Vanderbilt Football Preseason Game Prediction: Florida – Sports Illustrated

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Vanderbilt’s road slate in the SEC is not treating the Commodores kindly this season. Not only does it begin conference play with road games to Auburn and Georgia, but its penultimate game of the season is a trip to Florida.
While the matchup against the Gators is not the hardest game on Vanderbilt’s 2026 schedule, it is one of the toughest because it is a road game at a place that is prone to pulling off upsets.
Vanderbilt’s matchup against Florida this fall is an interesting one. The Gators have a new head coach, Jon Sumrall, and are in the middle of a quarterback battle. The two that are competing for the starting job are Georgia Tech transfer Aaron Philo and redshirt freshman Tramell Jones Jr.
Outside of the quarterback battle, Florida has its star running back Jadan Baugh back and its leading pass catch from last season, Vernell Brown III. The Gators also brought in Auburn wide receiver transfer Eric Singleton Jr.
On its defense, Florida brought in multiple four-star freshmen and added three pieces to its secondary through the transfer portal.
There will be a lot of new faces for the Gators on both sides of the ball and will need time to play well together. Certainly by the time Vanderbilt faces Florida Nov. 21, though, both squads will have developed about as much as they can over the course of the season.
Here are a couple preseason keys to Vanderbilt’s matchup with Florida as well as a game prediction.
The biggest key of the game for Vanderbilt is stopping Jadan Baugh. He is coming off a season where he finished with over 1,100 yards and had eight touchdowns. Depending on how the quarterback situation develops over the season for Florida, the Gators’ offense may run through Baugh.
If Vanderbilt’s run defense is able to stop the star running back, the Commodores give themselves a good opportunity to win the game.
Offensively for Vanderbilt, it will be another situation where the Commodores will have to deal with a difficult environment with a first-year starter as the quarterback. Whether that is freshman Jared Curtis or veteran Blaze Berlowitz, either quarterback that goes into “The Swamp” will be fighting against the crowd.
Schematically, though, if Vanderbilt is able to establish the run game early on, it could end up opening the passing game up for whoever is the quarterback. If Vanderbilt’s offensive line is shored up and playing well come late November, running back Sedrick Alexander will have his chances to get going.
The question is how Florida’s defense, particularly its secondary, develops throughout the season. The Gators have freshman four-star cornerback CJ Bronaugh in addition to the cornerback and two safety transfers they got.
This could certainly be a game that goes either way. It could come down to which team’s running game is able to control the game. Both teams have quality running backs that have the ability to do serious damage in a game.
If that is the case, then betting on Jadan Baugh to take control over a game seems to be a safer bet. On top of that, the Florida environment is going to do enough to where it forces Vanderbilt into one too many mistakes.
It will be close, but Florida will defend home turf.
Score Prediction: Florida 28, Vanderbilt 27
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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