The weather on Wednesday’s press conference matched the mood of the Florida program and fan base.
Cold and gloomy.
Coming of a 42-21 loss to Alabama, concerns about the quarterback position and secondary only have gotten stronger. The loss was disappointing a whole to the team, but seemed to affect Muschamp especially. Sitting at his weekly press conference, the Florida head coach looked sunken, admittedly frustrated in the loss but stating the team is working on making improvements on their week off.
Here were some quotes from the press conference:
Injuries:
“Leon Orr had a scope on Monday. Just a small tear in the meniscus. Cleaned that up. He had a bone bruise as well. He will be questionable for Tennessee. He was walking yesterday, so we’ll see how he continues to progress.
“Disappointed for Mark Herndon. Lost him for the year, had an ACL. Was covering a kick there, got his foot caught and got hit on it and turned funny, so disappointed for Mark.
“Expect D.J. Humphries to be back for Tennessee. But he moved well yesterday.
“Mike Taylor’s got some swelling on his knee, he’s got a bone bruise on the knee. We’ll see how he continues to progress. He would be questionable at this time for Tennessee, but those things over the weekend, he may come around. So we’ll see how he does.”
Emmitt Smith’s tweet about Jeff Driskel (Smith tweeted, “Put Driskel on the bench please, I’ve seen enough;” the tweet has been deleted):
“Emmitt called to apologize. To me, to Jeff Driskel and our football team. He was frustrated. He wants us to win. He wants us to be successful. He’s a great Gator. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. And I appreciate Emmitt calling and saying the things he said, I really do. He’s a class individual, and he’s about all the right things.”
Difficulties in sitting on a loss:
“No doubt. As a competitor, you want to go play the next day. You look at baseball and basketball and some of these other sports, they get them back either the next day or sometimes it’s a double header to get it out of their system. Frustrating for our guys and move forward.”
Frustrations in watching Amari Cooper have success while Vernon Hargreaves III was out at various points in the game due to injury:
“He got kicked in the Achilles and it swelled up on him a little but on game day. It was painful. We tried to get him through that; certainly he’s a competitor. He’ll be fine.”
One game affecting recruiting:
“I think guys look at the total body of work, how they’ve been recruited by a school. I think it goes a lot further than wins and losses. Obviously, winning helps. I’m going to say that it doesn’t but again I think it’s a total body of work and those sorts of things in recruiting. I think there’s a lot of factors that go in and all situations are not the same. You know, some guys are attracted to a school for different reasons, whether it’s by scheme, position, the guy who recruited him, the coach or whatever the situation may be, but I don’t think you can put your finger on one thing and say ‘This is the reason why guys choose these schools.”
Interjecting on play calling in 3rd quarter:
“I didn’t interject at all. We talked about going some tempo. We had the plan to go into the game. We weren’t playing well defensively. In the first half, that was a large discussion. Philosophically before half, you know being backed up, being down seven points on the road, I didn’t want to get in the situation where we could’ve had a turnover to put them either 10 or 14 up from that situation. Now if we had gotten a first down, if we had gotten to our 35, 40-yard line, we were going to go fast and see what we could do. I also knew the other head coach very well. He wasn’t going to call timeout. He wanted to get out of the half. So in that situation philosophically, I don’t think it’s very smart to drop back and throw it or create a situation where you can create a turnover.”