PD’s Postulations: Thoughts on the Alabama Game

There certainly is no way to come away from Saturday’s loss with any good feelings. I did not think that being blown out was a strong possibility, but it happened. But it was a competitive blowout in that we led early, it was a one-score lead at half and the score was tied in the third quarter. Florida was competitive and was in position to win the game for nearly three full quarters. Then Alabama pulled away.

And the fan base melted down. Predictably. But…wasn’t this exactly what the majority of the fans – and national and local media – predicted? Some said we would stay competitive for a half, maybe three quarters, then Bama would pull away. Some just said “blowout loss”. Well, isn’t that exactly what happened? Yes. So why the meltdown? Why the reaction like we were somehow not an unranked team that was starting over from a once-in-a-lifetime low season, playing the best team in the nation in their own house that has been rocking and rolling in the same system and coaching regime for eight years now?

The team ultimately met expectations. Why are we so mad? We are rebuilding, in Game 3 of a new offense still trying to get a couple of play makers to step up, with 2007-like youth and inexperience all over the defensive backfield, and Bama is nearly a decade into one of sport’s greatest dynasties.

And we fans thought what? That we’d play like the 1996 Gators? The 2008 Gators?

What was really bad, however about Saturday was the way that we lost. We surrendered the most yards in school history – and almost all of it through the air. The running yards they got in garbage time late was nothing but a beat tired defense running on fumes. Because they never got Alabama off the field except when Alabama neglected to take care of the football. If not for Alabama’s issues with ball security, Florida would have been utterly defenseless.

Reality Check

Also predictably, the faction of fans who have always been against Muschamp have started beating the drums harder to fire the head coach. Understandably, a lot of fans who had supported Muschamp all along threw in the towel Saturday. That’s just human nature. Last year took its toll on the minds and emotions of Gator Nation. It was just one year (really, just 2/3 of a year), but it seemed to last forever. And they are just tired of losing and looking bad. I get that. I’m sick of it too. If there were an Easy Button to push and fix this, I would be the first one to jump on it with both feet

However, I have a few reality checks for all of us.

Reality Check #1: There is no Easy Button to fix this. There is no elite head coach or elite coordinator out there who could come in next year and fix this program and make us a top tier program again in a short period of time. Because if Champ goes, this recruiting class is gone. All of it. It would likely be the worst class in school history. And you can expect a lot of the top talent that signed last February to transfer – like we saw when the regime changed from Meyer to Muschamp. And Zook to Meyer. And Spurrier to Zook. And I have news for us all: whoever that new coach is will be doomed to short-term failure too and Gator Nation will be lighting the torches and calling for the headsman in less than two years again and the revolving door will just keep on spinning. I want Muschamp to succeed here because he is a great man, a great recruiter, a great coach and I think he can be a great HEAD coach (though he clearly is not yet). But part of the reason I want him to succeed is that he HAS to succeed for our program to return to prominence this decade. Or maybe even next decade. Because as I said, there is nobody out there who can fix it quickly who would consider coming here. Especially after we drove Spurrier away, ran Zook out of town, demonized Meyer before and after he left, and then drove Muschamp away without giving him the benefit of a chance to fix things with Roper. Because all new coaches should have the chance to either win early or fix early mistakes and win with the fixes. Zook got the chance to blow out his staff, and then still failed. Muschamp blew out his staff and deserves at least this one full year to make it work.

And I don’t care how many fans don’t agree. Every coach in the business DOES agree with this. And I don’t care how many fans don’t think that the Gator fans drove any of our previous coaches away or treated them like trash while here and/or after they left – true or not, that is the perception out there among the coaching fraternity. And perception is reality.

