Where Did That Come From?

1017. That’s the number of rushing yards Florida had through six games. For those of you without a calculator handy, that comes out at 169.5 rushing yards per game.

If you had asked anyone how many yards they thought Florida would manage to gain against Georgia’s defense, they would have asked if it would be rude to put a minus sign next to the number.

No one, and I mean no one, would have given any guess north of 200 yards, much less 416.

And yet, it happened. That's right, 416 rushing yards.

Prior to its 38-20 shellacking of Georgia, Florida was in the bottom half of the SEC in every statistical category on offense. But on Saturday, it looked like Will Muschamp had borrowed Gus Malzahn to run his offense for a day.

He would’ve had good reason to, with everyone in Gainesville questioning his coaching ability and pitching in for his plane ticket out of town.

It looked like Will Muschamp’s time was up.

Florida AD Jeremy Foley said back in October that he would evaluate Muschamp’s status as the rest of the season unfolded, after all.

His Florida Gators had suffered crushing blowouts at the hands of Alabama and Missouri, while narrowly pulling off controversial victories over Kentucky and Tennessee. Along the way, they never looked convincing.

Jeff Driskel was a turnover waiting to happen at quarterback, and the defense just wasn’t good enough to make up for the offense’s ineptitude.

This team wasn’t terrible, maybe even a little better than the year before, but it was not improving at the same pace as the conference’s elite. Muschamp wasn’t making enough progress to save his job.

And then Saturday happened. For 60 football minutes, and for the first time in almost two years, the Florida Gators looked every bit like the team Will Muschamp wanted them to be.

Against Georgia, Florida looked like a championship-caliber team.

In one fell swoop, Florida snatched complete control of the SEC East away from Georgia, blowing the race wide open again. Just when we thought Georgia had the division locked down, too.

Georgia’s defense, thought to be one of the best in the SEC, possibly in the nation, was completely exposed. Florida’s offense, thought to be one of the worst in the SEC, did the exposing.

A case for “most bizarre game of the year” could be made here.

But the contest left us with more questions than answers, including the most important one: was this game a fluke?

Is Florida’s offense really that good? Is Georgia’s defense really that bad? I’m to say probably not and maybe.

I highly doubt that Florida is going to start for 400 yards a game. Their offensive line is still suspect, and they won’t be able to simply line up, call 60-plus running plays, and have the same success they had against Georgia.

Speaking of the Bulldogs, it’s evident that maybe their defense isn’t quite as good as advertised, at least against the run. It just hasn’t been exposed until now.

Take a look at who they’ve played, and you’ll see that so far Arkansas is their only opponent to average more than 200 rushing yards a game or rank inside the top 50 nationally in rushing. And against all of those opponents but Tennessee and Florida, the Georgia defense forced at least one interception.

Georgia’s defense was going up against teams that primarily threw the ball, allowing them to pin their ears back and get after the quarterback. That forced opposing signal-callers into making mistakes, particularly interceptions.

Until they played Florida, that is.

Florida was the first team all season to line up and hit Georgia right in the mouth with a bruising running game all season. Even Arkansas was forced to put the ball in the air behind a 38-6 first half deficit caused by three turnovers.

But does that mean Florida should have been able to amass 416 rushing yards against them? Probably not. But it still happened.

Maybe the players were fighting for Muschamp’s job, or they really wanted to beat Georgia. Maybe like the Monstars, they stole the talent from a couple of NFL running backs.

No matter the reason, what we witnessed Saturday was incredible.