Gator Country has a new podcast as Jack Peglow of Rock Nation joins us to continue to help us preview the Florida Gators game against Missouri on Saturday.
Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre ask Peglow to give us his keys to the game, plus tells us what to expect from the Tigers on offense and defense.
Andrew and Nick continue to give you the latest on the Gators football team heading into the game, plus talk about the latest injuries.
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrew: What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, back with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, finally it looks like we’re going to play football on Saturday in the Swamp when the Missouri Tigers come to town for that 4:00 kickoff for Homecoming.
Nick: Hopefully it won’t be like the last time Missouri was down in Gainesville for Homecoming.
Andrew: For real. I will say this, Nick. If you just were on the message boards and on Twitter, you would never think Florida was playing a game against Missouri this week.
Nick: No. It’s LSU again this week, right?
Andrew: Yeah. It’s LSU again. Jack Alleva, or what’s his name?
Nick: Joe Alleva. You finally got the last name right, and then called him Jack.
Andrew: I mean, I was calling him Jack for a reason, because there was a bad word that was going to come after it. I was going to be nice, since he is an athletic director. The whining has taken charge. We’ll move on after this. We’ll talk about it for a brief second. Come to find out that SEC Commissioner Sankey cannot force LSU and Florida to play. Nick, I’m going to be honest with you, I have already marked it down as the game is going to be cancelled. I don’t see it being played.
Nick: I’m with you. It’s kind of a shame, but I think I’m with you right now. I don’t see how the game gets played if you can’t force the teams to come to some kind of agreement.
Andrew: The only way, and I’ve been thinking about this today, because I knew we were going to talk about it, the only way I can think it happens is if something was to happen to where the SEC was to change the rule and said, “If Florida doesn’t play LSU, they can’t go to the title game.” I mean, does Florida say, “We’ll bite the bullet and go ahead and go down there?” If it means that or not go to the SEC Championship game? In my opinion, it’s going to take something big like that to happen, because right now no school’s backing down.
Nick: Brent McMurphy proposed something on ESPN today. The SEC would end up having to pay the Sunbelt. It would need some Sunbelt cooperation. The scenario resolved LSU’s scheduled November 19th game against South Alabama, moving that to LSU’s bye week on October 29th. That would allow LSU to get its home game, and then still travel to Florida. Alleva has vehemently repeated, “We’re playing a home game. We’re not giving away that home game.”
Andrew: Right.
Nick: If you move that 11/19 game against South Alabama up to the 29th where the bye week is, saying “LSU, you didn’t play last week, that was kind of like your bye week.” That would open up that November 19th to travel to Gainesville.
Andrew: I still don’t think that retarded self of Alleva would do it, because then he’s going to complain.
Nick: Still there. So South Alabama would have to move their game against Georgia State from October 29th to November 19th, and Georgia State would have to move a game against Georgia Southern to November 26th. Or South Alabama moves Georgia State from October 29th to November 12th, and Georgia State moves a game against Louisiana Monroe from the 12th to the 26th.
Andrew: Right. I just don’t think he’ll do it. Then his excuse is going to be, we got to go play Alabama, and we’re still playing three games and this. I’m going to be honest with you, Nick. I’ve got to this point to where I believe it. I think this is his way of getting out of playing this series. I think this probably ends the series.
Nick: I don’t think they’re going to change the series. I don’t think this ends it. I think it adds even more fire to it.
Andrew: Here’s something else that’s interesting. I think Alleva’s hurt himself. There were some people I know talking about it as well that LSU boosters are just fed up with the way he’s handling this mess, and their handling of Miles and everything else. Of course, they wanted him gone last year, but then to fire him there. There’s a lot of people that are on Alleva’s case. I think he’s kind of treading on bad water, and I don’t know. The way all of the people over there have handled it, including their minions of reporters, has just really put a black eye on the University of LSU.
Nick: He already had a black eye after the way that they handled Les Miles last year. That was a complete mess, a circus.
