Week 6 features a renewal of SEC East Rivals, as the South Carolina Gamecocks face off against the Florida Gators on Saturday. Both teams are coming off of a loss, as Florida looks to rebound from its 45-17 road loss to Missouri, and South Carolina fell 35-34 at home to Kentucky in overtime.
Ahead of taking on the Gamecocks, Florida first-year head coach Jon Sumrall had high praise for the Gamecock team he will face. During his weekly press conference, Sumrall called Shane Beamer's team one of the best teams roster-wise that Florida has faced all season:
"We have a challenging opponent this week," Sumrall said via Swamp247. "You look at South Carolina on film, they're as good talent-wise as anything we've seen this year by far. They're the best talent team that we have played today. And you look across their entire roster, offense, defense, and even the return game, man, they've got NFL guys everywhere. Like all over the tape. And so it's gonna be a really formidable test because these guys, they got dudes. And so we got to go back to work."
South Carolina will take on a Florida team that has not lost at home this season, last upsetting then-No. 4 Ole Miss two weeks ago that vaulted the Gators into the Top-25 rankings. The Gator offense is also particularly comfortable at home, averaging 57 points a game in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium so far this season.
Head coach Shane Beamer can likely take away several aspects of Missouri's game-plan against the Gators to use for his team. One of the biggest defensively was making Florida's offense one-dimensional. Missouri held the Gators to a season-low 42 yards rushing. As a result, the pressure was placed on quarterback Aaron Philo to make up for that. Going up against a fierce pass-rush from Missouri, he threw for just 197 yards with zero touchdowns. He was sacked three times.
South Carolina's defense has done well defending the run so far this season, allowing just 100 yards on the ground per game, good for 29th in the nation. Coach Sumrall added that the Gators need to get back to having more of a run-pass balance this week.
"The way we're built, to be quite honest with you right now, we do not need to be living in a drop-back pass game the entire game," Sumrall said via Swamp247. "We need to play complementary football. That's how we're built offensively, personnel, structurally, like, and every year you have a different team, and we may at some point have a team where we feel like, hey, we can just go drop back and pass a lot and wing it. But right now, we need to be able to stay on schedule."
Despite both teams coming off of losses, Florida is listed as a 14-point favorite against the Gamecocks this week. Saturday's game will kickoff at 12:45 p.m., and air on SEC Network.
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