Five thoughts from Florida's 37-34 loss to LSU

The Florida Gators knew what they had to do in order to play for a National Championship, or at least they should have.

In his pre-game meeting with the ESPN production crew on Friday Dan Mullen said he thought the Gators would get into the College Football Playoff even if they lost to LSU but beat Alabama in the SEC Championship game.

That’s not going to be the case unless Florida can somehow wash the stink of losing to a 24-point underdog, 3-5, now 4-5 LSU Tiger team, and beat Alabama by 30.

When asked about those comments after the game, Mullen decided to take a jab at Ohio State, who has played just five games this season, rather than take responsibility for the way his team looked on Saturday night.

“I know we've played 10 games, OK. So I guess probably the best thing to do would have been to play fewer games because you seem to get rewarded for not playing this year in college football. But I tell you what, I give our guys a lot of credit,” Mullen said. “ The competitors our guys are, that they want to go out there and compete every single week. That we've faced a lot of injuries, we've faced a lot of adversity, we've played short-handed a lot of games. And we have no control. We have no control over anything but whether or not we win next week. That's all we can control. We win next week, we're SEC champs. I can't control more than that. That is all we control, and I guess that's a good question for the committee. That's their deal with what's important. But I tell you what, I'm proud of our guys of how they faced through everything, played a 10-game SEC schedule, played beat up, played short-handed a bunch of these games this year.”

Florida looked like a team that knew they were 24-point favorites. They looked like a team that expected to roll the ball out on the field and that would be enough. They didn’t account for LSU wanting to come in and ruin Florida’s season while making its own.

The Gators have been slow starters but they never woke up on Saturday. They looked like a team that didn’t care about beating LSU, and that’s probably because their head coach didn’t seem to think this game mattered much either.

The Florida Gators are the SEC East Champions and they’ve earned a right to play for the SEC Championship next weekend in Atlanta.

Say a prayer, the boogeyman is coming.

Alabama isn’t just a really good team. They’re the best team in the country. The Tide have rolled over just about every opponent they’ve faced this season, including the LSU team that beat Florida on Saturday, 55-17.

Florida has become one-dimensional. No, the Gators aren’t “saving their best plays” so that they don’t show up on film against Alabama. Nick Saban knows how Dan Mullen takes his coffee. He’s probably seen the notes that Mullen took as a graduate assistant when Mullen was at Notre Dame in 1999-2000. You’re not going to surprise Nick Saban with anything in Atlanta.

Florida is in over their heads next week.

Kyle Trask’s final stat line looks nice. The redshirt senior completed 29-of-47 pass attempts for 474 yards and two touchdowns, adding two more on the ground. Trask was the first one to tell you that his play didn’t cut it on Saturday night.

“I take a lot of responsibility myself if I play a clean first half and I feel like I gave them just 10 points straight up,” Trask said after the game.

Trask threw two interceptions and fumbled a ball away in the second quarter. It was a huge swing in the game, where LSU scored 17 points and then put together a field goal drive to start the third quarter.

This game wasn’t Kyle Trask’s fault, but in a Heisman race where he was already losing ground, according to Vegas odds, a loss to a team that was a 24-point underdog might remove you from the race altogether.

One play does not lose you a game but Marco Wilson throwing Kole Taylor’s shoe will go down in Florida history as one of the most boneheaded decisions ever.

The tweet says it all. The penalty came just after a third-down stop that would have forced LSU to punt. Instead, the Tigers got 15 free yards, a new set of downs, and were able to kick a 57-yard field goal that proved to be the game-winner.

Kyle Trask impressed after the game

We’ve already talked about how Dan Mullen handled his post-game press conference. Kyle Trask took a different route.

Trask, still in his pads and dirty jersey looked into the camera and blamed himself. The quarterback who accounted for four touchdowns on the night, broke Danny Wuerffel’s single-season record with 40 touchdowns, put the loss on his shoulders.

“I take full responsibility for everything,” Trask said. “I mean I just got to play cleaner - that’s pretty much it.”

“It's not the way you want to go out as your last time being in The Swamp but at the same time, you know, our goal to begin the season was to get to the SEC championship and we still have a chance to, you know, win the SEC, and that's going to be our full focus going forward.”