Rapid Reaction to Florida's 45-28 win over Mississippi State
GAINESVILLE, Fla — The Florida Gators notched their first SEC win of the season behind 503 yards of total offense and record-setting performance by UF’s two-QB tandem of Graham Mertz and DJ Lagway. They helped the team build a three-touchdown lead twice en route to a 45-28 victory.
Mertz and Lagway finished a combined 26-of-28 (92.8%, UF single-game record) for 277 yards, connecting with 10 different receivers. Mertz threw the only two incompletions (19-of-21, 201 yards, three TDs) to post the third-highest completion percentage (90.5%) by a Gator ever while Lagway went a perfect 7- for-7 for 76 yards.
Florida’s 17-point win is tied for the team’s largest margin of victory on the road against a major conference opponent under coach Billy Napier (2022 at Texas A&M). The Gators won their third-straight game in Starkville and improved to 15-5 in the last 20 meetings in the series against MSU.
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In the video above, Gators Online shares our rapid reaction to Florida’s win at Mississippi State.
Billy Napier on the Florida Gators win over MSU
“Man, it feels good to win a game. I think we did enough to win today. I was really impressed, thought offensively we had some tempo about us, thought we played well around the quarterback. And I thought the quarterbacks did a really good job kind of being the point guard of the offense and distributing the ball. We had some balance. Outside of the think we had a three and out early, and then we fumbled. I thought we did a lot of good. I think we started both halves a little slow, but once we settled in I thought we moved it well. Defensively, at times we did a lot of good things. I thought we did a good job getting off the field on third down to the first half, but there’s just, there’s three or four or five possessions there where we disappeared. We were a little more consistent across the board today, but we know that there’s going to be more consistency required. The rush and the coverage got to work together. Overall, the rush defense has got to get shored up, and we have to eliminate some of these penalties that we had. We got away with a couple, on offense we overcame them. And then defensively, we had a few that were costly. Another good day in the kicking game, thought we did a lot of good there, the specialists were sharp. We gave up one kickoff return, I think maybe got out to the 35. Outside of that a big punt return that turned into points, and then a big field goal there at the end to make it three scores.”
