The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Florida Gators 2025 Edition

HELL YEAH, FUCKIN’ RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was closer than it should have been for a while, but your Miami Hurricanes came out and defeated the rival Florida Gators 26-7 on Saturday night. Florida stymied Miami for a while, but in the end, the Canes just had too much for the Gators.

Craig T. Smith has your game recap:

Mike Schiffman is back with the 3 stars of the game:

Let’s get into this edition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

The Good

• A win! Winning isn’t easy, so I’m always going to start with this. Deal with it.
• Beating the Gators! I hate those bastards.
• Miami is 9-2 against Florida in the last 40 years.
• Miami has not lost to Florida in Miami since 1985. Or, since I was 4 years old.
• QB Carson Beck ends his collegiate career 3-0 against the Gators. 2-0 at Georgia, and 1-0 at Miami.
• FUN FACT: Beck grew up a Gator fan, but they didn’t want him. WHOOPS!!!! lol
• To this point of the season, Beck’s stat line is solid, but less so than it was through 3 weeks. 82/112 passing (73.2% completions), for 962 yards, 7 TDs, 3 INTs. And 26 yards and a TD rushing. And, most importantly, 4 wins out of 4 games.
• RB Mark Fletcher Jr. 24 carries for 116 yards and a touchdown. Big Fletch keeps on adding to his impressive season.
• RB Marty Brown. 18 carries for 80 yards and 2 TDs. Should have been 3 TDs if not for the refs blowing the earliest whistle I’ve literally ever seen for forward progress during an ongoing play.
• LB Mo Toure. 10 tackles, a TFL, and a sack. He struggled a bit moving laterally when UF got their little bit of mojo going in the 3rd quarter, but outside of that, he was lights out.
• LB Wesley Bissainthe. 8 tackles, 0.5 TFL. He was also very, very good this week.
• EDGE Rueben Bain Jr. It’s unreal how good he is. 7 tackles, a TFL, and 0.5 sack, and his impact was much larger than the numbers would lead you to believe. He’s looking like a top 5 pick in the NFL draft.
• DT David Blay. 6 tackles, 0.5 TFL. An unsung anchor inside for Miami’s stout defense.
• EDGE Akheem Mesidor. 4 tackles, 0.5 TFL, 0.5 sack, and 2 hurries. Ho hum.
• S Jakobe Thomas. He’s routinely making big plays. 5 tackles, 1.5 TFL, 1 sack. I love his passion and physicality at all 3 levels of the Miami defense.
• P Dylan Joyce. 4 punts for a 45 yard average.
• K Carter Davis. 2/2 on FGs, 2/2 on PATs, and good kickoffs all night long.
• Canes forced a 3 and out on Florida’s first possession. All their plays looked like this: Miami in the backfield wrecking shop.

• New wrinkles to the offensive playbook!

• The ethos of “big dudes close to the ball” paying off here for Miami’s first touchdown of the game. #WeightRoom

• Records are there to be broken, Gaby

• Gang tackling, like the Lord intended. You love to see it.

• Safety Jakobe Thomas with a nice sack of Lagway on a 3rd down blitz.

• Jakobe Thomas with a HUGE TFL on 3rd down in the 4th quarter. Man, the defense needed this play.

• Marty Brown with a late TD to put Miami ahead 19-7

• BAIN!!!!!!!

• Big Fletch carrying the pile a solid 10 yards after contact. TOO BIG!! TOO STRONG!!!!

• Yeah, it’s getting REAL LATE for Napier in Alachua county.

• TALK THAT SHIT, MARIO!!!!

• Held Florida to 2.7 yards per play.
• Held Florida to 2.8 yards per rush.
• 36:30 time of possession.
• 344 yards of offense — 160 passing, 184 rushing.
• 10 chunk plays — 4 passes (15+ yards), 6 runs (10+ yards).
• Another week of solid tackling. Actually, very good tackling from the defense save the one TD drive.
• Held USF to 141 yards of offense — 61 passing, 80 rushing.
• 4 games, 4 opponents held under 100 yards rushing. That’s the blueprint.
• 4/4 redzone scoring, with 3 TDs.
• 21 first downs
• 8/16 on 3rd down
• 1/1 on 4th down
• Held Florida to 0/13 on 3rd down, and 3/6 on 4th down
• Let me say that again: MIAMI HELD FLORIDA TO 0/13 ON 3RD DOWN!!!!
• 7 TFLs
• 4 sacks — Thomas (1.5), Toure (1), Lightfoot (1), Mesidor (0.5), Bain (0.5)
• Only allowed 4 TFLs
• Only allowed 1 sack
• Another advanced stats snapshot that tells the story of a Miami win — that should have been worse than it was. I mean LOOK AT ALL THE DEEP PURPLE (very, very bad) ON THE FLORIDA SIDE!!!!

