PD’s Postulations: The Eastern Kentucky Game

Well there was not much to take away from Saturday’s beat down of vastly inferior Eastern Kentucky as far as the current Gator team. But there were some things that stood out. At least one was good, and a few others were sadly telling of the dynamics of this team and how it got to where it is today.

The Good

Sure it was just an FCS team, but it was a darn good FCS team that could have pestered Florida all afternoon if it came into the game with its mind enveloped in other things. Things like its revered head coach being fired and most of the position coaches and coordinators likely getting their walking papers in a couple of weeks as well. It would have been easy for the Gators to go through the motions all week in practice and then again on Saturday to the tune of a modest win in their 2014 home finale.

But they refused to go out like that. They played big and they won big. They had two receivers go over 100 yards for the first time in nearly 60 games. They passed for five touchdowns for the first time since Tim Tebow was pulling the trigger at Florida. A pair of Gators grabbed two touchdown passes each, with one of them hauling in Treon Harris’s third touchdown pass of over 70 yards on the year, which also set the SEC season mark with four 70+ yard passes for the Gators so far. Quinton Dunbar scored his first 100-yard receiving game of his career in his last home game. And to add to the fun, the Gators gave tribute to the start of the Cocktail Party Michael McNeely, throwing the senior walk-on an eight-yard pass for his first career reception. He came out for an encore a few plays later when he hauled in a 28-yard touchdown pass. It was his first career touchdown…on offense.

It took a lot of heart for the entire team to pick their heads up and go about their business like real men that week, prepare the right way and then play at a high level after having their hearts ripped out by South Carolina and then again the next day when their coach was fired. It says a lot about how close knit this team is to have the drive to play for each other and for their coaching staff. We saw the same drive beat Georgia into the ground a few weeks ago. We certainly hope to see the same drive in Tallahassee this week.

A Telling Display

Two things happened Saturday that together may have told the entire story of the Gators’ season and of the Muschamp tenure at Florida…and the undoing of both.

The first thing was that deposed former starting quarterback Jeff Driskel – banished to the bench by the coaches and banished to the Eastern Front by many of Florida’s more unforgiving fans – was forced into action in relief of the banged up and largely ineffective Treon Harris…and Driskel flat-out balled. To watch his poise and precision – and most shockingly his confidence and relaxed nature – you would have thought he had been doing that his whole career.

If only.

This was Jeff’s second three-touchdown game through the air this year (to go with the one rushing TD), but only the third of his career. And watching him play so well while facing little pressure from the pass rush and perhaps more importantly no pressure from the coaches and fans, it was painful to think back at the young star in the making who signed to be the new spread-option dual threat star at Florida. To think how badly he was damaged by the angrily dismissive Charlie Weis, then the obliviously hands-off Brent Pease, receiving zero real position coaching until his fourth year on campus, when he was asked to learn and produce in yet another different offensive scheme under yet another offensive coordinator. Kurt Roper worked with him closely and had him dialed in with the new system…in practice. But through all the beatings behind jailbreak offensive lines over the years, all the contradictory messages to win the game while not losing the game every week, and the nearly year out of action with nothing to do but rehab and replay all the body-crushing hits he took and what terrible games he played in his last start and his last bowl game. He played throughout the year as if broken beyond repair.

What we saw Saturday was another glimpse of what could have been, if only about a hundred things been different. What could have been for Jeff, the Gators and the career of Will Muschamp.

A Telling Display, Part 2

By now most of you have seen the video or still pictures of the raucous love-fest between Muschamp and his player in the home team’s locker room after the EKU game. Family reunions don’t have that much warmth and sincere joy between fathers and sons. This, along with the moving images of Will’s mother greeting him on the field in tears after the game, are the images that will remain burned on the minds of many Gator fans and almost all of Muschamp’s Florida players.

