Florida Upsets No. 4 Ole Miss 52-28: Final Score and Recap

No. 21 Florida beat No. 4 Ole Miss 52-28 on Saturday, September 26, 2026, in Gainesville, running for 302 yards and six touchdowns to hand the Rebels their first loss of the season. The Gators trailed by nothing for long — a 17-6 halftime lead briefly shrank to 17-14 before Florida answered with touchdowns on five straight second-half possessions and pulled away. The win moved Florida to 4-0 for the first time since 2019.

What was the final score of the Florida-Ole Miss game?

Florida won 52-28. The game was played Saturday, September 26, 2026, at Florida’s home stadium in Gainesville, and it matched a Florida team that entered the day ranked No. 21 against an Ole Miss team ranked No. 4. Florida led from the opening quarter on, and the final margin of 24 points was the largest by either team all season to that point. The result dropped Ole Miss to its first loss of 2026 and pushed Florida to 4-0 on the year, the Gators’ best start since 2019.

How did Florida pull away in the second half?

Florida turned a six-point halftime lead into a blowout by scoring touchdowns on five consecutive second-half possessions. The Gators led 17-6 at the break, and Ole Miss answered quickly out of the locker room to cut the margin to 17-14. From there, Florida’s offense took over: five straight scoring drives put the game out of reach and turned what had been a one-score contest into a 24-point win. Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss threw for 298 yards but was credited with two turnovers, including a fumble late in the third quarter, at a point when the Rebels needed to keep pace rather than give Florida extra possessions.

Who were the standout performers?

Running back Jadan Baugh led Florida with 142 rushing yards and three touchdowns on 29 carries, and Duke Clark added 126 yards and a score of his own. Florida’s offensive line controlled the game up front, and the team finished with 302 rushing yards and six touchdowns on the ground as a group, plus 498 yards of total offense. Baugh’s afternoon also extended a personal streak: it was his fifth straight game with 100 or more rushing yards, making him only the third player in Florida program history to do that, joining Emmitt Smith’s runs in 1987 and 1988 and Fred Taylor’s in 1997.

(Ole Miss’s rushing total and Florida’s passing total were not part of the widely reported box-score figures used for this recap.)

What did Ole Miss’s coach say after the loss?

Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding called the defeat an “old-fashioned butt whupping” in his postgame remarks and questioned whether enough of his players had the toughness to respond. Golding, who took over the Ole Miss program this year, said he did not want the sting of the loss to fade quickly, comparing it to a prior defeat he said stuck with him. The Rebels had opened the season 4-0 before Saturday’s result.

What does this result mean going forward?

Florida is 4-0 for the first time since 2019, and Ole Miss’s unbeaten start ended at 4-1. Both teams remain in the thick of the season with conference play ahead, and Saturday’s result will factor into how the AP Top 25 sorts out in its next release — we track that poll separately rather than speculate here on how any single game moves it. For now, the box score stands on its own: Florida ran the ball 302 yards’ worth of proof that its offensive line and backfield can carry a game, and Ole Miss now has to answer for a defense that gave up six rushing touchdowns to a team picked well behind it in the preseason rankings.

If you’re trying to make sense of where every team stands after a weekend like this one, our AP Poll college football rankings breakdown walks through how the weekly Top 25 comes together. Florida’s 52-28 win over Ole Miss is now a settled part of the 2026 record book — Saturday, September 26, in Gainesville, final score 52-28.