The Bad

• A clunker from Carson Beck. 17/30 passing (57% completions), for 160 yards, 0 TDs, and 1 INT. Beck added 2 carries for -7 yards on the ground. He was off target and out of rhythm almost all night long. Miami survived this game largely in spite of Beck, not great because of him tonight.
• Miami stalling and settling for a FG on their 2nd offensive drive. Had 2nd and 10 on the 22, which was immediately followed by a snap infraction, then a sack. Can’t have that.
• Letting Florida hang around. They’re talented, sure, but this shouldn’t have been close. When UF made it a game at 13-7, then got the ball back with a chance to take the lead?! There’s NO WAY that should have happened.
• The passing game in general. I know Florida has a solid defense, but the Miami passing game looked inept. Don’t love that.
• Drops by the receivers. Limited chances tonight. Gotta catch ‘em all, gentlemen.

The Ugly

• C.J. Daniels with a disgusting drop on 3rd and 9 halfway thru 2Q. Can’t have that.
• Consecutive punts, including a 3 and out, after getting stops once going up 10-0. That is killshot time. Gotta go score the ball!
• C James Brockermeyer with three (3) snap infractions in the first half. Never seen anything like it in my life.
• Refs blew the play dead SUPER FUCKING EARLY when Marty Brown broke free and scored on 4th and 1 to start the second half. An atrocious call. Absolute bullshit.

• S Dylan Day. Usually a stalwart on special teams, he had a nightmare of a day. Missed the chance to pin Florida inside the 2 yardline multiple times on the night. Bad bad bad. Ugly, even.
• Florida scored a touchdown on the ensuing drive.
• Carson Beck with an atrocious interception on the first play of the ensuing drive. C’mon Carson. You’re better than this.

• 6 penalties for 30 yards. Most of them pre-snap. Operational issues that need to be addressed.
• No, seriously: letting Florida hang around. They had fewer than 150 yards of offense. This should not have been as close as it was for 50 minutes of game action.
• Florida only called for 3 penalties.
• No turnovers forced. I know Florida’s offense is hella inefficient, but we couldn’t get one gift from Lagway today after he threw 5 picks last week? Annoying.

Team Grades

Offense: D+

Passing game was atrocious today. Carson Beck had his annual clunker, for sure. But the running game with Fletcher and Brown was awesome…..and should have been relied on even more with Beck clearly struggling. The false start penalties were insane AGAIN. And this wasn’t even on UF simulating the snap. This was all James Brockermeyer messing up. Fix it now or find the bench.

I liked seeing the Tight Ends return to the fold….but not at the expense of catches for C.J. Daniels (who had one of the worst drops you’ll see), Keelan Marion, and Joshua Moore. And Alex Bauman….maybe we leave him as a blocking option cuz he’s BAD in the pass game.

There were good parts of the offense, but there were WAY MORE things to clean up from tonight’s game than the previous 3 games combined. If not for Florida being such a bad team, the offense looked like it might have cost Miami a win for most of this game. I’m a tough grader, and I don’t care.

Defense: A+

Buddy. Corey Hetherman is HIM. This defense is incredible. They let Florida drive the ball exactly once all game. This is what you want to see from the Canes defense, and I’m super sold on Hetherman, and you should be, too.

My only complaints were the 4th down conversions allowed, especially on the Florida touchdown drive. Those 3 plays let the Gators back in the game, and I would have liked to see Miami execute better in those spots.

But, again, this is what the Miami defense is supposed to look like, and what they’re supposed to do to a struggling team such as this. Bravo!

Special Teams: C+

2/2 on FGs. Dylan Day’s mistakes cost Miami 2 punts pinned inside the 5 and were instead touchbacks. One KR wasn’t really that great. And PR didn’t do much either. Punting was good, 45ypp average, but man, what if the NET were that high if the 2 punts were correctly downed? This was okay, but not great. More to work on during the bye.

Coaching: B/B+

Another strong week for the staff, but not as strong as previous. Miami let Florida hang around in this game for far too long, and I’m putting that on the coaches. IDK if you want to give this demerit to Cristobal or OC Shannon Dawson, but they’re the reason this isn’t an A again.

I liked what I wrote here two weeks ago, so I’m gonna leave it here again: To have the kind of season that we desire, Miami cannot look past any opponent. That’s how disasters have happened in years gone by. But not tonight. They were ready, and that’s a credit to the staff. The players knew the scheme, knew the tendencies of the opponent, and made plays when they were there to be made.

I still want more points on the scoreboard. And with the way Miami was running the ball, there was no reason to be south of 30. I know there was the Marty Brown TD that was incorrectly whistled off, but still. The offense really, REALLY came down to Earth tonight, and I think that is being reflected in multiple places in this piece. The Standard is The Standard, and in many ways, we struggled to meet that tonight, EVEN WITH a 26-7 win over a rival team.

That’s it for this installment of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Hop in the comments and let me know your thoughts.

Go Canes