Andrew: It’s like I told the LSU beat writer, whatever his name was. I don’t even know what his name was. Anyway, he was a dufus. He was a moron, but anyway. He said, I just told him like it was. Everybody wants to be Jeremy Foley. Some people can’t. Sorry.
Nick: Jeremy Foley was the best athletic director in the country.
Andrew: I think his name was Anthony Ching, or Anthony Chang, something like that, whatever his name was. The guy for LSU, that’s all I can tell you. I forgot. You’ll have to find him on Twitter if you want to talk crap to him.
Nick: I don’t know, but it’s Missouri week. Missouri is kind of one of the oddballs, despite winning the SEC East twice, one of the oddballs in the SEC. Kind of pretty far away from Florida, so fans don’t know too much about them. Fans’ focus is definitely not on Missouri. Hopefully the team’s is, but fans’ isn’t. So we’ll bring on Jack Peglow here in a few seconds to schedule, to preview the game with us, talk about where Florida can take advantage of Missouri, a team that gave up 400 rushing yards to LSU two weeks ago, and get a little preview of what’s to come this Saturday.
Andrew: So he gets to schedule the game now? Lord.
Nick: Stop it.
Andrew: That’s what you said.
Nick: Let’s bring him on.
Andrew: Let’s go with Jack from Rock Nation out in Missou. Here we go.
Guys, we’re back with our good friend, Jack Peglow. I said it correctly, guys. Don’t hate me too bad. From Rock Nation.
Nick: It’s a minor miracle.
Andrew: It’s a minor miracle. From Rock Nation out in Missouri. First of all, thanks for coming on. Are you enjoying fall weather yet out in Missouri?
Jack: I would be if I was down there. I’m actually up in Chicago, which is even better, because I am basically a human version of a blast furnace. I’m hot all the time. So being a little further north suits me well, but I am enjoying it. I was down in LSU last weekend, and that was a little sweaty.
Andrew: That’s because of the LSU fans and the hatred they spew off right now. We want to talk a little bit about the Tigers. I’ll be honest, Missouri right now is not really the talk of the town with the LSU thing still being kind of overhead. A lot of Gator fans aren’t really sure what this Missouri Tiger team is going to bring. I guess, first thing, you said you went to LSU, that seemed like a game that really wasn’t Missouri’s kind of game. They were blown out, and you usually don’t see Missouri do that. What was the major thing? Was it all Ed Orgeron coming back, or was it Missouri mistakes? What was the key in that game?
Jack: As much as I’d like to blame it on Orgeron coming in and working his voodoo magic down there as an interim head coach, I think that was part of it, but I think it’s not necessarily that it’s his magical properties. I think it was that he changed up a lot of stuff. They came out and ran an offense that Missouri was not prepared for, one that they weren’t expecting, and it really caught them off guard. I haven’t seen Missouri’s defense play that flat footed and unaggressive in a long time. It really showed. You can look at the score and see for yourself. That was a big part of it. I think that they weren’t prepared for what LSU wanted to do, and it really caught them off guard.
The other part, at least defensively, is that they’re still in the early stages of implementing a newer system. I know Barry Odom, now the head coach of Missou, was the defensive coordinator last year, but he was still working with some of what Gary Pinkel had been running in previous years, and now that he’s the head coach, and he’s brought on DeMont Cross to be his defensive coordinator there, changing things up a little bit. They’re still going through some growing pains. They even said today after practice that it may be a couple years before they can actually start running what they really want to run, because they just don’t have the personnel to do it yet.
Andrew: That was going to be my…go ahead.
Jack: I was going to say, it’s just the combination of a lot of things. It’s that they weren’t prepared. It’s that they’re still learning. It’s a pretty young team still. So they’re going to go through some growing pains. Two weeks ago was just a very large growing pain.
Andrew: That was going to be my question is you guys have been kind of the staple of front seven, the defensive line. I know the defensive line coach is now at Miami. How big of a part was he, and, I guess, how big of a loss is it really that he’s gone?
