Luke Del Rio has yet to repeat his 320-yard, four-touchdown performance against Kentucky in the second game of the year. But he has also yet to lose a game as the quarterback for the 6-1 Florida Gators.
The redshirt sophomore is 5-0 this season, missing the Tennessee loss and the Vanderbilt victory with an injury, and has thrown for 1,139 yards with eight touchdowns and six interceptions.
In Saturday’s 24-10 win against Georgia, Del Rio bounced back after throwing an early pick and finished 15-for-25 with 131 yards and a touchdown.
He spoke on Monday about improvements the offense needs to make and it kept circling back to quarterback play.
First one where I actually got to play in the Bank. Amazing experience. On to the next one #DTWD pic.twitter.com/v3MwPvds0v
— Luke Del Rio (@LDelRio12) October 30, 2016
Off To Arkansas
Now the focus turns to Arkansas as the Gators head to Fayetteville in a vital conference away game Saturday at 3:30 p.m. The Razorbacks (5-3) have suffered all three of their losses to in-conference ranked teams: Texas A&M, Alabama, Auburn.
Del Rio talked about Arkansas, praising their quarterback Austin Allen, who he knew in high school through Elite 11.
The Razorbacks are ranked 36th in the nation in passing defense, holding their opponents to 206 passing yards per game. Last week’s 52-6 loss to Auburn came almost exclusively on the ground. The Tigers ran for 543 yards and only threw for 89.
Updated SEC East standings: #Gators a game up on UK plus H2H tiebreaker. pic.twitter.com/iwpst8HPbH
— Jonathan Arnholz (@JArnholz) October 30, 2016
The Gators need to win two of their last three SEC games to compete in the SEC Championship for the second consecutive year. Arkansas, South Carolina and LSU are the remaining conference games.
However, Del Rio isn’t taking any games off and says they have the mindset that they have to win out.
Playoffs?
There’s always the chance that if Florida does wins out and takes SEC Championship title, it’ll be very hard for the College Football Playoff committee to leave a one-loss SEC Champion out of the playoffs.
The first College Football Playoff rankings of the season come out tonight at 7 p.m. on ESPN.