The Florida Gators get their first taste of SEC football under head coach Jon Sumrall when they take on the Auburn Tigers. Sumrall made it clear that if they don’t figure things out quickly, they would be in for a rude awakening.

“If we play like we did in the second half, we’re about to have a real rude awakening, and we have got a lot of improvement to do,” said Sumrall after the 52-3 win over the Campbell Fighting Camels.

They are going to be tested quickly on Saturday against an explosive offense that the Tigers have, but they have an advantage they didn’t have last year.

Florida Gators have advantage against Auburn Tigers

When the Gators lost 18-16 to the South Florida Bulls in Week 2 last season, the unique offense that head coach Alex Golesh runs gave them issues, especially in the two-minute drill. The good news for Sumrall’s squad is they have seen something similar already this season.

“Yeah, the spacing is unique,” said Sumrall during Monday’s press conference. “It’s got some similarities to what FAU presented, and sometimes even Campbell, for that matter. Tempo, like FAU, I think last year FAU was the fastest offense in college football. I think South Florida was the third fastest, so there’s some similarities there.”

It’s not a 1:1 comparison with Golesh’s offense and the one Zach Kittley runs at Florida Atlantic, but the spacing issues that they both present do make things more difficult, especially with defending the run.

“I think the personnel makes it a little bit more different and unique. But they stress you. They got good players, and they try to put some guys in space, and you have to win one-on-one matchups. You can’t hide guys. Guys got to make plays, and guys got to step up,” said Sumrall.

“But it’s stuff that you see in college football that’s relatively-I don’t want to say common-but at this point, we’ve all seen all this stuff for a while now, so it’s not like you know unfamiliar for anybody. But the challenge is they’ve got good players, and they do good stuff schematically, but they’re doing it with good people too, which we have to win our one-on win our one-on-one battles.”

Being that they have seen the wide splits that Golesh likes to run, it’s given the Gators some internal data to work with. How are they going to get their defense in position to win one-on-one matchups? Sumrall laid out a big challenge to them after the 66-21 victory in Week 1, and they responded. Will this make a difference going into Jordan Hare? Saturday night will be fun to watch play out.