Reality Check #2: Alabama is dominant. Everyone is saying that we made Sims look like Johnny Unitas when he was supposed to be awful. Well, we were wrong. Sims is pretty darn great. And he showed it in his first three games already before Florida came to town. I don’t care where you think we are as a program under Muschamp, or where you think we should be: we are not ready to play on the level that Alabama is this year, and should never have thought we would be. I was dead wrong about that, and so were most. I don’t personally know at what level we ARE ready to compete, but Alabama is not a proper benchmark for us right now. Tennessee – our nest opponent – is. Kentucky was. Georgia and LSU and South Carolina and Missouri are. Heck even FSU is. Or will be by the time we get to the end of the season. But Alabama is not. Everything we feared about the Tide has come to fruition: the unholy alliance of Smart the defensive genius, Kiffin the offensive genius and Saban the everything genius, and by far the best and deepest roster in the nation, is showing us what it’s got. And it is horror movie scary. Yet we still matched them score-for-score and matched their intensity for nearly three quarters. That effort did not kill our season.

Reality Check #3: The game against Alabama meant absolutely nothing. Nobody had this as a win in their preseason projections, not even the most optimistic or homer-oriented ones. I certainly did not. All East teams have a loss now or have demonstrated that they are very, very beatable. So if we win out against just the East teams, we will go to Atlanta to play Alabama again. Missouri and Tennessee have no SEC losses, because they have played no SEC games, but both have already been embarrassed by out-of-conference teams: UT was embarrassed by being blown out by a good team, and Missouri was embarrassed by losing at home to one of the worst teams in the very worst Power5 conference – Indiana. And LSU? Well they just got drilled at home by Mississippi State. And Georgia’s win over Clemson is sure looking a lot less impressive after seeing the Tigers lay that pathetic egg against FSU and their junior varsity replacement quarterback. And the South Carolina team that tamed them last week barely beat one of the worst Vanderbilt teams ever Saturday night. We could improve just enough to win the rest of our games. That is very possible not because we are that good, but because the rest of our schedule is that beatable. Every season goal we had before the Alabama game is still attainable. And if we attain them, the Alabama game will have meant nothing. If we fail to attain them, it will be because we failed to win one or more of the remaining games, and the Alabama game will have meant nothing.

Muschamp’s Future

As I mentioned on the forums over the weekend, I am in agreement that if Alabama blew us out (which they did) and we played very poorly (which we did) UF should start the search committee process and start vetting possible replacements for Muschamp. I also agreed that if Jeff Driskel played very poorly (and he did) that Treon Harris needs to get a couple of first half series – regardless of the score – in the Tennessee game, and he needs to start getting increasingly more practice reps with the first team as if he were preparing to be the new starter.

Now, that having been said, I don’t think Muschamp will be fired and I don’t think Driskel will be benched. Those are both based on what I expect to be improvements made in team and quarterback performance as the season progresses. However, the university must be prepared for the contingency that the season (and thus head coach) might tank, and the coaching staff must prepare for the contingency that their starting quarterback might tank. They must ready those ships for sea, even if they ultimately never leave port. Because they have to cover those bases.

My confidence in Driskel has waned after seeing him miss so many reads and open targets Saturday. While he has clearly improved his entire game when playing lesser opponents, his tremendous struggles against high pressure game situations against top teams continue. My confidence is still very strong in Muschamp and the team overall having a strong season, because even given the 2013 shafting that fate dealt the team and staff with all the injuries, and the resulting big setback in development of players and program, Champ should still be able to have a very good season this year. If he is the coach that I saw win 11 games in 2012, then he will eclipse the 8 or 9 win plateau this year. Those should still be our expectations. Not six wins and not seven. But after getting blown out by the best team in America in just the third game under a new offensive system (and with almost all rookies and true sophomores in the secondary) and after seeing Bama’s first 4 games, I think it is clear that UF fans – and that I – should never have expected the team to be ready to challenge the Tide yet. I thought we could do some damage and hang with them late (later than we did), but ultimately lose. We actually came pretty close to doing that, except we played a lot worse than the score indicated through three quarters, and then we fell to ashes in the fourth quarter and the score caught up to our ineptitude.

