It was a beautiful Florida evening in the Swamp when the Florida Gator’s do-it-all offensive weapon Trey Burton arrived on the scene of division I collegiate football against UK. That night, Burton torched the Cats’ defense with five runs for 40 yards, five more receptions for another 37 yards, a 42 yard completion and six touchdowns.
As the quarterback in former Florida head coach Urban Meyer’s wildcat formation, Burton played a similar role in Florida’s offense against UK to the role Randall Cobb played when he lined up under center for the Cats. With running as a first option, but enough throwing abilities to threaten a pass, Burton frequently found the ball in his hands all over the field, and he made those touches count leading to his career day.
“They hadn’t ran as much wildcat (formation) and those things that they would in a (Tim) Tebow-type offense and that was a little bit of a shocker,” UK head coach Joker Phillips said.
As just a freshman, Burton, to that point in the season, had been having a relatively quiet September. In Florida’s first three games in 2010, against Miami (OH), South Florida and Tennessee, Burton had a combined six rushes for 15 yards and three receptions for seven yards as the Gator’s wildcat quarterback. Those numbers average out to five rushing yards and two receiving yards per game.
In eight regular season games following the UK game, Burton’s numbers increased modestly as he accumulated 61 rushes for 292 yards and 21 receptions for 138 yards, an average of 36.5 rush yards and and a little over 17 receiving yards per game.
But the most dramatic difference in Burton’s game against UK and the rest of his freshman campaign can be found on the scoreboard.In the 11 regular season games outside of Florida’s match-up with the Cats, Burton scored six total touchdowns — five rushing and one receiving. Against UK alone, Burton had an additional six touchdowns — five rushing and one receiving.
Despite Burton’s performance against the Cats a year ago, UK’s defense says it’s not focusing any more on Burton than any other athlete in Florida offensive coordinator Charlie Weis’ pro-style offense.
“Florida is always going to be Florida and you know they’re always going to be good,” senior defensive back Randall Burden said. “So we really don’t single one person out to just try and hold them down. We just work on our defense and just shut the whole offense down.”
But UK knows that even with the wealth of speed and athleticism Florida will be bringing with them to Lexington, they will need to slow Burton down this time around to maintain any hope of squashing the Gator’s 25-year win-streak over the Cats.
“We know he’s a starter and he plays a lot and we keep our eye on him just like we keep our eye on a lot of those other backfield guys,” senior linebacker Ronnie Sneed said. “They can do different things with him but we’re going to shut them down. We don’t plan for him to have a big game like he did last year, that’s for dang sure.”
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