Disclaimer (1) - A lot of this may sound like apologist reasoning in support of the coaches. Nothing new here - those of you that have been on the list long enough may remember that I was classified as belong to "the pollyannas" during "the dark years" :)
Disclaimer (2) - It may seem that I like to pick on Keith a lot. Not really, for some reason his comments often motivate me to add mine. Those being said: is this conservative play calling because Adazio is our new offensive coordinator and OL coach? If Gonzales (WR coach) were our OC - would we see a lot more passes? I doubt it - Urbam has input, and final approval on all plays that are called. If we were mixing the run and pass more - I would feel more comfortable. I would feel that we were more unpredictable. Coach Meyer, in his post game press conference said that he had hoped to be more balanced by this point in the season. I read a post on a message board this morning that I'm going to borrow from heavily here (conceptually anyway), as I agreed with a lot of the points the poster made (as to why we haven't seen "more" out of our playbook). First two games =cupcake city. No reason to play anything but vanilla. Against CSU not only did we substitute early and deeply we only ran two sets on defense and maybe four plays on offense. Troy was much the same, only we opened up the defense a little more so that the players could practice some of the schemes "live". Tennessee's offense didn't scare us too much (although they did run the ball, especially in the first half, with more success than I thought they'd have). Their defense basically dared us to run as they were set up to defend against the deep ball/big plays. Meyer is no 90's era Spurrier - who often stubbornly tried to throw the ball downfield rather than take what the defense was giving up. As long as we could run the ball and Tennessee could not hit big plays, it made sense to shorten the game and let the Vols have their moral victory. For one quarter in Kentucky we saw what this team is capable of. I can't help but think that Meyer's friendship with Rich Brooks kept him from exercising the full offense even more. Even then we had a flu-ravaged team and our primary speed receiver, Deonte thompson, missed his second consecutive game with a strained hamstring. Fast forward to LSU. Deonte is back and healthy, but we've had two weeks of uncertainty as to whether or not Tebow would be able to play. He did, but missed valuable practice time (as well as personal conditioning) and once he was cleared to practice he was splitting reps with Brantley because there was no guarantee that he'd be cleared to play in the game. So we face an LSU defense who's strength is their back seven (if you weren't muting Danielson you'd be painfully aware of that), our timing between the QB and receivers is a little rusty, they can't stop our run game, and most importantly - they weren't a threat to score much against our defense. So, once again, there were compelling reasons not to go wide open on attack. I think we may see a different story this coming weekend. Arkansas has the best offense we'll have seen this year. Our defense will get a true test. They haven't been very good on defense save the first half against Auburn on Saturday. Our playmakers are healthy and practicing. If we are conserative on offense then I may have to accept the fact that we're either not that dynamic, or are just truly afraid to take chances. Our OL is great, and probably better than most other DLs. My concern is - (1) injuries for our OL are starting to mount and (2) can our OL blow holes in a great defense like Alabama? 1 - Seriously? Since the season began we have lost one OL to injury for the season - Patchan. Everybody plays with dinged OL to some extent - that is, IMO, an overblown concern. 2-Possibly, but maybe not. That is of course the main concern with us being too one dimensional. But statistically, we have the most efficient (not the most prolific) passing offense in the country, so when we pick our spots, we're pretty successful. Demps, Rainey, and James are great one on one with DBs - I am still not convinced that they can run through takles at the line of scrimmage. If the OL blows huge holes and gets them past the LBers - then great. Otherwise it is usually lost yardage. Go back and look at how many times we ran the dive play on Saturday night with Demps and Rainey. Count how many plays went for more than five yards and how many went for a loss. I don't know the numbers, but from my recollection I'd bet that it would make you re-think that last sentence. Moody, Chris Scott, Gillislee - I think could break most of the tackles. But we rarely see Moody and never see the other two except mop up duty. We're slowly (too slowly in my opinion) seeing an increase in Moody's work load. He has the best rushing average with backs with at least 20 carries, and the fewest number of carries among backs with at least 5 yards per carry (both of those numbers are from my faulty memory, so they may not be exact, but they're in the ball park) in the country, or so I read. As for Chris Scott - a good performance in the O&B game doesn't mean he's ready for prime time. In the limited carries he's had this season I didn't see anything that suggests he should take snaps away from any of our top three. Same for Gillislee - he's fourth string for a reason, but he will be very valuable for us before his time is done here. Meyer, despite his reputation as an offensive innovator, is still very old school conservative when it comes to winning games. His plan to win starts with playing great defense and special teams. The primary tenet on the offensive side is ball security. That being said, he loves to find ways to get his playmakers in space to create big plays. But I don't think we'll see him trying to light up the scoreboard if he feels that by doing so he'll uneccessarily put winning a game at risk. How to get to the big game? Win and survive. Our once again quoting the coach from his post game interview "the best thing about being 5-0 is it gives you the chance to fo 6-0." Go Gators! Steve --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ GATORS: ONE VOICE ON SATURDAY - NO VOICE ON SUNDAY! 1996 National Football Champions | 2006 National Basketball Champions 2006 National Football Champions | 2007 National Basketball Champions 2008 National Football Champions | Three Heisman Trophy winners: Steve Spurrier (1966), Danny Wuerffel (1996), Tim Tebow (2007) - Visit our website at www.gatornet.us -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
