No. 4 Florida Gators Upset by No. 21 Texas A&M 41-38 After Game-Winning Field Goal
By Chris Harry, FloridaGators.com // October 10, 2020
ABOVE VIDEO: Check out highlights as the Florida Gators take on the Texas A&M Aggies in Week 6 of the 2020 College Football season.
COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS (Florida Gators) – Junior Seth Small kicked a 26-yard field goal as time expired Saturday and the 21st-ranked Aggies upset the No. 4 Gators in a game devoid of defense at Kyle Field.
Senior quarterback Kellen Mond, making his 37th career start, passed for 338 yards and three touchdowns, while tailback Isaiah Spiller shredded the Gators for 174 rushing yards and two more scores, but it took the Aggies’ defense to make the play that changed the course of the outcome.
The score was tied at 38 when Florida quarterback Kyle Trask, already with 312 yards, four touchdowns and no interception, took over with 3:40 remaining and a chance the game-winning drive.
After hitting senior tailback Malik Davis for 23 yards to near midfield, Davis fumbled the ball away two plays later and the Aggies recovered at the UF 48.
Mond needed eight plays to move his team 40 yards, hitting a big third-and-8 completion (a troubling trend on the day against the UF defense) to wideout Chase Lane for 16 yards to the UF 19.
On the next play, Spiller rushed 11 yards to the 8 and, after an A&M timeout, basically gave Small an extra point to win the game. Mond finished 25 of 35 against a UF defense that yielded 543 yards and an astounding 12-for-15 conversions on third down. Trask was 23-for-32, but was denied a chance at a game-winning drive.
Florida finished with 402 yards of offense, but just 90 on the ground, compared to A&M’s 205. The Aggies trailed 38-31 with just over six minutes left, but got a 51-yard scoring bomb from Mond to wideout Caleb Chapman to tie the game, then the turnover that turned the game. A&M started the day 0-7 against teams ranked in the top five during Coach Jimbo Fisher’s three seasons since bolting from Florida State.
In those games, the Aggies had been outscored by an average of 19.1 points, including last weekend’s 28-point loss at No. 2-ranked Alabama. They’re now 1-7.
WHAT IT MEANS: The Gators will be chasing the winner of Saturday’s game between Tennessee and Georgia, both of which began the day unbeaten and tied with the UF atop the SEC East. The defeat wasn’t a death knell to their hopes of winning division (not with dates against the Volunteers and Bulldogs down the road), but in the bigger, College Football Playoff picture, a loss to a team that was steamrolled 52-24 at Alabama last week won’t help the Gators pass the eye test down the line; if it comes to that. There’s also the more closer-to-home issue of that defense, which will be under serious reevaluation.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Mond and Spiller accounted for 515 of their team’s 543 yards. That’s 94.8 percent.
STAGGERING STATISTIC: The Aggies averaged 7.3 yards per snap. The Gators averaged 7.2, but 18 fewer plays, and thus nearly 170 fewer yards.
UP NEXT: The Gators (2-1, 2-1) return home to facing reigning national champion LSU (1-2, 1-2), which Saturday was stunned at unranked Missouri, 45-41, in a game that was moved from Baton Rouge to Columbia due to Hurricane Delta. The Tigers are a shadow of the team they were last year with Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 overall draft pick Joe Burrow, what with 14 players taken in the NFL draft, but still quite talented and formidable, regardless of their two losses, including those 600-plus yards passing surrendered in a season-opening home loss against Mississippi State.
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