Jack: He was a huge part of the reason that Missouri was able to develop that reputation, and he’s the reason that we put so many guys in the NFL, because he brought them in. He recruited them, and then he coached them up, and then they were even better. The defense is different than what he’s good at running and coaching for. He’s a really good defensive line coach in a 4-3 system, and they want to go more towards a 3-4, and even sort of like a 3-3-5 in some situations. It’s definitely a big change, and we’re seeing different results for sure. I think if he would have stayed he maybe wouldn’t have been as effective. He and Odom, not that they necessarily didn’t get along, but they had different philosophies, so it sort of made sense when they parted ways.
Nick: Looking at the offense, actually let me go broad team view real quick. Andrew and I were kind of talking about this before. What Missouri team is the one that’s going to show up? It seems like against West Virginia, you lose by 15, don’t really show up. Against LSU, maybe some of the things, LSU’s playing for Ed Orgeron, because they love him, playing for Les Miles, because they’re upset that he was fired. Get blown out in the that game. Then you’re playing, you take care of the teams you’re supposed to, Eastern Michigan, Delaware State. Lose a very close game to Georgia. It just seems almost like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde of which Missouri team is showing up every Saturday.
Jack: Even within the Georgia game itself there was a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde situation. The first half Missouri racked up a ton of yards, did really well offensively, and then they were totally shut down in the second half. Honestly, I’m not 100% sure. Like I said, they’re young on offense. They’re even younger on offense then they are on defense, so you never know quite what you’re going to get week to week with that, and they’re putting in a new system there. It’s tough to sort of guess how productive they’re going to be. I will say that Josh Heupel, the new offensive coordinator, has shown a lot more than Missouri offensive coordinators have in the past couple of years. So that gives me reason for optimism.
That said, Florida has a really good defense. I wouldn’t expect Missouri to put up a ton of yardage. I think they’ll maybe be a little bit better. I think whenever you get shellacked like they did against LSU two weeks ago it sort of maybe shocks the system a little bit, gives you that little bit of extra motivation to come back out the next time you play and show that that was an outlier and not indicative of how good your team actually is. Maybe there’s a little extra motivation there, and they do play a little bit better, but I wouldn’t expect them to put up 400 yards or anything like that.
Nick: That passing offense has been good. I really like Drew Lock. We got to see him last year when we were up in Missouri. He leads the SEC right now in passing. Florida leads the SEC in pass defense. Before the Kentucky game Quincy Wilson was quoted as saying, “Kentucky likes to throw the ball around. We like teams that like to throw.” How does Drew Lock handling going on the road in Gainesville? It will be a sold out Homecoming crowd. How does he handle that and going up against Florida’s secondary and pass rush?
Jack: It’s going to be a challenge, for sure. He did start a lot last year due to some difficult quarterback situations in Missouri, but he’s still young. He’s still just a true sophomore. He can definitely get rattled on the road, especially when it’s a big time atmosphere like what you were saying. It worries me. He tends to try to force throws at time. He’ll lock onto a receiver and try to throw the perfect pass and fit it in between double coverage.
Nick: He seems often to me kind of like a gunslinger, like he trusts his arm so much that there’s not really a throw he thinks, “I can’t make.” That can sometimes get him into trouble.
Jack: He does. He gets a little overconfident at times, and he tries to fit balls in where they aren’t going to fit, flat out. It’s cost him already this season a couple of times. He is leading the league in passing, but he has four interceptions to his credit, and that’s against only a couple of SEC teams, and West Virginia, who’s a good defense, but they’re nowhere near what LSU and Florida are.
So it worries me. I think he could definitely make some mistakes that may keep Missouri out of the game. He needs to calm down a little bit and to be okay with taking the check down and not throwing for the hero pass every time, but so far he seems to want to make that. We’ll see if he can maybe calm it down a little bit and be a little bit more efficient against Florida, if not I think Missou may be in trouble.
Andrew: Let’s move on a little bit. I guess, you look at this game, if Missouri is able to get the win, what do you think is the key? If Florida was to win, I guess, what do you think is something Missouri won’t do? If you can give us a key on both sides of that.
