When an offensive minded head coach and his offensive coordinator come up with a gameplan the last critique they would want to hear is “slow and predictable”
Unfortunately, 32 games into Jim McElwain and Doug Nussmeier’s run with the Florida Gators, that is exactly the critique they’re getting.
Right now the Gators rank 124th in the country in total numbers of plays run per game (60.8). They’re running a play on average every 28.67 seconds on offense, 109th in the country.
It all came to a head last week when the offense was pinned back at its own six-yard line with 4:01 to play, one timeout and trailing a point. Before turning the ball over on downs the offense was only able to muster 21 yards and needed 2:22 to do that, leaving precious little time to get into field goal range even if they would have converted the 4th and 3 pass.
The Gators’ offense isn’t flashy, it’s not spectacular an when it’s only given 60 chances to execute a week, it’s not going to win many games. The offense needs more volume and in order to achieve that they need to run plays faster.
I think the tempo and fluidity in which it goes. You could see at times it was good. And yet at times it wasn’t,” McElwain said. “There were questions instead of just flowing right into it.”
Ultimately the chain of offensive command goes like this. Nussmeier, who is in the box rather than on the field during games, picks a play and radios it down to an assistant on the sideline. The assistant and backup quarterbacks with headsets then signal the play into Feleipe Franks, who then relays the play to the team. It seems like a lot of steps but there are hundreds of teams around the country that have their offensive coordinator up in the box and they run the same game of telephone to get play calls in. Why is it an issue for Florida?
“I would say it’s just getting the play into the game, getting from the sideline to Feleipe so Feleipe can get it to us and relay it to everybody else. Gotta get it faster,” receiver Freddie Swain said. “Once we get that faster, we get more plays called, we’ll get the ball into the endzone.”
But it’s year three for McElwain and Nussmeier. Each year has featured the same molasses on a cold Montana morning pace. It’s five games into this season.
You would assume that this would be something that has been worked on, so why would the words “we’re working on it” carry any weight now?
McElwain and players acknowledge that the pace is an issue but don’t really offer up any solutions other than ….
“It should be, but just communication,” Swain said when asked if the pace of play should be fixed by now. “Just working on communication, just working on it in practice and hopefully relay it to the game.”
Can Florida fix it? Maybe. The operation must be quicker. The offense isn’t good enough to score enough points to win. McElwain is just 5-10 when their opponent scores more than 14 points and that includes a 3-2 mark this season. Previously the only wins were over ECU and Tennessee in his first year as head coach.
McElwain was brought in to fix an offense that bored people to sleep but 32 games in it looks like more of the same slow, plodding, inefficient offensive plays and schemes that got his predecessor fired.
Playing to not loose is always boring and aggravating when you do loose.