Kevin Brockway, Gainesville Sun Mon, November 2, 2026 at 10:17 PM UTC · 2 min read About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Florida football coach Jon Sumrall says he has a "plan in place" for who will start at quarterback for the Florida Gators against Oklahoma at The Swamp on November 7 (7:45 p.m., SEC Network).
"I'm not gonna make a big quarterback-one announcement," Sumrall said. "I have a plan that is already kind of in motion and in place. But I don't know that it helps us with me naming a starter today. We need both of them to be ready to play to go win."
Sumrall benched starting quarterback Aaron Phio after he completed 5 of 7 passes for 26 yards and two interceptions during UF's 27-8 to Georgia on October 31. He then turned to backup quarterback Tramell Jones Jr., who completed 18 of 25 passes for 172 yards. and one rushing TD. Jones also turned it over twice with one interception and a lost fumble that the Bulldogs recovered and retuned for a TD.
"I fully understand that we need to play better quarterback, we do," Sumrall said. "We can't turn the football over like we have, especially in particular last week's game, it's been the worst one of the year."
But Sumrall said Florida also needs to play better around whichever quarterback is playing. Two of the four turnovers − Philo's first interception and Jones's fumble −came as a result of Florida 's inability to pick up blitzes.
"It's really hard to fully evaluate the quarterback position when we're not playing good enough around them," Sumrall said. "I don't know if Tom Brady was our quarterback on Saturday if it would have helped us. And I'm not trying to be a smart aleck. He would have been under too much duress and pressure to operate."
Sumrall said he's not consulting player input when it comes to making the quarterback decision. But he said he's reading body language and how players respond to each signal caller during practice.
"I've developed a pretty good trait for seeing how guys react to each other," Sumrall said. "The beautiful thing is the way those two guys have treated each other has created no conflict. Are they competing with each other? Yeah, they both want to be the starting guy. If they didn't, we have a problem. You want guys that want to be the start. But the way they've handled it has not created division within our football team."
Kevin Brockway is The Gainesville Sun's Florida beat writer. Contact him at kbrockway@gannett.com. Follow him on X @KevinBrockwayG1.
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Florida football coach Jon Sumrall won't reveal starting QB for Oklahoma
Source: Sports
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