The University of Florida football program hasn’t been the typical Florida football program we’re used to over the past few years. That’s 99.9% of the reason why the Gators decided to go hire Jon Sumrall, who has had a lot of success at previous stops.
His most recent stop at Tulane showed that not only can he be a good coach, but an elite one in the college football ranks. The hope is that he can transition from the mid-major ranks all the way up to the SEC and continue finding success at the highest level.
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There’s plenty of hope that he’ll eventually do so, though I expect that there will be some growing pains, and Florida fans shouldn’t view that as that big of a problem. Winning in the SEC is difficult enough, but doing so as a first-year head coach is even more difficult.
Right now, it’s about building the right habits, and it sounds like that’s exactly what Sumrall is doing from top to bottom. He’s continued to say a lot of the right things, and he believes that his team is truly putting a lot of stuff together.
“We gotta continue to grow as a team and come together,” Sumrall said, per Kevin Brockway. “Have synergy. We’ve got to have certain guys elevate at certain spots to play winning-level football where we still have some question marks at. Just consistency.”
“We have to get into a space where we bring it every day, and you cannot calculate your effort you give by how you feel,” Sumrall said. “Like, being tough is being at your best no matter what the circumstances are around you. And so our guys got to get in a routine of, like, man, every time we go out to practice, it’s a great practice because we’re showing up. We’re gonna show up.”
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Toughness is something that Sumrall has spoken about a lot, especially during his time at Tulane. It’s not exactly surprising to see him harp on that with a program like Florida, as this is a program built on toughness.
If Florida can have this type of attitude week in and week out in the SEC, even if it loses some games, it will be much better than perhaps it is getting credit for early on.
