Tennessee and Florida pulled off an unusual quarterback exchange on Saturday afternoon.
The Gators began with a new starter at the most important position before passing the storyline to the Vols coming out of halftime. By then, Kyle Trask was playing like he had been behind center for years in leading Florida through the decisive moments of a 34-3 SEC football victory at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Fla.
Tennessee, on the other hand, was descending into a quarterback quandary while suffering its eighth consecutive loss at “The Swamp.”
Florida coach Dan Mullen had joked on Monday about starting Emory Jones at QB, lest Trask be unnerved by his new assignment. After all, the 6-foot-5, 239-pound redshirt junior hadn’t started since his freshman year in high school in Manvel, Texas.
But Trask picked up where he left off last Saturday, when he replaced injured starter Feleipe Franks and led the Gators (4-0, 2-0 SEC) back from an 11-point deficit to a 29-21 victory at Kentucky. Trask was 15-for-18 passing for 257 yards and two touchdowns against the Vols before falling from the QB stratosphere and back to earth with two second-half interceptions.
By that point, Tennessee (1-3, 0-1) had replaced starter Jarrett Guarantano with true freshman Brian Maurer to start the second half. When asked about the change during his postgame radio show, UT coach Jeremy Pruitt’s referenced UT’s overall ineffectiveness on offense.
“Well, I mean we wasn’t getting anything going offensively,” he said. “I thought it was a chance to get Jarrett kind of settled down and give Brian an opportunity to see what he could do.”
Pruitt sounded more exasperated when addressing the situation with reporters.
“I think Jarrett’s got lots of ability to be a really good player and I’ve said that over and over,” he said. “But there’s times when you’ve got to take the bull by the horns and say ‘Let’s go.’ You’ve got to make some plays. You’ve got to have an impact on the people around you. So that’s one of the things I’ve been talking to him about.”
While Maurer directed UT’s lone scoring drive, he also threw an interception. Guarantano was back before the end of the third quarter and Maurer re-entered for mop-up duty.
Both quarterbacks were hamstrung by the Vols’ feeble running game, which yielded only 88 yards. Down and distance conspired against them as well, which took into account the Vols’ seven penalties. UT faced third down and seven yards or more on nine occasions.
Furthermore, Jauan Jennings was the lone receiving threat with seven catches for 73 yards. No other receiver had more than two catches or recorded more than 27 receiving yards.
Guarantano was involved in whiplash-like series of plays at the beginning of the second quarter that reflected the peaks and valleys of his UT career.
It began with the redshirt junior overthrowing tight end Dominick Wood-Anderson, who was running wide open down the left side of the field. Two plays later, Guarantano took a direct hit from blitzing Shawn Davis but still managed a 19-yard completion to Jennings for a first down. Three plays after the highlight, however, Guarantano and wide receiver Marquez Callaway got their signals crossed and Guarantano threw an interception directly to Gators defensive back Marco Wilson.
In the end, Guarantano was 10-for-17 passing for 107 yards and two interceptions while Maurer was 4-for-11 for 44 yards and an interception.
Just last week, after Tennessee’s 45-0 rout of Chattanooga, Pruitt emphasized that Guarantano was UT’s quarterback and deserved to be because he had outplayed the Vols’ other QBs.
Saturday’s change might signal a more lasting shift in the storyline, one that extends beyond another misspent day at Florida.
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Dan Fleser is a 1980 graduate of the University of Missouri, who covered University of Tennessee athletics for the Knoxville News Sentinel from 1988-2019. He may be reached at danfleser3@gmail.com