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Florida Gators penalized for having two players with same number on the field

Untitled designby:Nick de la Torre•08/31/23•

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Florida HC Billy Napier
Kim Klement | USA TODAY Sports

SALT LAKE CITY — Football has been played for more than a century, but the Florida Gators found a unique way to get penalized on Thursday night in a loss to No. 14 Utah. The Gators’ defense forced the Utes to punt but were hit with a flag when two players wearing the same jersey were on the field at the same time.

Have you seen that one before?

This is a massive and, frankly, inexcusable breakdown in communication. Florida has two players that wear No. 3 — freshman receiver Eugene Wilson and junior cornerback Jason Marshall. Both return punts for the Gators.

You can’t do that. The penalty have Utah a new set of downs and the Utes turned that into seven points.

Billy Napier explains Florida Gators mishap

Napier has elected to have two offensive line coaches. That means Florida has an analyst handling the special teams. Chris Couch is in his second season on the job at Florida. It is his responsibility to have the correct players ready to take the field.

“That’s exactly what it is. It is something that we have had in the past, we’ve worked in the past. We were rotating the punt returner two to one. And we go safe, Jason (Marshall) is out there. We were supposed to get him off,” Billy Napier explained after the game. “We just didn’t communicate. We’re in put safe. We’ve got to communicate that better. There’s no question that’s another thing that we control that we didn’t do the right way.”

Florida’s special teams have left much to be desired through 14 games with Napier and Couch.

Special teams weren’t the reason the Gators lost but this penalty was the most glaring lapse in discipline and communication on a night that featured plenty of both.

In total, Florida was penalized nine times on Thursday night, with procedural penalties doing the most damage.

“I think that first of all, I think that the crowd impacted the game. No question about it. Early on, a couple of those short-yardage situations, we had procedure issues. Guys flinching. Two of them in particular that were costly,” Napier said. “Then we just had – we were a little bit off in two formations there. We’ve got to communicate with the officials better. Those proved to be issues. One of them was a third-down conversion that didn’t cost us. The other one cost us on third and 1 where we convert the play, but it was just called back because of an illegal formation.”

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