I want everyone to succeed and Driskel has had a lot of unfair obstacles to overcome, but he’s had enough time to start overcoming them now. If he can’t step up his game, his expiration date is approaching. The same goes for Muschamp. I think both of these guys would be a lot better than their records or their performances if they had been able to just have normal careers at UF that were not sabotaged by myriad untimely, unfair, unforeseen and simply bizarre events, however at some point the program has to see sustained excellence come from these two. Period. It’s unfair and I feel for them both, but now is the time they must produce or perish. And I think they will both produce well enough this year not to perish.

Of course, if I am wrong, and the season goes to pieces to the tune of just five wins, maybe six, then Muschamp will be gone. And he should be. And nobody knows that better than he does. Firing him may be a huge mistake in the long run (yes it might: he might become an elite coach at another SEC school where he gets more time and doesn’t have a 2013 type fateful disaster, or he might become the defensive coordinator at a rival SEC school and dominate our offense for the next 15 years), but it would have to be done.

Recruiting Buzzkill

Another ugly certainty coming out of the Alabama game: the recruiting momentum that we had built over the last few months ground to a screeching halt with Saturday’s blowout loss. But this was expected. It was well known that a blowout loss would kill the recruiting momentum. That is tough to stomach, but at the end of the year if UF wins eight to ten games and *when* – not *if* – Bama wins the national title once again, the staff will be retained and sign a top-5 recruiting class…and this loss to Alabama will have had no effect on the recruiting class. If the Florida coaches don’t get the pathetic play of the defensive backs corrected, find a second receiver who can catch a football, and get Jeff or another quarterback to make good decisions against good opponents, then UF will only win five to seven games and the staff will be fired. In that event, we will have one of the worst signing classes in school history and our program will be set back another 5 years, minimum…and this loss to Alabama will have meant nothing.

So basically, other than very short-term momentum loss, this game means nothing. As we knew it would going in, if we lost. That is why so much of us entered the game without any stress: we were playing with house money. Nothing to lose. For some reason, many of the fans reacted to the loss as if that never happened. These are mostly the fans who reacted to 2013 as if 2012 never happened. It is a mystery to me, but at the end of the season, much like this Alabama game, it will have meant nothing.

One of the most damaging things for this recruiting class right now is the fan meltdown and outburst that gives the recruits the impression that Champ is going to be fired – which is the ONLY thing that would keep us from a top-5 recruiting class in February. However, Foley is not about to pull the plug after this game alone. Muschamp will be under the microscope the rest of the year, but much like the likelihood of a loss to Alabama Saturday, this is not news. That is already being done. He has been on double-public-probation since well before the season started.

As before, the Alabama game changed nothing but fans’ level of anger and outbursts. Muschamp’s fate – and the domino effect fate of the program for the next ten years or so – will be judged on the whole season, at season’s end. It won’t be done now and Saturday’s loss will have the least to do with that decision of any other game on the slate.

What We Think We Know

Of course, the fans who wanted Muschamp fired in the tunnel after the game take their position because they think they know that the rest of the season will be a disaster. I wonder if South Carolina fans felt that way about their season after being beaten far worse by much lower-ranked Texas A&M (at home, not on the road) just a few weeks ago? I wonder if Gator fans also thought their 2000 season was going to be a disaster when Florida was blown out by lowly Mississippi State at the end of September that year (went on to win the SEC title)? I wonder if Gator fans felt that way when they were eviscerated by a significantly outmanned Syracuse team in late September 1991 (went on to win the SEC title, beat FSU who had spent most of the year at #1, and only lost one regular season game)? I ponder whether Gator fans felt that way after getting blown out in consecutive games by Tennessee and Missy State in late September and early October of 1992 (went on to win the SEC East, almost beat the eventual national champs in the SEC title game in one of their home stadiums)? I am curious as to whether Gator fans felt that way in 1990 – before Spurrier had established himself as a success at Florida, and when even he still had a lot of doubters in Gator Nation thinking he was just a gimmick coach – when the Gators were utterly destroyed by Tennessee in early October (went on to finish #1 in the SEC).

