Florida Football: 3 takeaways from tough SEC East loss to Georgia

Florida football hoped to assert dominance in the SEC East against Georgia. Instead, the Bulldogs pulled out a win in Jacksonville to remain top dog.

For a while it looked like this year’s edition of the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party could end up as another classic down-to-the-wire battle in a long-running rivalry. Instead, Georgia rolled out to an early 13-3 lead in the first half and then extended their margin in the second half until Florida started clawing back the deficit belatedly in a 24-17 Bulldogs victory.

The Gators now need Georgia to lose twice to have any shot at the SEC championship game this year. With Missouri already sitting on two losses and yet to play either the Gators or Bulldogs, there is no real possibility of engineering a three-way tie at the top of the division that would break in favor of Dan Mullen’s squad.

So this loss proved quite costly for a Gators side that hoped to break out and show that it was ready to put its name in the College Football Playoff hat. Instead, it is entirely possible that Georgia vaults head of a Penn State team on a bye thanks to the way they exerted their will over the Gators at TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville.

Though Florida dropped their second of the year, they still have a shot at the New Year’s Six. Here are three things we learned about these two teams on Saturday evening in their annual neutral-site showdown.