Florida and Alabama traded possessions early in the game with Gators freshman quarterback Jacoby Brissett throwing an interception on the second play of the contest and each team punting twice.

On the Tigers’ third punt of the game, UF redshirt senior running back Chris Rainey muffed the catch; the ball was recovered by AU linebacker Daren Bates.

Florida head coach Will Muschamp exploded in anger on the sideline, questioning the referees as to why interference was not called on Auburn.

Three plays later, Gators sophomore defensive tackle Dominique Easley jumped offsides, but Tigers QB Barrett Trotter continued the play and threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver DeAngelo Benton for the first score of the game.

Down a touchdown, Florida employed F-back Trey Burton behind center and ran the ball on four of five plays to get down to Auburn’s 23-yard-line. UF ended the drive with a 47-yard field goal by redshirt junior kicker Caleb Sturgis to reduce their deficit to 7-3.

The Gators struck again on their next possession. Brissett completed three passes to redshirt junior WR Frankie Hammond, Jr. as part of a 12-play, 64-yard drive that ended with a 25-yard field goal.

Auburn took over with 2:33 left and drove down to Florida’s 28 but failed to connect on a 45-yard field goal, taking just a one-point lead into the locker rooms.

The Tigers outgained the Gators 80-30 offensively in the first quarter, but UF took over in the second, compiling 76 yards of offense compared to just 22 for AU.

Auburn and Florida began the second half by substituting their quarterbacks. The Tigers sent in second-year player Clint Moseley for Trotter, while the Gators replaced Brissett with fellow freshman Jeff Driskel.

Both teams punted on the first possession of the second half, but Florida freshman punter Kyle Christy dropped his attempt, picked it up and shanked the ball just 18 yards. Auburn K Cody Parkey missed a 42-yard field goal on the ensuing possession, his second failed attempt of the game.

The Gators got the ball back and began driving down the field with Driskel. UF offensive coordinator Charlie Weis called a flea flicker on second-and-one at AU’s 48; though the first part was executed well, Driskel overthrew redshirt sophomore tight end Jordan Reed, who was streaking down the middle of the field.

After another punt each from Florida and Auburn, the Tigers put together the longest scoring drive of the game, a seven-play, 66-yard effort that resulted in a 14-yard rushing touchdown by RB Onterio McCalebb.

The Gators tried to respond with a long drive of their own but stalled on fourth down in the red zone. Sturgis was ruled out with an injury after the half and kicking a field goal was not an option for Florida at the time.

UF punted once again but pushed AU back inside their own five. Auburn ran the ball three times but was stuffed by Florida’s defense and punted from their end zone.

Freshman WR Robert Clark replaced Rainey as punt returner after the latter muffed his first four punts of the evening. Clark did not do any better, letting the Tigers’ punt fall between his arms as he tried to field it.

Auburn recovered with less than three minutes to play and eventually kicked a 42-yard field goal to take an 11-point lead with 35 seconds remaining.

Miscues by the Gators wound up costing them the game. Florida’s three turnovers – two fumbles on special teams and an interception on the second play of the game – resulted in 10 points for the Tigers. Auburn outgained their opponent 278-194 on the evening and made sure to score when it counted.

Tigers RB Michael Dyer led all playmakers with 23 carries for 73 yards. Hammond had 40 yards on four receptions for the Gators, a season-high for a Florida wide receiver.

UF will now have a bye week to try and cure what ails them before heading into the World’s Largest Cocktail Party against Georgia in Jacksonville, FL on Oct. 29. The game will air live on CBS at 3:30 p.m.

Photo Credit: Dave Martin/Associated Press

“He’s been doing well. He looked good yesterday when we repped him. I don’t think it’s limiting anything that he’s trying to do,” he said. “You’re just trying to work through an injury. He got some reps last week and he’s trying to get back in and get the reps this week. Again, we’re talking about a freshman. He hasn’t had the amount of turns and reps at the position in the offense as a John Brantley would have. When John misses a practice or so in training camp, he picks it up back the next day and it’s OK. When you’re talking about a freshman, you have a little bit of a drop-off as you go back the next time.”

Muschamp said he’s “got my ideas about what’s going to happen” as far as naming a starter but said it certainly could change after Wednesday’s practice. “We’re going out there today working a lot of red zone and third down and critical situations in the game,” he said. “We got a one-minute drill to win the game, we’ve got some situations that are going to come up in the practice that those guys need to perform well [in].”

NOTES AND QUOTES

» On adjusting the offensive philosophy: “We’re going to open some things up a little bit offensively. We need to do that to help our football team.”

