Ole Miss vs. Florida: Final Score, the Rushing Gap, and What Comes Next

As of September 27, 2026, at 8:29 a.m. ET, Ole Miss vs. Florida is no longer an upcoming game. Florida has already beaten Ole Miss 52–28 at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville on Saturday, September 26.

The useful postgame question is not simply who won. It is why the final margin reached 24 points even though Ole Miss produced more passing yards. The official box score points to a clear answer: Florida controlled the ground game, stayed on the field longer, and avoided the turnover problems that hurt Ole Miss.

Florida built the lead early and finished it late

The quarter-by-quarter scoring shows the shape of the game:

Team	1Q	2Q	Halftime	3Q	4Q	Final
Florida	10	7	17	14	21	52
Ole Miss	0	6	6	15	7	28

Florida led 17–6 at halftime. Ole Miss responded in the third quarter, scoring 15 points to Florida’s 14, but that only narrowed the margin by one point. Florida then scored 21 points in the fourth quarter while Ole Miss scored seven.

That sequence matters because the final score can make the game look uniformly dominant. It was more specific than that: Florida established control before halftime, Ole Miss showed some offensive resistance after the break, and the Gators delivered the decisive closing quarter. The official Ole Miss recap also identifies three Florida fourth-quarter touchdowns as the point when the game pulled away.

The decisive difference was the ground game

The official box score gives the most useful comparison:

Statistic	Florida	Ole Miss
Total offense	498 yards	426 yards
Rushing	302 yards	128 yards
Passing	196 yards	298 yards
First downs	27	25
Turnovers	0	2
Time of possession	36:59	23:01
Third down	6-of-10	4-of-11

Ole Miss won the passing-yard comparison by 102 yards, but Florida ran for 174 more yards and held the ball for 13 minutes, 58 seconds longer. The Gators also converted two more third downs and committed no turnovers while Ole Miss committed two.

That combination explains why passing yardage alone is a poor summary of this matchup. Ole Miss moved the ball through the air, but Florida repeatedly created the longer, more balanced possessions. The numbers do not prove that every turnover came from the same tactical problem, but they do show that Ole Miss had less margin for error: it had to rely more heavily on its passing production while Florida could keep applying pressure with the run.

Jadan Baugh and Duke Clark made Florida’s approach work

Florida’s rushing advantage was not an abstract team statistic. Jadan Baugh carried 29 times for 142 yards and three touchdowns, while Duke Clark carried 12 times for 126 yards and one touchdown, according to the official Florida recap.

Those two backs alone accounted for 268 rushing yards and four touchdowns. That production gave Florida a direct way to turn possession into points without needing to win the passing-volume battle.

Ole Miss still had legitimate individual production. Quarterback Trinidad Chambliss completed 25 of 34 passes for 298 yards and a touchdown, and wide receiver Deuce Alexander caught seven passes for 134 yards and a touchdown, according to the Ole Miss recap. The lesson is not that Ole Miss’s passing game failed. It is that its passing success did not offset Florida’s 302 rushing yards, longer possession time, and turnover advantage.

For anyone evaluating the matchup rather than just recording the score, the key comparison is therefore Florida’s rushing control versus Ole Miss’s passing production. Florida won the side of that comparison that sustained drives and shaped the game’s tempo.

What the result means for each team’s next game

Florida improved to 4–0 overall and 2–0 in SEC play. The Florida schedule lists the Gators’ next game at Missouri on Saturday, October 3, 2026, at 3:30 p.m. ET. The next useful test is whether Florida can carry the same rushing and possession profile into that road game; the Ole Miss result alone cannot predict the outcome.

Ole Miss fell to 3–1 overall and 1–1 in SEC play. Its official schedule lists the next game at Vanderbilt on Saturday, October 10, 2026, after the bye week shown on the schedule.

For Ole Miss, the most informative numbers to watch in the next result are not passing yards by themselves. The Florida game shows that a productive passing attack can still leave the team chasing the game when the rushing gap, possession gap, and turnover gap all point the other way. Closing those gaps would matter more than simply repeating the same passing volume.

Bottom line

Florida won 52–28 because it controlled the parts of the game that connected offense to possession: 302 rushing yards to 128, 36:59 of possession to 23:01, six third-down conversions to four, and zero turnovers to two. Ole Miss’s 298 passing yards and Deuce Alexander’s receiving performance were real positives, but they were not enough to overcome Florida’s ground-game advantage.

So the current answer to “Ole Miss vs. Florida” is straightforward: Florida won the completed September 26 game, and the decisive story was the Gators’ rushing control—not a failure by Ole Miss to pass the ball.