Jack: If Missouri’s going to win I think it’s going to have to be real ugly. There’s got to be not a lot of scoring on either side. The defenses both show up, and the offenses are kept out the stadium basically. I just don’t see Missouri being able to keep up with Florida if this turns into something where you need to keep scoring to win, because Missouri’s defense is good, and Florida’s defense is good, but Florida’s offense is probably a little bit better than Missouri’s at this point. I don’t think that Missouri can beat Florida’s defense more than Florida can beat Missouri’s defense.
Nick: Florida’s offense has shown a proclivity to not score a lot of points.
Andrew: It could be ugly in Gainesville.
Jack: Which does give me some hope. They’re also probably a little bit more comfortable with winning ugly than Missouri is at this point. With the new regime they haven’t really had a chance to show that they can do that yet. I would trust Florida more in that situation.
I mean, the key to stopping Missouri is just to get their offense out of whack and out of sorts, because you do that early on and they get rattled. They’re still young, and they’re still learning this expansive playbook that Heupel wants to put in. I’m not sure they have a ton of things that they can do to get themselves out of a funk and make a big comeback. If Florida can get up early and park the bus defensively, I think that’s a pretty good formula to lock up a win.
Nick: I think that will be important for Florida, especially with getting Luke Del Rio back, getting out to an early lead and be able to run the ball. We always ask on the show if you are ready to make a pick. I think Florida is about a 13.5 point favorite in this game. Would you want to make a pick now of who will win the game on Saturday?
Jack: I do think it will be Florida. I think Florida wins. I think they’re the better team, and it’s not that close. I think Missouri could probably keep it a little bit closer than they did against LSU, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a win something along the lines of maybe 24-14, or even 28-14, a couple of touchdowns, and maybe Missouri scores late to make it look a little bit closer than it actually was.
Nick: Until last year they were all pretty close games.
Andrew: Yeah.
Jack: Last year was a lot closer than it ended up being.
Nick: That’s true.
Jack: That was a little flukey.
Andrew: Jack, we appreciate it so much. Tell everyone where they can find you on the web, and we’ll get you out of here and talk to you maybe during basketball season.
Jack: I’m on Twitter @JackPeglow. You can find everything I’m writing at RockMNation.com. We appreciate the follow. I interact with quite a bit of Florida fans on Twitter, and they’ve always been very pleasant and very fun to interact with. We like you guys, and we’re excited to watch what hopefully should be an entertaining game, and even if it’s a little ugly, sometimes that’s kind of fun.
Andrew: I’m glad that the good Florida fans came, because there is some bad ones, but we’re glad that they were showing you a warm welcome.
Jack: Everybody’s got their bad ones. Everybody does.
Andrew: Definitely. Jack, we appreciate it so much, and we’ll talk to you very soon.
Jack: Sounds good, guys. Thanks for having me.
Andrew: Thank you.
Nick: Thanks, Jack.
Andrew: Alright. We’re back. Nick, that was good stuff with Jack. I said this to you just a second ago. Jack might be the most realistic guy we’ve had on here. He wasn’t beating around the bush. He didn’t give us some nonsense about LSU having the more talented receivers or any of that, but I will say this, and that is I did kind of enjoy watching LSU’s defense, I mean Missouri’s defensive line. Kind of sucks that they’re struggling at that position.
Nick: For a while it seemed like Missouri just had a factory somewhere under the football stadium that just produced great defensive linemen. It’s tough. If you’re trying to move from a 4-3 to a 3-4, it’s difficult. You don’t have the right personnel. You don’t have the right talent and the right guys to do that. It’s a transition period. You see it all the time in the NFL. That’s difficult. Hard to do it on the fly. Hard to do it in the SEC. Hard to do it against a Florida team that gets Luke Del Rio back, which really should help the entire offense, not just the passing game.
Andrew: The entire team, in my opinion, feeds off of Del Rio. We talk about, and I think we’ve talked about it enough to put us all to sleep, but Florida really does lack that leadership on offense. I mean, we’re in agreement in that, right?