» On competition at the quarterback position: “It starts in the meeting room – how well they’re aligning and how well they know what we’re doing and understanding us and our opponent. That’s where it starts. We do have some lifting during the week and how they conduct themselves there. And then on the practice field. Who’s producing? Who’s making plays? Whether it’s a quarterback or any other position. Who are the guys who are making positive plays for the Gators? That’s what I talk about every day. We talk about competition. Those are the things you’re talking about. You’re talking about guys going out and competing every day at positions. Competition makes everybody better. We don’t have enough competition at some spots. That’s what’s been frustrating for me.”

On playing a lot of true freshman: “Any time you have transition there is some natural attrition that happens within the program.”

» On returning to Auburn: “The Auburn people were good to me. I really enjoyed my time there.”

» On the main reasons why Florida has lost consecutive games: “The first thing that I would be disappointed with would be psychologically when John went down in the Alabama game – of how we responded. We didn’t respond very well as a football team. That goes back to mental toughness of understanding that you can’t always control your circumstances but you can control how you handle it. We didn’t handle that very well. Then going into Baton Rouge and playing a very good football team, I don’t know that early in the game we faced adversity if we handled it very well. From there it’s a trickle-down effect to how the game was going and what LSU needed to do to win the game and that was not throw the football. That was just run the football. Over a period of time of not maintaining drives offensively, not getting enough stops defensively, it turns out to be a little bit of what it was.

“The first thing I would talk about as far as my disappointment so far has been handling adversity – handling when things go against you and understanding that, when you play in this league, you’re going to have adversity and you’ve got to learn to handle those situations. It’s a mental toughness factor. It’s an understanding that, when you play in this league, there’s going to be some adversity. You got to learn to handle it and play through it. A little of that goes to youth. Who are your leaders? Who are the guys who are willing to step up and take it by the horns and push forward? It’s not from a lack of effort. We’re getting great effort. All of those things have been very positive. It’s just the psychological part of the game that you got to learn to battle through.”

His re-opening of the quarterback job is not a statement about Brissett’s performance last week. Though Weis “chose the conservative route” and decided not to open up the offense due to his lack of experience and the hostile environment in which the game was played, he thought Brissett “handled himself very well” on Saturday.

“He showed very, very good poise. That’s what I expected from being around him a bunch. Until you go out there and actually watch it, you don’t know what’s going to happen for sure,” Weis said of Brissett. “There’s a lot of good practice players that when it comes time to playing a game, they disappear. But he certainly isn’t one of them.

“It’s one thing when you expect it, but you don’t know until there’s 93,000 people, you’re on the road, it’s loud. He wasn’t the reason that we lost the game. I can say that with fairly good confidence.”

Weis has a lot of confidence in both Driskel and Brissett, citing the fact that they have now both played in games as a “big difference maker” for each player going forward. Though he said even Brissett would admit that Driskel is the faster of the two, he has been impressed with what each player brings to the table.

“They’re both big, strong, physical guys, very sharp mentally with a very, very high ceiling,” he said. “Both these guys have grown to improve and be very, very good players.”

With his starting quarterback out at least one more week and an offense that has only scored 21 combined points against top of the top teams in the country, Weis realizes that the Gators have to make some changes. It did not help that he had to start his third signal-caller on Saturday with a limited package of plays that did not allow Florida to pass the ball as much as he wanted.

“If you score 10 or 11 points on a weekly basis, you’re going to lose most of them – if not all of them. What we have to do is be more aggressive. You’re in that catch-22 when you’re dealing with inexperience at the quarterback position. We will be more aggressive [this week],” he said.

Weis also explained why he was unable to keep the offensive momentum going two weeks ago when redshirt senior John Brantley went down and freshman Jeff Driskel was forced to enter the game. He placed the blame on his lack of preparation.

“Let’s go back two weeks. John gets hurt. What you could do is you could have a better auxiliary plan in place so that if John goes down, we’re going to go just to this auxiliary plan,” he said. “But to be honest with you, I thought we were going to have to throw the ball to win – as you saw what our game plan was. You don’t go into that auxiliary plan with guys that have been here for three days saying, ‘OK we’re going to let you throw it on this defense on every snap.’ It’s quite a drastic change from what the plan really was to win the game.”

Part of Weis’s auxiliary plan against LSU was using RB Trey Burton behind center for many of the running plays. He said that Burton was a viable option for the team and will be one going forward if UF must continue using young quarterbacks.

