The No. 10 Gators enter November winning six of their first seven games, but their most difficult stretch lies in the next four weeks of the 2016 regular season.
While Florida’s first seven opponents have combined for a 26-31 record this year – none are currently ranked in the AP Top 25 – its final four are a combined 19-12. Two, in LSU and FSU, are right now ranked.
It can be argued that the Gators truly haven’t been tested by a good team at this point – and even the only team they’ve lost to, Tennessee, is currently on a three-game losing streak. Florida currently ranks 47th nationally in strength of schedule, but its remaining schedule is the fifth-most difficult in the country.
Since the conclusion of the Tim Tebow era, Florida hasn’t been great in November games. The Gators are 14-12 in that month over the past six years, with its lone perfect November coming in 2012. Florida has gone 6-8 combined over the past three years in November.
Safe to say, these next couple of weeks will be a defining stretch for this Gators football team. Even with Tennessee falling to South Carolina over the weekend and giving the Gators a cushion atop the SEC East standings, Florida refuses to get too comfortable.
“Anytime you become comfortable and start to look ahead and not take care of the now that’s when you get in trouble,” McElwain said. “That’s why I think this is a great opportunity to define kind of what we’re all about. You hear the cliché’s and all that kind of stuff but it really does. I just like where this team’s at, and yet, here’s this next step that we need to take to kind of solidify where our program is at and we’ll find out.”
The first test of November for Florida (6-1, 4-1 SEC) will come on the road this weekend against Arkansas (5-3, 1-3 SEC), which fell out of the top 25 following a 56-3 road loss to Auburn on Oct. 22. In that game, the Razorbacks’ defense allowed 543 yards and seven touchdowns on the ground while the offense mustered just three points on 215 total yards. The Auburn defense had no trouble getting to Arkansas quarterback Austin Allen in the pass rush, as it recorded four sacks and 15 quarterback hurries.
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McElwain called Arkansas’ blowout loss to Auburn an “anomaly.” Three of the Razorbacks losses this year have come against teams currently ranked in the top 11 nationally.
“It got out of hand, maybe became a little uncomfortable in what they had to do offensively once they got thundered early,” McElwain said. “It took them out of their normal game. But, I will say, they're physical. They understand what they want to do and how to do it. They're very sound on both sides of the football. And for us, we've got to be right. I'm looking forward to this week of preparation as we go into the game and take another step.”
Florida quarterback Luke Del Rio shared the same sentiment about Arkansas.
“I think Auburn had a really good game plan,” Del Rio said. “You know, Arkansas’s a good team. They have a good defensive approach. And Austin Allen, I knew him a little bit in high school with the Elite 11 and all that, and he’s played phenomenally this year. So, you know, they’re a good team. We’re excited to play them.”
Outside of the Auburn loss, the Razorbacks offense has averaged 34.9 points per game as Allen has been one of the SEC’s better quarterbacks this year despite a shaky offensive line. Arkansas takes a run-oriented approach on offense – 56.1% of their offensive plays this year have come on the ground – and runs play-action quite often.
"Their play-action game and what they do,” McElwain said. “(Offensive coordinator Dan Enos) also got there right when I was leaving Michigan State actually. Reggie Mitchell’s there, too, that is a great friend. He’s their running back coach. What they do with line shift formation, motion. The run plays off it, the counters off it, but more than that, the play-action pieces off it. Our guys are going to have to do a great job of being disciplined. When they’re clicking on that stuff, it’s real.
"We’ve got to make sure that our eyes are sound and we’re not jumping on the double-move stuff, which has hurt us,” McElwain continued. “Let’s call it the way it is. And yet what we need to do is continue to try to reestablish the line of scrimmage and make the guy throw it, not get in rhythm. I think last week was a great example of that, where we forced them a little bit out of rhythm, not being able to get their feet set to be as accurate as you need to be when the windows are small. That’s going to be the tough assignment this week.”
Saturday presents the Gators with an opportunity not only to inch one step closer to Atlanta but help gradually change the current national perception of the program.
“I feel like people always love to hate the Gators,” defensive end Bryan Cox Jr. said “They don’t ever want to give us our respect or props, so we have to kind of go and take it ourselves. We’re still a very hungry team. This top 10 doesn’t mean anything to us, we feel like we should be up there higher. So we have to continue to push and work every day at it.”
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