On Saturday afternoon, the Ole Miss football program came crashing back down to Earth with an ugly road loss to the Florida Gators. As many predicted, Ole Miss failed to ground themselves after the emotional high of last week's win over the LSU Tigers and former head coach Lane Kiffin, and they suffered their first loss of the season as a result.

After the game, head coach Pete Golding had a blunt way of describing what went wrong for the Rebels.

“That was an old fashioned butt whoopin right there, I thought in all three phases, especially in the first half,” he said, per Joe Cook of 16 WAPT News on X, formerly Twitter. “Just couldn't really get anything going offensively, especially on third down. Defensively, losing leverage… explosives in the run game and the pass game.”

Indeed, not much of anything went right for Ole Miss, which ended up losing this one by a score of 52-28 against a Florida team that now looks like it could be a powerhouse under head coach Jon Sumrall.

Article Continues Below

The ugly loss doesn't necessarily mean the sky is falling for the Rebels, who still have the impressive win over LSU under their belt and will have plenty of chances down the line to pick up more big wins this season.

However, it was a harsh reality check for a team that spoke all week about not getting swept away in the hooplah of the Tigers win but evidently forgot that advice at some point before kickoff on Saturday.

In any case, the Rebels will next hit the field on October 10 for a road game against the Vanderbilt Commodores after a bye week.