“You better have, especially going into that game, you better have some options, some versatility within your package,” he explained. “I wasn’t going to wait around and let us be stagnant. […] We had the package. I used it the second series. Didn’t intend to use it quite so early, but what you didn’t want to do was – it was already 7-0 – you don’t want to let the game get away from you too quickly.“

NOTES AND QUOTES

» On freshman QBs Driskel and Jacoby Brissett: “I like both these guys. I like them a lot. I don’t like one of them a lot. I like both of them a lot. They both have attributes to be a very good quarterback. [...] I’d love Brantley to be here this week, but you can only play one quarterback at a time. Right now my job is to make sure I just get those guys ready to go.”

» On learning about Brissett’s presence during recruiting: “I was scrambling a bit to help get him here, but one of the things that I liked the most besides watching him on tape was actually watching him play basketball. I watched his basketball team, which was really good. But I watched him play on his basketball team and watched his presence and his command playing basketball. It’s so much easier when you can watch a guy physically doing it. That’s something that’s different. Presence is not something that you can watch on tape. You can watch production, but you can’t watch presence.”

» On rumors about redshirt freshman QB Tyler Murphy transferring: “He’s been with me for the last five hours, so that would be news to me.”

» On if he’s concerned about the blocking of tight ends and running backs: “If you can’t block then you can never be a regular player. You can never be an every-down player. Because a running back who can’t pick up the blitz, you have to take him out when there’s a blitz. A tight end who can’t block the run, you’re going to be looking for somebody better. And the same is true for wide receivers. If they can run and catch but they can’t block anyone, you can’t play them on a regular basis because you’re going to run the ball at least half the time.”

» On if his offense is physically capable of matching up with teams like Alabama and LSU: “That’s a moot point because I’m just worried about Auburn. That’s what I’m worried about. Hopefully we’ll get to revisit that question down the road. Hopefully that question has some merit this year. Right now, we can’t be worrying about that. We have to be worrying about Auburn.”

» On the improvement of redshirt junior tackle Matt Patchan: “He’s played with a lot of physicality. That’s what’s got him more time. Matt is a physical player, but when he knows what he’s doing and can really turn it loose, he can be a dominant physical presence. That’s what he’s shown to earn himself more playing time. In that last game, he was one of the players for us that stood out and played with physicality the whole game.”

» On if his offensive line is undersized: “It depends on who you’re playing against. If you really look out our offensive line versus LSU last week, no, they weren’t undersized. It depends on the opponent and how big they are versus how big you are. I’ve been with offensive lines where everyone averaged 280 and I’ve been with offensive lines where everyone averaged 315. And I’ve won with both of them. Size isn’t always the factor.”

» On if using so many special packages early has hurt his playbook: “Now [other teams] practice that and you do other stuff. That’s part of coaching. There’s other things you can do off of the same thing. We only ran a handful of things.”

Muschamp said that how the snaps are split – and how much Driskel practices – will be solely dependent on his health at this point in time.

“It’s not like one guy is a different quarterback than the other guy. They’re both very similar skill set as far as that’s concerned. A lot of that is going to depend on Jeff’s ankle,” he said. “How many reps will he be able to rep in practice? I don’t know at this point. We’re going to have about an hour and 15-minute practice [Monday night]. We’ll move from there and, as we move further in the week, I’ll know more obviously about how much he’ll be able to go and compete for the job this week. That will determine the reps and then obviously determine the starter.”

If Driskel is unable to practice at full speed or Brissett goes out again and earns the start, Muschamp is confident in the latter can continue progressing and play better.

“I thought Jacoby did a good job [against LSU]. As far as comparing how each quarterback performed in totally different environments, I’d have a hard time doing that. I thought he managed our offense very well,” the coach said. “I thought what we asked him to do he did very well. He’s a very composed young man. He’s very intelligent. He’s athletic. He’s smart. He works extremely hard since he’s been here as far as learning the offense and learning what to do and how we want to do it and manage our football team. I’m very pleased with his progress.”

Muschamp is so pleased, in fact, that he said offensive coordinator Charlie Weis will open the playbook even more for him if Brissett returns behind center. “Certainly we’ve got to do some more – something else offensively,” he said. “If you continue to do the same thing, you’ll continue to get the same results.” Driskel has been working with a larger playbook considering he’s been involved in the offense since the spring.

One thing that will not change as long as a backup quarterback is in, however, are running backs sophomore Trey Burton and redshirt senior Chris Rainey taking direct snaps in certain packages. Muschamp feels that helps take some of the pressure off of the young signal callers and gives the team a different element in a running game that was completely stopped against Alabama.

Florida will know who is starting at quarterback by mid-week, but who the Gators will trot out under center may once again remain a question until just before kickoff.