Nick: Yes.
Andrew: Del Rio’s going to be that guy, in my opinion. He is that guy. He’s always been that guy. He kind of leads the team, and what was interesting is Jordan Scarlett had something to say about that on Tuesday, talking about how the offense, what was the word he used, Nick? More in rhythm? What was the quote?
Nick: He said a couple things.
Andrew: Fire them out. Let’s go. Don’t be shy.
Nick: He said a couple things. His quote about rhythm was more about I asked him if it’s hard to get into a rhythm when you’re not getting multiple carries in a row, and he said yeah, which is not anything groundbreaking. He says of the offense with Del Rio back, “I feel like we can make a statement, a good statement, coming back. We’ve got Luke Del Rio coming back. Not knocking Appleby at all, it’s just that Luke is a little bit more comfortable with the offense and understanding points and stuff like that. I think we’ll do a lot better Saturday.” He said that getting Luke Del Rio back is an advantage, because DBs have to take account for him now, they’re not just playing the run. “So Luke takes a little bit off my shoulders. He has everybody in command. He’s like a general. Calms everybody down in tough situations, brings us all together.”
He also said that the Florida coaches might not be expecting a certain blitz, but Del Rio’s able to pick that stuff up off the line and point and call that out, and that happens all the time. Coaches are going to call a play, and it has protections built into it. The quarterback needs to be able to see, the quarterback and the center, need to be able to see this isn’t a look we’ve gotten from their defense before. This guy’s blitzing. That’s not what we have prepared for. We still need to pick it up though.
Andrew: That’s kind of what we talked about before. It’s not a bad thing to be a field general, to be a game manager. It’s not a bad thing, and I think that’s what you were able to see with Appleby, not even so much in the Vandy game, but more so in the Tennessee game, where he didn’t notice that there was adjustments being made by Tennessee’s defense mid game. That was that. The Vandy game was just him being atrocious with reads. That’s just all that was. Is Del Rio going to set the world on fire? No. Is he going to get things moving in a better direction? Yes. I am very interested to see how that knee does with the first hit.
Nick: Even more so, how does he react to it? You know what I’m saying? Kind of like you don’t really know how you’re going to react to it until it’s been tested. The knees been tested, now I’m confident in it again.
Andrew: That’s what I was going to say. We all know it hasn’t been tested yet. He hasn’t taken a hit since the North Texas game three weeks ago.
Nick: Gator Country would have had a story, so-and-so has been kicked off the football team after hitting Luke Del Rio in practice. Luke Del Rio injured again.
Andrew: Breaking news, walk-on Johnny Johnny who was acting like so-and-so from Missouri, has been removed from the team for hitting Del Rio. No, that’s what I’m saying. You hear about it all the time with quarterbacks, and really all players. You hear about it all the time in the NFL where players will come back from an ACL, and they’re like, after that first hit I really felt like I was good to go. I think that’s what’s going to be there for Del Rio. Once he gets that first hit and realizes, I’m fine, then he should be good to go. Until then, he may be a little tentative for that, but it will be interesting to see how his mobility is. He’s never a runner, but will he be able to move around?
Nick: I will say, in the open portion of stretching, I mean, football practice, that I saw, to me it did look like Del Rio was probably, had the most mobility that I’ve seen since he’s had the brace on. The first time I saw it was in Knoxville, and he was walking like a pirate with a peg leg, looked super uncomfortable. It takes a while even just to get used to the brace. Even if you’re not feeling active discomfort in the knee, it takes a while to get used to that brace and the way that feels, and the way that that moves.
So to me, I’ve seen him get a little bit more confident, put a little more pressure. The first time I filmed him throwing a pass after people were saying, “Why is he doing that? Why does he look like that?” It’s he’s not comfortable putting that much weight on his front leg yet. I say today I saw him throw three passes, basically, three passes 11 on 11, and like six more on air. It looked, as far as walking around and being able to shift his weight as he threw, that he was probably the most comfortable he’s been since the injury that I’ve seen.
Andrew: Right.
