphasis to get off the field on third down and that’s what we did.”
On how the defense responded after the first drive…
“It was the theme of the week that we would just keep fighting, no matter what happens. Just get up and keep fighting. The last two weeks we got knocked down. We didn’t play how we wanted to. So we had a chance to respond and that is what we did. Just keep fighting no matter what. Coach Sumrall says when something bad happens, he says ‘good’ and just keeps going.”
On pulling off this big of a win after consecutive losses…
“Like I said earlier, our whole thing was to just keep fighting. Get up and swing back. You get hit in the mouth, get up and swing back. It was everybody in the building versus us. We started off high, then dropped two in a row. Now our back was against the wall. What are you going to do? You got knocked down. It’s about trying to get up and keep fighting.”
On how big the turnovers on downs were…
“They were huge. They were huge momentum swingers. They had the punt return, which was huge for them. We didn’t let it get us down. We just kept it going.”
On what he thought of Tramell Jones Jr.’s play…
“I’m really proud of him. He’s somebody who just hasn’t played a lot through these first five to six games, but he stepped up when his number was called. He put the team on his back. He did his thing. He’s just a dog. He’s a competitor. That’s what we needed to win this game. Without him, we wouldn’t have won this game. So, I’m proud of him. I appreciate him for that.”
Videos Courtesy GatorVision | Transcript Courtesy ASAP
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