NOTES AND QUOTES

» Muschamp said redshirt senior QB John Brantley is progressing well in rehab and slipped up a bit, mentioning that the injury is indeed to his ankle. “He’s working hard. He’s been in the training room a lot and went on the road with us to get all the reps he could get as far as rehabbing his ankle. We feel like he’s making good progress. We’ll continue to go forward with that.”

» He also said that there is a benefit to not disclosing the specifics about Brantley’s injury. “There are some teams out there that might want to get him in a pile. Not that anybody in our league would do that.”

» Florida will again likely choose their starting quarterback on Wednesday after two full days of practice because that is when the offense primarily focuses on red zone and third down plays. “As you start to work through Tuesday’s practice, you need to move forward,” Muschamp said.

» He also addressed why redshirt freshman QB Tyler Murphy has not had a chance to start for the Gators. “He’s done some good things. He’s managed our offense well, but those other guys have just performed better,” Muschamp said.

The focus this week has been on freshman QB Jeff Driskel likely starting his first game on Saturday, but head coach Will Muschamp explained Wednesday that fellow freshman Jacoby Brissett has actually moved into the second reserve spot.

That did not come as much of a surprise for redshirt junior wide receiver Frankie Hammond, Jr., who praised Brissett’s progress in learning the offense.

“[He’s] just being more comfortable and just being more sure of himself, learning the plays, getting in the rhythm, setting his feet, making progressions, making throws,” he said. “[He’s] just a poised quarterback. He makes great decisions in practice. He hasn’t had the chance or opportunity to actually do it in a game situation. He’s made tremendous strides and he’s a good quarterback.”

Hammond also said Brissett had the best arm of the three reserves “just because of his size” but thinks whoever starts on Saturday will do a good job.

“In my opinion, all three of them are ready right now. They’re all practicing right now, getting reps and getting themselves prepared,” he said. “Nobody really knows who is going to actually go out there against LSU. We’re getting all three quarterbacks prepared, and I don’t really have a personal preference. Any one of them can go out there and all three of them can get the job done.”

NOTES AND QUOTES

» Hammond on if the offense is bothered by not knowing who will start at QB: “It doesn’t really change anything from our perspective. We kind of got into a rhythm with JB. Since he’s out, we kind of just have to play it by ear and just be athletes. Every ball is not going to be perfect. Even JB doesn’t throw a perfect ball every time. Just be an athlete, play it by ear, if the ball is in the air, come down with it.”

» Hammond on if he would prefer knowing the starter: “You never know what the situation may be. One of them could go in the first play and roll an ankle or whatever and be out. All three of them getting an equal amount of reps, in my opinion, is beneficial to keep them going and for later on down the season.”

» Hammond on if the team’s unity changed after the Alabama loss: “There was no finger-pointing. There were mistakes made everywhere and things we can learn from every aspect of the football game. We came in, didn’t point any fingers. It was everybody’s fault. You can’t point one thing out. If anything, in my opinion, it made us closer, stronger and is something we can learn from and build on.”

» Wenger on if the offensive line got together after the Alabama game to work things out: “Some of us usually go Thursday nights out to eat. It’s not one of those things where we have to get together on our own. We all know. We all were feeling pretty miserable about it and we don’t want that feeling again. We’re doing everything we can to not have that feeling repeat itself. At this point, like I said, we’ve moved on from it. We’re learning from our mistakes and moving forward, taking it one game at a time.”

» Wenger on how defensive lines in the SEC compare with those he played against while at Notre Dame: “Very good. At Notre Dame there was a lot of Big 10 and Big east schools and some Pac-12 schools now I guess, if that’s what they’re calling it. It’s different. I’d probably say just the athletic and talent is higher than what I’ve seen in the past. People will always ask, ‘What was probably the best comparison?’ USC in 2008 when they had [Rey] Maualuga and [Brian] Cushing and those guys was the closest I’ve seen to what the SEC has.”

» Redshirt sophomore tight end Jordan Reed on if it was easier for him to come into games last year: “Probably because I had to learn less things than they have to learn. They have to learn the whole playbook. I had to just learn a few packages last year.”

» Reed on what Driskel brings to the table: “The play is never over with Driskel. He’s real mobile. Just keep running around and hopefully he’ll see you.”

» Reed on Brissett: “I see a lot of good things out of Jacoby. He’s got a real strong arm and he’s really athletic as well. I think he could be a really good player.”

» Reed on how the offense will play without Brantley: “With young quarterbacks, we have to make every play we have a chance to make. Got to keep his confidence up.”