But it was this wild and heartfelt locker room scene that may give us the biggest insight into why Muschamp could not get the team over the hump this year. Just could not get them to perform like they and he wanted them to. Like they all know they can. The cold hard fact of the matter may be that Muschamp – the ultimate players’ coach – was too much of a players’ coach. He was perhaps too close to the guys he was coaching up; too close to be able to properly motivate them.

Muschamp’s players would run through a wall for him. But they seldom did.

At least they seldom did it effectively. They would run through a brick wall for him but usually wound up tripping and smacking onto the concrete before they ever got to the wall. And when this happens, being too buddy-buddy with the head coach can sometimes be the culprit.

We’ve all heard the saying that you can’t always be a parent and a friend to your children. Same goes for coaching kids. The players sometimes have to be scared of the coach. Scared to let him down. Scared of the bench. Scared of the dog house. Scared of the tongue-lashing of a lifetime and a living hell of stadium stairs to run. Scared of getting their head torn off and shoved into their pocket. Some of the most effective coaches are loved by their players one day, hated by them the next – as long as respect is constant.

As much as the respect and love was always there, I suspect that the fear, and certainly the hate were never present in large enough quantities to get these players to maximize their potential every week. The tough love discipline was always in full effect for off-the-field incidents. I suspect it was not always in gear when on-field performance hung in the balance.

As he exits the Gator program, it is clear that Will Muschamp is an incredible human being and a man who is loved and revered by all. He probably would have had a much better season and still have his job if he’d have been more of a jerk.

The Bad

This one is obvious. Treon’s hand injury that put a significant hitch in his giddyup in the critical second half of the South Carolina game last week clearly has not healed enough to be as effective as needs be to move the offense, even against an FCS team. This is rather worrisome. As well as Jeff played in relief, we all know that his performances this year adjust inversely with the level of competition and amount of defensive pressure. That doesn’t bode well if he has to carry the load against FSU Saturday. At least not on the surface. Which brings me to the final section…

Beating FSU

Yes, beating them. Because that is what Florida should do this week. It is what they can do and should do. Even with our offensive woes, Florida will be the best team FSU has faced this year. No other defense on their schedule even approaches Florida’s in terms of talent, athleticism and production against good offenses. After an expected slow start (though nobody expected quite so slow a start as they had in Tuscaloosa), the defense could be easily called dominating at this point. After opening drives, they completely shut down the high-powered offenses of Georgia and South Carolina, only allowing some late drives after they were into the prevent defense and celebrating against Georgia and after they had been perhaps spent too much by the completely ineffective offense against South Carolina, to which they gave a short field on that last decisive drive.

As for FSU, they are so ripe for defeat by a good team, it defies imagination. They don’t run well and they cannot stop the run. Meanwhile UF is fierce against the run and can run the ball, sometimes powerfully. FSU has merely repeated the same formula over and over again this year: get outplayed and even dominated for three or more quarters by supposedly vastly inferior teams, usually falling behind throughout the game, but staying within shouting distance thanks to their weak competition committing just enough bad mistakes, then their wayward quarterback starts flinging the ball against really lousy prevent defenses in the fourth quarter and squeaking out the win in the last seconds (literally).

That is a script that can and likely will be ripped to shreds by the first decent team with the guts to play four quarters and not shoot itself in the foot a dozen times. Florida has the guts to play four quarters, but has too often displayed a penchant for shooting itself in the foot enough times to throw away wins in their grasp.

The devil’s advocate says that FSU will be finally amped up and play 60 minutes of high energy, well-executed football because they are playing their hated blood-feud rival Florida. However they hate Miami at least as much as they hate Florida and Miami was a conference game, and they played just as poorly against the ‘Canes as they have against everyone else.

