GAINESVILLE — Florida veteran Tyreak Sapp and the struggling defense hadn’t had much to celebrate this season.
But on Sapp’s 22nd birthday he and his teammates welcomed UCF and whooped it up during a one-sided 24-13 win.
With tens of thousands of his closest friends looking Saturday night at the Swamp, Sapp and an inspired front seven staged a sack party. The Gators grounded 6-foot-3, 247-pound quarterback KJ Jefferson five times and sent him home limping a season after he led Arkansas to a stunning upset here with Sapp on the sideline because of a concussion.
“I wanted to make sure he left out of here with a loss, and we wanted to leave him hurting,” he said. “He was holding his knee.”
Knights coach Gus Malzahn, whose team finished with a season-low 273 yards, held his head is frustration after he’d gift-wrapped the Gators momentum. Trailing 7-3, a bold, if not baffling, fourth-down call in Knights territory backfired to open the second quarter.
With a yard to go from UCF’s 43-yard line, UF stopped Jefferson for no gain on a keeper.
Even though the Gators had stoned star tailback RJ Harvey on 3rd-and-1, Sapp fully expected the Knights, who entered with the nation’s second-ranked run game, to go for it.
“We understood exactly what they wanted to do,” he said. “They [were] just one of the top running teams in the country, so you got to pay them respect to that and that’s what we harped on all week. So it wasn’t a doubt in any one of our minds that they were going to go for it. Who wouldn’t?”
But on their own 43?
“It is what it is,” Sapp said. “You going to roll the dice, or you going to hold back? Life is a gamble.”
Life was good for the Gators (3-2) as a reported crowd of 90,369 joined the fun.
UF lost twice at home in September by double digits, to Miami and Texas A&M, as the defense collapsed each time, allowing a combined 1,017 yards.
Sapp, a Fort Lauderdale native and standout at St. Thomas Aquinas, admitted the jolt of confidence delivered by his team’s performance against UCF still did not compare with the optimism he carried into the season-opening visit from Miami.
“It kind of blew up in our face, but it’s all right,” he said. “Things happen in life and we move forward and we get better no matter what happens.”
Yet, the Gators’ D didn’t appear to grow from the experience and entered October last in the SEC against power conference teams, allowing an average of 499 yards along with 34 points — more per game than all but hapless Mississippi State.
After winning 42-28 at Mississippi State despite allowing 480 yards, Florida set out to find solutions during its bye week. Three spirited practices with a focus on smoothing out the defensive play-calling operation paid dividends against UCF.
UF was more organized and aggressive.
“We changed some things, got our mojo. We got some swag,” edge rusher George Gumbs Jr. said. “We were running around, having some fun. We came out, like ‘OK, we all feel better — just get ready to attack the next week.'”
Gumbs, a redshirt junior transfer from Northern Illinois, finished with 1.5 sacks to give him 2.5, tied with Sapp for the team lead.
Plenty of Gators joined in against UCF, including a youth movement beginning to take shape.
Following the two-minute warning, Bryce Thornton iced the Gators’ win with a red-zone interception to end any chance of a UCF comeback. Fellow sophomore safety Jordan Castell had a team-leading 6 tackles.
Meanwhile, sophomore linebacker Pup Howard recorded his first career sack, while true freshmen in edge defender LJ McCray and defensive tackle D’Antre Robinson of Orlando each recorded a half-sack.
“It’s starting to make sense,” Napier said. “They’ve gotten some experience. They’re starting to acquire reps. Those are adding up and then all of a sudden, they get out there and they make the most of their opportunity.”
While eager to celebrate the win himself, Napier is not naive.
“Let’s be honest here, there’s bigger challenges ahead,” he said.
UCF is a 2023 addition to the Big 12 still trying to establish itself at the power conference level. Florida’s remaining schedule is filled with Top 25 teams, beginning with an upcoming visit to Tennessee.
The No. 4 Vols (4-1) were stunned 19-14 at Arkansas, scoring 40 points fewer than their season average entering the game. But Josh Heupel’s up-tempo should reveal just how far the Gators defense has come.
“There’s still things that we need to fix as a whole, as a defense, but we kind of filled some of those gaps and tightened up some of those screws,” Sapp said. “This week coming up is we got another opportunity to get better and going to a big game, an SEC game, and kind of showcase what we can do.”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com
Up next …
Florida at Tennessee
When: 7, Saturday, Neyland Stadium
TV: ESPN