I personally don’t know what the season will bring. But I do know that I have seen far too many blowout losses in late September and early October by Gators teams that went on to win championships to think that one game on the road against the most talented and best-coached team in the nation is going to dictate the rest of the year to any degree. I also know that even though he got blown out in Tuscaloosa, Muschamp’s team scored three touchdowns and was in position to win the game at the end of the third quarter. And I know that Urban Meyer – who won two national titles at Florida – took Gator teams to Tuscaloosa two times and didn’t score a single touchdown in either game, and was never competitive in either game.

So what we think we know and what we really know are both pretty close to nothing right now. But we DO know a few things. We do know that a mid-season firing is not going to happen just because of this game. We do know that whether Muschamp is fired or retained, neither outcome will have anything to do with this Alabama game. And we do know that Muschamp darn well BETTER succeed this year and win eight games or more and secure his job and a great recruiting class…because if he doesn’t, we Gator fans might as well stop following the football team for the next ten years or so, because that is the earliest we will be a top program again.

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.

10 COMMENTS

    • I rather like that song. It would be very popular in fact if not for the inaccurate belief in so many adult sports fans that there is some sort of nobility in being ugly and mean-spirited in the name of “brutal honesty”. I recognize that one needs not be brutal to be honest. But when perfection is not attained, many sports fans have too much anger to care about human decency.

      They also labor under a sad misconception that sports is somehow disconnected from free will. When things go well, fans can still choose not to be arrogant and cruel to other teams’ fans. Likewise, when things go poorly, the choice is ours to react like savvy, self-respecting adults with tons of real world perspective who see the big picture of possible solutions or like spoiled impudent children who can only see the broken toy two inches in front of their face. We can react as if we know that everyone is knocking themselves out to do their best – and that they are all human beings with hopes and dreams, trying to make UF a winner – or we can react as bitter anger balls because we think they are trying to personally hurt us by denying us the ability to say, “We beat you, ha-ha!”

      But you picked a very appropriate tune, coming from “The Flintstones,” because if we fire Champ right now, it would set our program back to the Stone Age.

  1. Like all of your previous columns, you have a very tenuous grip on reality. Alabama is not the best team in the country, a good team would have won over Alabama Saturday. You normally lose when you cough up the ball four times. I predict Alabama will lose at least two games during the regular season. Florida is a bad team, that’s why Alabama won. You continue to have visions of this team having a great season, but what is it based on? Now you think Muschamp should be retained cause it will set Florida’s program back. Just where do you think the program is now? As for recruiting, does it matter? Florida has recruited, according to the recruiting rankings, as well as anyone not named Alabama the past few years. Just where has that got them? West Virginia is never among the top teams in recruiting, yet they were competitive with Alabama with a former backup quarterback at FSU. Clint Trickett, a lowly three star, is miles ahead of Jeff Driskel, the can’t miss five star. So why worry about recruiting, it hasn’t helped the Gators to be ranked high in the first place. I don’t know how you’re going to handle it when it turns out that Florida is a worse team this year than last year, and to top it off, FSU win’s it all again, a frightening scenario, but one much more likely to happen that the one you envision.. No, everything is not peaches and cream like you spin it. There’s something rotten in Denmark, and it starts with the stench coming from the top, the head coach and the quarterback. I think you are mistaken in saying they have been the victims of, well, whatever excuses you still throw out. But life isn’t always fair, and their performance speaks for itself. They both have to go, or in Driskel’s case, be benched. Eight or nine wins? Try four, that seems more realistic right now.

    • Snowprint, you are nothing if not consistent. You never fail to disappoint. Thank you for your obvious warmth and devotion to my every word.

