Okay, I don't profess to be a football expert, but I do think I know little about the game. Everything below is my opinion only and no matter how I state anything, nothing is fact, my opinion only! The Gators are not as bad as they have looked at times and I don't think we have seen them as good as they can be either. There have been several glaring errors - poor snaps, penalties, blown coverages. And some supposed errors - wrong people on the field, bad play calls, coaches not seeing the fake FG and calling TO. The problem with evaluating this team for me, is that I only get to watch on TV, so I don't get to see the whole field and make my own determination if the play calling is effective and/or if the QB read was correct on the play. Having said that, here is what I have seen: - Watching on TV which typically shows 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage on the main shot, you will usually only see 7 or 8 defensive players. That means that the safeties at least are playing very deep and keeping everything in front of them, the classic Tampa2 defense. Contrary to what the spread offense implies, Urban is a very conservative coach, if the D is keeping you from the deep ball, the reads go to the short crossing routes where our speedy WRs go against LBs. This is not flashy and doesn't result in 2 minute scoring drives, but it is taking what the defense is giving us. The thing I can't see on TV is are our WRs getting any separation when they are running off the coverage? The alternative is to go the Arkansas route, where the offense is designed to go deep and will try that no matter what, the result is interceptions when it doesn't work. - The dive play. This is really part of the triple option and the reason it goes up the middle is partly because of the explanation above. If the D plays 2 deep safeties and we complete a bunch of crossing patterns, the LBs will tend to creep back to better cover the crossing play. When this happens, if the OL is blocking well, our speedy RB will pop through the hole and have the opportunity to make a couple of guys miss for a big gain. So, we keep running what is seemingly an unsuccessful play over and over, the whole purpose being to keep the LBs closer to the line so the crossing routes and wide runs work better. The biggest issue with this team however is the intangibles. Identity and team chemistry, this team is lacking. As far as team chemistry I can only guess at the dynamics, but given some of the quoted chatter and rumors that were swirling, I think there were/are some, dare I say it... entitlement players on the team. Guys that thought just because I am here, I should play. this goes for both the upperclassmen and freshman. We have had 5 years of top notch recruiting classes and there are a lot of guys who have paid their dues and expect to play and there are a lot of newbies that are great and expect to play. When you have a guy like Pouncey talking smack before the season and then going out and having the worst performance by a Center I have ever seen, it doesn't help matters. The identity issue is related to the above, but has different issues on offense and defense. On offense, we started out trying to run the same spread we ran for the past 3 years, that won't work because we don't have #15. So the coaches have been trying to figure out what we are good at and create this hybrid spread-pro set offense. If you are a young player on the team and you are used to this fast paced high scoring machine, it has to affect your psyche. It appears we are finally getting into some type of rythym, but is still seems choppy. Q1 against UK was great, Q2 back to the basics, Q3 much better. We need to find the consistent play and play calling. On defense the problem is too many good players, a nice problem to have. We have so many guys with roughly the same level of experience, we keep rotating them in and out, but all it takes is for one of them to be playing on the wrong play that he doesn't know how to cover or against a mismatch WR. Cody Riggs, is an awesome special teams player, but got abused in the KY game. Last, the Bama game worries me, but all big games make me feel this way. I have watched Bama play 3 times this year, and while they may have won more impressively, they aren't as great as everyone is making them out to be. They make mistakes and had to come back from a double digit deficit against Arky and had to rely on several incredible Arky mistakes to win. I think we can score on Bama, the question is can we stop them from scoring. Ingram and Richardson are big, fast bruising backs, they can't be arm tackled and that is a weakness of our team in my opinion. We seem to have a hard time wrapping up players and taking them down, they always seem to get that extra 2 or 3 yards after contact. Add in the mix Julio at WR and we have another big guy to take down. I think this will be relatively high scoring for what are considered 2 great defenses, and will call it at 24-27. Ken K MNGator
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