From the Other Sideline – Florida

Neil Shulman founded the In All Kinds Of Weather brand as a sophomore in college in 2013, and has since built it into one of the Internet’s largest multi-media platforms covering the Florida Gators. In 2025, he acquired the popular Florida baseball podcast Gator Diamond Pod, bringing along its founder Adrian Perez as his co-host for all sports to provide top-tier coverage of everything related to Florida football, basketball, baseball, and softball.

Neil is one of the few Gator fans out there who has always wanted Florida to play Miami and Auburn every year, but knows it can never happen with a 16-team SEC. Follow him at @AllKindsWeather.

1. What are a Florida fan’s first thoughts of Auburn football right now?

As a program historically, my opinion of Auburn is one of respect. This is going to sound like backhanded shade, but I swear it isn’t: I respect Auburn immensely for carving out a legacy as a respectable program in Alabama’s shadow. It’s your bad luck that you have to share a state with arguably the best program in CFB history, yet you’ve got a real history of your own. It would probably be like if the University of Florida existed in the state of Ohio and we had to share a state with the Buckeyes. How any additional program in that same state can build a prestigious brand of its own is the eighth wonder of the world to me, but y’all have done that with nine national championship years notated in your stadium. And two of them are even real!

Fake natty jokes aside though, I have no idea what to make of Auburn under Golesh yet. Yeah he beat Florida last year with USF, good for you— so did everybody else not named South Carolina or Mississippi State under Billy Napier. Baylor is a P4 team, but that still doesn’t tell me much about you guys— if anything, it worsened my impression of both squads.

And like we’re about to get into, I have no clue what to make of Florida right now either. That’s why this game is so huge. Both teams are about to collect the first real data points about their respective teams.

2. What’s the vibe like in Gainesville after beating college football juggernauts FAU and <checks notes> Campbell?

Optimistic. But I think for most fans, cautiously so. It’s not like we aren’t aware that we played a pair of payday games to begin the season; we also play ten P4 teams in a row from here til the end of the season, so we’re fine with the lack of competition to this point.

As I alluded to in Q1, the real feelings and emotions are going to come out after this game— for both fanbases. We’ll have real, live data points to judge our teams by on Sunday morning. And frankly, I have a feeling that both fanbases are going to have a lot of concerns heading into the back 75% of their seasons.

3. What do you like and dislike about Jon Sumrall?

I like 99.99% of the stuff that Jon Sumrall does and says. From the biggest things to the littlest things, there are exactly two things among those hundreds, if not thousands, or individual moves he’s made that I don’t love. The “I’m gonna throw the podium” thing was hilarious. Lighting into his team with a 17-0 lead over FAU for bad effort in tackling was exactly the killer instinct our last idiot lacked. Getting Phil Trautwein to come home was a massive deal. I couldn’t be happier about the hiring of Buster Faulkner. And Sumrall earned his first year’s salary by simply retaining the talent he retained.

Two things that I really haven’t liked so far. One was letting Billy Gonzales walk to Texas. He’s served here under three staffs and won two national championships. He’s a Gator forever and he can still do his job damn well (look at Dallas Wilson and VBIII). He should’ve been retained.

A much more minor quibble was leaving the starters in the game at 45-3 in the second half against Campbell. I get it, you want to end on a positive note. But you can believe in someone had gotten injured late in a game that had long ago spiraled out of control, people in Gainesville would be SCREAMING.

I gave what I don’t like more space than what I do like because to be totally honest, I can’t think of anything besides those two things that he’s done to annoy more than the 1% fringe of our fanbase that’s only happy if they’re miserable. That’s it, just those two things. He’s otherwise batting 1.000% at Florida. Hopefully that doesn’t change Saturday.

4. Who are your two most favorite Auburn Tigers of all time and why?

They’re both from the same team, and neither of them are probably who you’d expect when I say they’re from the 2010 team.

I have a soft spot for the underdog who gets no recognition and then overachieves. So my first one is Emory Blake. Depending on the ranking system you use, he was either a three-star recruit or unranked altogether. Terrell Zachery and Darvin Adams got most of the hype in the receiver room that year, but Blake caught multiple passes in every game he played on that 2010 team, including one in the famous “Camback” game. After getting marginally more than zero hype as a recruit, he’s now got a legacy that’ll be passed on to future generations for outperforming his expectations. Good for him.

And on the same note… RIP Philip Lutzenkirken. I’m a Giants fan who grew up with fullbacks like Madison Hedgecock and Henry Hynoski who not only blocked well but made plays in the passing game, so I love a fullback who contributes the hard work and then gets rewarded with some carrots. I still can’t believe he’s gone. But his Iron Bowl dance will live on forever.

5. Name two unheralded Gators that Auburn fans should lookout for.

Jadan Baugh gets all the hype in Florida’s RB room, and he deserves it. But watch out for Waltez “Duke” Clark. Baugh taking a breather does not mean your run defense can relax. Clark can slice you up for big chunk plays if you aren’t careful.

Picking a second one is much harder than that first one was. With a bunch of options to pick from, I’ll go with LJ McCray on Florida’s defensive line. A former five-star recruit, McCray hasn’t played up to that potential yet— but it might just be a matter of time. If he’s gonna have a breakout season, it’ll start in this game.

And then for a bonus— Aaron Philo is a name most Auburn fans know simply because most fans know the QB of their opponent, but watch out for his legs. He’s not a great runner. But he’s a willing runner, and if your defense leaves a vacuous hole for him to run through, he will happily take it.