  2. David…
    Once again… you bring reality to the masses. This is what we all like about your comments.
    Reality… not sunshine… but basic truth and logic.
    So many of us want to “knee jerk” this situation that we are going through.
    Heck… Clemson was a couple of blown coverages away from beating the “Pristine Nolies” at their own home park last week.
    I wonder what their feelings would have been if they had lost without their sociopathic quarterback?

    In closing, I agree, whole-heartedly with every one of your words. Gator Fans need to keep things in prespective. Lets see how this season unfolds. The truth, in time…will come to the surface.
    And, once again… you are right…all the vemon spewed forth about Muschamp right now does NOTHING for our recruiting. It is the absolute worst thing that a recruit can see.

    And, of course…not to mention those posters of other schools that come on here, masquerading as Gator Fans… putting forth their ever so kind words.

  3. I couldn’t agree more! I’ve been telling any Gator fan that would listen to “Calm the F down, support this team and let the season play out. That Bama game means nothing and nobody thought we would actually win, so let’s focus on the rest of the season that matters – starting with Tennessee and the rest of October.” These fans don’t realize the role they play in the overall direction and recruiting of the program. We all desperately need Muschamp to succeed this season to keep the train and recruiting rolling in a positive direction – we have a bunch of 5*’s ready to sign the dotted line and be our future superstars as soon as they see progress and that Muschamp is going to be in G’ville for the long term – the recruits need the “noise in the system to be put on silence!”. Muschamp and these players need us to support them, be positive and stop putting so much pressure on them to perform. They will get the job done and make us proud – please just sit back and see how it all plays out. If Muschamp fails to deliver the wins, you’ll get your way and he’ll be out and we’ll get a new coach and it will kill us for the next 2-3 years in recruiting and 4-5 years on the field. C’mon Gator Nation – let’s come together and pray for the best!

    • Not sure where the “we’ll get killed in recruiting if we change coaches comes from” nor do I buy into a huge setback with the right coach. In our last three coaching change years, we’ve averaged 15th in recruiting. And our average star ranking was higher than at least 5 other teams ahead of us in those years. Not exactly terrible. And we were right back on track in year two in recruiting all three times. Plus Meyer still managed to win a championship in year two, and ‘Champ went 11-2 in year two as well. Not sure how that’s setting the program back. So I wouldn’t put too much stock in those ‘missed opportunities’ if a change necessary.

      But that really shouldn’t be a concern if that’s what needs to be done even if it were true. Is ‘Champ the right guy for the job? The thing is, I’m not sure which is odd even though we’re in year 4.

  4. David I am shocked at what you wrote , somebody needs to stop talking about 2012 , the D won that season full with NFL players recruited by URBAN MEYER , the 2007 team I think went 9/4 , if you think UF with the same team that I saw Sat will finish 9/4 YOU ARE NUTS———-you want to keep Coach M because otherwise it will kill recruiting ? I totally disagree , that we will finish top 5 class if WM stays , well I best not comment on that. agree with you nobody should have believed UF was going to beat Bama , but if not for the t/overs ALABAMA would have won 49/7 if not worse —forget a 4 year QB who cannot play a lick , what about a LOST DEF BACKFIELD , 800 yards given in 2 SEC games ? please man stop defending the impossible to defend , have u seen Duke this year ? so everyone thinks it was ROPER , no man it is the head coach that has DUKE at unprecedented levels , and it is ours who has us in the GUTTER

    • Try 1100 yards allowed in two SEC games. That’s 550 yards a game. Forget about the quarterback, can this defense stop anyone that doesn’t have a direction to start the name of their school?

  5. DP only difference between you and the fire WM crowd is the Tenn game hasn’t been played yet. After another disappointing JD performance next week in Knoxville you will be right there with everyone else. The fire WM crowd just avoided the post Tenn rush and want action now. This team is no better now than it was 3.5 years ago when Muschamp took over and his absurd loyalty to Driskel is hard to fathom. I agree on your sentiments about recruiting and setting the program back if he is let go, but how much is enough? Look forward to your thoughts after the next game.