Sunday, 4 a.m.
In the end, their offense was worthy of championship. Their quarterback would look good as a statue. Their receivers are as good as. you might have suspected.
In the end, however, defense did in the Florida Gators.
The Gators, despite the star quality of Kyle Trask and his talented receivers, lost to No. 1 ranked Alabama in the SEC Championship Saturday night. Because as good as the offense was for Florida, the defense struggled all night.
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For instance:
-- Quarterback Mac Jones threw for 418 yards and five touchdowns.
-- Running back Najee Harrison ran for 178 yards (and had 244 total yards) and scored five touchdown.
-- Receiver DeVonte Smith caught 15 passes for 184 yards.
And there they go. In all, the Tide rolled up 605 yards and 52 points. Florida was unable to slow them down, giving up 35 points in the first half.
“We’re running our plan right there" Mullen said. “We’ve had some chances to make some stops defensively, we created a turnover and fumbled it right back. I think we had three third down penalties, to keep them on the field. We’ve gotten off the field a bunch of times but we’ve just stopped ourselves.
“That’s disappointing because our guys are making plays, we are making mistakes. You can’t get give an offense like that five extra opportunities.”
Trask was terrific, too, throwing for 408 yards passing. Kadarius Toney caught eight passes for 153 yards, and Kyle Pitts caught seven for 129. But Florida couldn't match all of the Tide's weapons. The Gators ran for only 54 yards.
Defensively, the Gators were unable to harness Alabama's big three.
Trask entered the game in the Heisman discussion, but with Florida out of the playoff picture, it hard to say how his chances will be affected. Alabama's Jones and Clemson's Trevor Lawrence will be the consensus front-runners in most predictions.