Florida Gators Football: Kurt Roper Notebook

Florida Gators offensive coordinator Kurt Roper met with the media Tuesday for his weekly press conference. Coming off a last-second loss to LSU, the Gators are now in preparation for Saturday’s homecoming contest against Missouri. Quarterbacks Jeff Driskel and Treon Harris will play Saturday, though it is currently unknown to what extent or how they’ll be utilized. The Gators once again will look to improve upon an offense that has sputtered at times during games and has had low production recently from the receivers.

Here are some quotes from the press conference:

Playing two quarterbacks at Duke:

“Before, really, the whole thought process was situationally. Short-yardage, red zone, going in. Last year at Duke, Anthony got hurt in the second game in the second quarter. Brandon had to end up starting a couple games. And he started against, I can’t remember the exact order, but Pitt, Troy and Georgia Tech in there. What you saw is he was improving every game as an every-down quarterback, for lack of a better term. So when Anthony came back, he went back into starting and what Brandon ended up being was a guy that was maybe a spark in that term, where we had a game where we were struggling against Miami and Brandon went in and his first drive was a touchdown. Then we put Anthony right back in and we scored a touchdown. Then we went into a little bit of a lull and then Brandon came in and scored a touchdown. Against NC State, Anthony played a large part of that game and we had a drive at the end of the game where we went with Brandon. We had to have a touchdown to win the game and he went in and scored a touchdown. Really that was, I guess, the situation came about because of an injury and then a guy that improved from a three-game stretch of being the starting quarterback that we used if we were having some, maybe we just weren’t being as productive as we needed to be.”

Getting the offensive line in place correctly against the pass rush of Missouri:

“Max always does a good job on that. But really ends up happening is our quarterback really directs all the fixes that we have in place. He’s going to be the guy that always does it. Max will do a great job once we’ve determined what we’re doing, getting guys on the right people. But if there’s any manipulation of a protection it’s done on the quarterback end. But as far as an offensive line, the importance, yeah, but they’re important every week. Those guys are up front, it’s huge. We’ve done a good job in protections, we’ve done a good job of getting the ball out of our hands. This week these guys are really good pass rushers. They’re different than some of the guys we’ve seen, not that teams aren’t good at rushing the passer.”

The play call where had a the team ran Driskel on 3rd and 5:

“Well, same thing we did earlier. We had a third-and-3 earlier, ran the same play and got to a fourth-and-1 and ran the quarterback again. So it was a situation that I felt like we might have an opportunity for two downs again. So it was, hey, maybe they try to play five underneath, two deep and take away short throws and all of a sudden you pop a run on them right there for a first down or you turn it to fourth-and-2 and you’ve got a more manageable fourth down if you decided to go for two. That was the method behind that one.”

Running Brandon Powell at the goal line:

“Well, we ran inside zone. Well, we felt we knew what they were … Brandon Powell is a little lighter. Physical guy. Tough guy. Felt really good with the ball in his hand and had been playing a lot of football. Had been in that series and made some plays. So we just, that was the decision that we made at that point to put it in his hands. And so we felt pretty confident we knew what we were going to get schematically, and it’s what we felt our best thought was at that point. And then the next down, we obviously put a lead blocker in there and tried to run the quarterback to get our numbers right and put a heavier guy in there on second down. But we felt like we could number up. That’s the best way I can say it on the scheme right there.”

Driskel’s confidence after the LaTroy Pittman hit:

“He’s a guy that you’re not going to see any issue if there is an issue. He’s going to manage himself well and have the right demeanor and communicate well. Obviously that’s not an easy situation and a tough play, but he understands that you have to move on. You have to pick yourself up and you have to come back and you have to get ready to play again. You guys talk to him. What you see is what you get.”

Driskel and Harris splitting reps in practice:

“Today what we’re going to end up doing is Jeff will get most of those. And I wouldn’t say it’s a 50-50 split, but we don’t have, it’s the sixth game of the year so what ends up happening is you start getting a little bit worn out so our reps aren’t the same number. We’re having to go a fewer, less reps in a couple of team periods so it’s not going to be 50-50. But what I’ll have to do is jump him up and get him one or two of the 1-reps when we’re doing it.”