6. Name two current Auburn Tigers that scare you the most.

Both of these come from a PTSD standpoint for sure, and the first one is Byrum Brown.

Historically, Florida has a very mixed collection of tape against dual-threat QBs, and open field tackling is always a worry early in the year. But he’s got a penchant for being very inaccuracy when the pocket heats up. He’s completed 68.8% of his passes in his first two games, but also hasn’t faced an SEC defense yet.

And the second one goes hand in hand with Brown— Keshaun Singleton. He’s the guy who beat us deep with USF last year, and he had a big game against Baylor right off the bat this year. Our secondary is a somewhat sketchy situation, and even though, yes— new coach, new era, etc.— a grudge match against the exact same passing combo that fried us last year doesn’t exactly leave me with positive vibes in that matchup.

7. Where do you see each team having an advantage over the other? 

Florida’s receivers are going to have an advantage over pretty much every secondary they face this year— maybe Texas and Georgia can battle our WRs to a draw?— so I’d have to start there with Florida. Barring the unforeseen, you’ll be seeing Dallas Wilson and Vernell Brown III on Sundays in a couple of years. And TJ Abrams might join them in the league, too.

I wouldn’t say Auburn has as glaring of a position-on-position edge on Florida as Florida’s WRs have on Auburn’s DBs, but your USF transplant receivers have the capability to bake our secondary once again. Ben Hanks Jr. and Cormani McClain are very talented, but they’re far from NFL ready, and our safety room is very shaky. Get an even semi-accurate ball to Chaz Nimrod or Keshaun Singleton, and that’s advantage Auburn for sure.

8. What’s your analysis and score prediction for this game?

You can probably copy and paste this for most games, but whoever wins the trenches wins the games. And that’s especially vital here in game three of these coaches’ first years, because we simply don’t know how good either team is up front. But we’re about to learn.

If forced to make a summary judgment, I’d say I don’t think Auburn is especially great on either side of the line of scrimmage. I also think Florida shares that description. That sets up for one of two things— either one of these teams is going to prove me very wrong, or we’ll have a so-called “Battle of Mid.” 

If Florida wins the trenches on both sides, Auburn is screwed because Florida has the horses everywhere else. Wilson, Brown, Abrams, and even Bailey Stockton can pick you apart if Philo routinely has a clean pocket and can go through his progressions, as can Baugh and Clark if running lanes are opened up for him. Same goes for Auburn. I really don’t want to see Brown with time to go through his reads and find Nimrod or Singleton in single coverage against our secondary. It didn’t go well for Florida in the Swamp last year and I like Florida’s secondary’s odds in single coverage even less in the rematch at Jordan Hare.

At some point though, it feels like one side’s defensive front seven is going to have to make a play to win it. I do think LB Myles Graham on Florida is the best defensive player in this game, so he serves as a logical candidate for that. But frankly— your stadium has some kind of weird spell that’s cast over visiting teams in big night games. So my prediction is someone most Gator fans haven’t really heard of yet— maybe Elijah Melendez?— will get through the line late to cause a turnover that wins it for Auburn.

Yeah— really. I have Auburn winning this game. 31-28. 51.5% chance for Auburn to win, 48.5% chance for Florida.

9. Where do you see Auburn and Florida ending up this season?

I’m on record saying Florida goes 8-4. The first two games have raised new concerns for me, like our DL, but nothing that really makes me stray from that prediction. I also had Florida losing this game dating all the way back to the offseason, and picking off Missouri on the road and Ole Miss and Oklahoma in the Swamp to make up for it, to get to eight.

Auburn is a lot harder to judge. Your SEC slate is brutal. At Tennessee? At Georgia? At Ole Miss? At Alabama? Plus LSU at home? On top of this game? That’s miserable.

I think Auburn goes 7-5, with those games all being losses. But I will say that Auburn will look a lot better than 7-5 feels.

10. Why do Florida fans ignore that Auburn owns the series and has an advantage in almost every historical team stat?

The reason Auburn leads the head to head series is because of the first half-dozen games played between these two teams from 1912 to 1917. Auburn won all six. For perspective, World War I ended two years after that streak, and the SEC didn’t allow black athletes to play for another fifty years. Over the last 100 years, Florida leads the series 39-37. Of the eight billion people alive on planet earth today, I’d bet that less than 80 were alive to see any of those first six Auburn wins. They’d have to be at least 109 years old.

Note that I didn’t pretend those six games didn’t happen. They did and they’re part of history. But you asked me why Florida fans ignore the fact that Auburn leads the all time series, and I answered why. You won those games, great, but winning “football” games played back when the sport more closely resembled a rough-and-tumble combination of soccer and rugby than what it looks like today is not something people today put any real stock into.

But at least those six Auburn head to head wins over Florida actually happened. Sure they happened 110+ years ago, but they did happen. I say that, of course, to distinguish those six real wins from the seven bogus national titles that you guys claim. Come on, guys. You’re an SEC program. Act like it.

And if you want a direct answer for why Florida fans ignore those seven fake natties, it’s because we learned from experience with Central Florida that the best way to deal with such shenanigans is to point, laugh, and say “aw, that’s cute.” 

PS: by the way, it’s thanks to you guys that they get to even use that shameless marketing ploy, great job repping the league in that Peach Bowl!