Nick: Granted, as always, that’s a tiny sample size.
Andrew: Remember, it’s extra weight on the knee. There’s a lot of things that go into that. I think he’ll be fine. If he was Cam Newton or someone else that relied on his legs, you’re probably looking at, oh crap, this is going to suck, but he’s not that guy. We’ll see on that.
Other injury news, real quick. David Sharpe should be good to go. Anzalone’s good to go. Really the only two that are out is Sherit and Ivie, and we expected those to be out until probably the Georgia game. So no real surprises there. Jeremiah Moon back. Nick, he was doing some good things, and he was depth there. It’ll be interesting to see how he moves back in. Do they push him back in, or is it medical redshirt time?
Nick: I don’t think, I have no answer as far as what a coach would say. I almost would say medical redshirt. Again, here we go. So everyone freaks out about redshirt, who’s redshirting, who’s this, who’s that? It’s not a decision Florida has to make. If you play him again.
Andrew: It’s done.
Nick: It’s done. If you don’t play him again, it’s something you can file for.
Andrew: Daniel McMillian’s ankle is still an issue.
Nick: Jim McElwain said it was a sprained ankle at first. Then he played on it. Then he said it was a neck and trap injury, and Florida’s going to continue playing nickel, and they’re going to continue playing five and six defensive backs on the field. They’ll move Marcus Maye down into the box and bring Chauncey Gardner in, or play Maye in the box with Harris and Washington up top before they’re bringing Daniel McMillian in. It’s not an injury. It’s not an injury issue.
Andrew: Hold on, now. Florida’s about to go through a stretch where they’re going to play some running teams.
Nick: That’s fine.
Andrew: Arkansas, Georgia, the LSU game. You know what I’m saying? So you’re going to play three linebackers a little more, but I know what you’re saying. I think I agree with that. I’m just interested to see what will happen. He did play on special teams. In my opinion, I don’t know. I think you play him, because he already played, and he was doing okay, but I don’t know. We’ll see.
I think that Cox having that week off, Brantley having that week off, and not really a week off, but that game day off, helped them be back. Florida should be good to go. As Jack said, passing game. That’s going to be it. Florida has done well at times with the secondary, and then the Tennessee game we seen some not so well. If I’m a betting man, Missouri is going to probably look at that Tennessee tape and say, “We want to see what 7 can do.”
Nick: Yeah. Nothing to take away from Duke Dawson, but that’s it. That’s really what it is. Everyone knows 6. Everyone knows 31. So where do we try to take our shots? We try to take our shots over the middle of the field. Florida’s defense is aggressive. Florida really has liked blitzing Anzalone and Davis this year, so if you’re bringing a linebacker, we need to get the ball out quickly. How do we do that? Try to take advantage of something quick over the middle where the linebacker is vacating, and try to take advantage of what we perceive as your weakest link in the secondary.
Andrew: You’re going to look at Dawson and Washington or Marcell, and that’s where you’re going to pick on. What was interesting to me is this. He talks about there’s no running game for them, and then he wasn’t high on their defense. If you’re Florida here, and I hate saying this, because every time I say it it bites us in the ass, but if you’re Florida here, you got Del Rio back. You want to see an offense that does well. You look at what LSU did, and LSU is by far not an explosive offense by any means. Hell, Les Miles is sitting on his couch right now because of that offense. You want to see Florida’s offense do well and start. We talk all the time about they need to be in midseason form. Let’s see what midseason form is this week against Missouri.
Nick: Yeah. There’s just so many distractions this week. There’s the LSU game and everything that goes along with that, and then there’s Homecoming, and there’s going to be the Homecoming parade. It’s just so much stuff that is not normal game week stuff. How do you handle that on top of a Missouri team that you might not perceive as, Jim McElwain’s not dropping the back to back SEC Champion this year. This is a Missouri team that Florida should be able to beat. If Florida is the team that they keep telling us they are, then they need to beat Missouri, and they probably need to cover that 13.5 point spread. This is a team that Florida should beat like that.
