Florida suffered its second SEC loss of the 2021 season Saturday night at Kentucky. Plenty of questions piled up afterwards regarding Dan Mullen, who took plenty of heat.
The Gators had seven cracks inside Kentucky’s 10-yard line in the final moments trailing 20-13, but could not score. The final pass from Emory Jones on fourth-and-goal to Trent Whittemore fell incomplete and led to Kentucky’s capacity crowd rushing the field. It was the Gators’ first loss in Lexington since 1986.
The defeat means that Florida’s destiny in the SEC East is out of its control. The Gators also dropped from No. 10 to 18 in the AP Top 25.”In the SEC you can’t make the mistakes that we made tonight and win a game. It’s a good football team, top-25 team, playing a top-25 team on the road in the SEC. Great crowd.
Mark Stoops has built up the program. They are a top-25 team here, year in and year out. You have to give them credit you know, they have great energy, their guys played hard, made plays. They aren’t going to make all the mistakes we made when you’re playing an SEC team.”
“The penalties were not working for us. I’ll be honest with you we had 382 yards to 211 and I think that was a big factor. If you look at it, if you get a rhythm towards the game, the penalties weren’t small, you’re looking at taking third downs off the board.
Third down and backing us up, taking conversions and runs off the board with holding penalties. Those are the issues. The mental errors were just — you can’t do that and expect to win a game making that many mental errors.”
