These two running backs stepped up for the Florida Gators in their win against Vanderbilt

Jordan Scarlett was untouched as he burst through a wide gap and into the open space on the right side of the field.

None of the Commodores’ defenders could catch the running back on his way into the endzone for the go-head touchdown.

Florida hadn’t had a runner reach 100 yards all season. Scarlett did that and more on Saturday, but he wasn’t the only one.

Scarlett and Lamical Perine combined for 237 of the Gators 292 total rushing yards in their 37-27 victory against Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee.

Few things went the way Florida (6-1, 4-1 SEC) had planned in its fifth consecutive win of the season, but its two leading rushers helped ensure that a plethora of first-half mistakes didn’t prove detrimental.

“I’d say it’s just us locking in and focusing,” Scarlett told reporters. “We had a lot of mistakes early on in the game, and mistakes happen in football. It’s just about how you fight through adversity and how you respond. I think we responded really well.”

After a slow start to the season that saw him surpass 50 rushing yards just once through three games, Scarlett put together a 77-yard rushing game at Tennessee and a 66-yard performance in the team’s 27-19 upset win over LSU.

Perine didn’t reach 50 rushing yards until Week 5 against Mississippi State, and he followed that up with an 85-yard outing last week.

Scarlett told reporters after the game that the success is a product of he and Perine feeding off each other each time they’re on the field.

“It works hand-in-hand, you know, because we always compete,” he said. “We compete in practice. We compete in the meeting room, weight room. So it just correlates. We come out here and do the same thing. He busts a run. I want to come back and bust a run. Like, that’s just how we’ve been doing it. That’s how we’re going to continue to do it.”

After sophomore tailback Malik Davis went down in Week 3 against Colorado State with a broken foot, the Gators looked to Perine and Scarlett to fill the shoes of their second-leading rusher through seven games a year ago.

Perine and Scarlett responded by building on their progress each week, and they capped it off by powering the Gators to their highest rushing total so far this season.

“We [were] tired of hearing everybody say other schools go great running backs, and we knew how good we were and what we could do,” Scarlett said. “We just needed to get the ball in our hands and show the world what was going on.”