Being on the road is another bone we can grab off the plate of the devil’s advocate. Playing away from the Swamp has been a big benefit for Florida, as they are 3-1 away from the Swamp with two blowout wins (1-1 against top-10 teams) and only 3-3 at home, including only one conference victory in triple overtime against one of the lesser teams in the league’s weak sister division, one ugly blowout and two awful late game collapses. Florida is happy to be playing on the road. They are happy to return to the place where they brutalized FSU last time they visited. They are happy to return to the scene of the last great game Jeff Driskel had against a top-5 team, just in case he has to come on in relief again. They are happy to be playing the program against which Treon Harris has extra incentive to play well, since he flipped his commitment to the Semis to sign with Florida ten months ago.

Florida fans are tired of watching the same old movie play out for FSU this year. But this week conjures up a different plot the Gators and Semis acted out not so long ago. One where the head Gator got fired during the season, rode into Doak Campbell as a lame duck coaching his last game as a Gator with nothing left to lose, and kicked the feather clean out of the spears of the home standing Semis.

That is a movie Gator fans would love to see again this Saturday.

Get your popcorn ready. It is going to be a very interesting game.

David Parker
One of the original columnists when Gator Country first premiered, David “PD” Parker has been following and writing about the Gators since the eighties. From his years of regular contributions as a member of Gator Country to his weekly columns as a partner of the popular defunct niche website Gator Gurus, PD has become known in Gator Nation for his analysis, insight and humor on all things Gator.

5 COMMENTS

  1. you can’t help yourself, can you? Reality never darkens your door. Once again you bring out the nonsense about Jeff Driskel being a failure at quarterback for everything under the sun but the fact that he’s a failure because of himself. Getting excited over playing the Easterns of the world is not new for you. I’d be embarrassed to have written the tripe you wrote after the first Eastern this year. Go back and have a look, did a single word you wrote make any sense. As for UF having the best defense and the best team FSU has faced this year, that is also nonsense. You are what your record says you are, and a 6-4 team is not a great team. It’s a rivalry game, so anything is possible, but thinking UF is the best team FSU has faced this year is ludicrous. But being ludicrous is a habit with you, why would expect anything different now.

    • The village idiot checks in to spew his manure. If only we were growing organic vegetables, his offerings might have value.

      Snowprint, I presume that you must be the store security officer at the Tallahassee Publix. Maybe that elevates you to unwarranted heights. I suspect that you actually count the crab legs, and thus did not notice that a bunch were going out the door without a receipt. Or maybe you considered it was just business as usual.

  2. PD- I rather enjoyed the piece…All we do and say is mostly subjective analysis anyway- unless we’re using statistics to support an argument. The stage is set rather nicely for a Gator victory. Which team of fighting Muschamp’s will show? That’s the question.

    I agree with the ‘players coach’ paradox. These coaches have the kids loving them, out of trouble, but just can’t kick their collective asses enough to make them develop and show up consistently. If your coach already loves you, unconditionally, it becomes like an enabling parent, the love is there, the respect isn’t. The boundaries are skewed. Players continually play up to a higher level for coaches to get their praise. If they’re loved and praised anyway… what are they playing for? Kids aren’t always that evolved and developed to be doing this all for themselves yet. I can’t fault who Muschamp is as a person, all I know is my personal experience as a fan and alumni. It’s about wins or losses and the associated frustrations inherent in that reality. And that reality, my friends, has only one more game before it moves on to another coach. Beat the Noles…Go Gators.

    • The only problem with PD’s analysis, and yours as well, is that Muschamp purged the roster in his first couple of years.

      I would be more inclined to say that there are still gaps in the roster and WM needed another year or two to patch them.

      I also would question the new Special Teams coordinator, and maybe D.J. Durkin as well. ST breakdowns were the glaring deficiency in the Mizzou and USCe games. Untimely defensive break downs also played a big part;e.g., 3rd and 23

  3. Good piece. Football really is a QB driven game and our struggles identifying and developing QBs is yet another reason we are looking for a new HBC. Plus his inability to hire quality, plus…well, you get the idea. Of the departed, speak no ill, so I’ll say “thanks” Coach and JD, hope you live long and prosper. Go Gators.