Andrew: Here’s the thing, and this is what bothers me.
Nick: Maybe not beat like a Kentucky, but Florida should beat Missouri and not worry about it.
Andrew: Let me ask you this. If they go 28-10 or 28-14 like he said.
Nick: I’m fine with that.
Andrew: You’re fine with that?
Nick: Yeah. 28-10. It also depends on how that 28 looks. Is that two pick sixes? Then I’m not excited about the offense at all.
Andrew: Here’s the thing for me, and that is that I just I’m so sick of hearing about this team wasn’t up to our caliber, or there were so many distractions. When are we getting away from that bullshit?
Nick: When the team stops using it as excuses. Jalen Tabor himself said it.
Andrew: I’m not saying you. I wasn’t meaning you.
Nick: No. I’m saying when the team themselves stop using it as excuses, that’s when it will stop becoming the narrative.
Andrew: Right. That’s what I’m saying. I’m tired of hearing that. My thing is if anything this team should be riled up, ready to go, because let’s just be honest with ourselves here, they’re taking it on the chin in the media about being scared. The best way to put that behind them is to go out and level Missouri. I mean, that’s what it is. Here’s the thing, and you can go ahead and mark it down in your books, Nick, if Florida wins this game 13-10 or 13-6, guess what LSU fans are coming to say?
Nick: What are they coming to say?
Andrew: We crushed Missouri. That’s why you didn’t want to play. That’s what’s coming. You know it’s coming. You can mark it down. That’s what’s going to happen. That’s what I’m saying. This is a home game for Florida. You haven’t been home in a month. You’re back in front of your crowd. It’s Homecoming. It’s going to be packed. 4:00 game. Should be a decent atmosphere. It’s go time. Tennessee has that loss, and by the time you kickoff at 4:00 Tennessee’s probably down 21-0 to Alabama and starting their comeback trail, for all we know. If the team really has bounced back and in midseason form and ready to go, you have a good performance this week. That doesn’t mean winning, like you said, like they did against Kentucky, or winning by 30 points. It means having a good showing on offense. Defense is going to do its thing. Offense has to show up and show out.
Nick: It’s very angry of you.
Andrew: Well, have I steered away from that angriness all year? My angriness is focused at five people.
Nick: Where do you go if Luke Del Rio comes back this week, and you get more of the same, more of the same last six quarters? Where do you go from there? Right now Austin Appleby’s the scapegoat. He’s the Treon Harris. It’s point your finger at him. It’s his fault. He’s the reason why the offense isn’t good. It was great before. It was okay before. It was great before, and it’ll be better when he’s gone. So what happens if the team comes out, and the offense lays another egg? That’s not your scapegoat anymore.
Andrew: Are you telling me that the problem is still going to be 78?
Nick: I don’t know. You find a new scapegoat.
Andrew: I’m just saying. I mean, I think I put the scapegoat on both of them last time, last week against Vandy, 78 and 12 were horrific. They were awful. They were horrendous, terrible, against Vandy. Any word you can describe of not looking good, they were, and that’s what they were. Jordan’s back. He’s had a full week back. I don’t know. One thing I will say is this. I know Tyrie Cleveland supposedly was working with the ones. Whether or not that means anything or not, to me if he is that means that this staff really has maybe went through gut check time with this offense during the bye week, or the off week I guess is what we should call it. Then you should see something different, and if you don’t, then it becomes concerning.
Nick: I think this is week where, listen, it’s still an SEC team. You don’t need to beat them 45-0. I just need to see…
Andrew: I don’t need to see that excuse. That’s what I want.
Nick: I need to see sustained drives. I need to see more.
Andrew: I just need to see intensity. I mean, that’s it. Like you said, win 28-14, and you’re blowing off the ball, and you’re just missing some passes, or you’re dropping some passes, cool. When your offensive line plays like the walking dead, it’s really hard to say the offense looked good, and, quite, frankly, I just can’t handle any more of the this was a bad team, or it was an early kickoff, whatever the excuse has been.
Nick: At some point the excuses have to stop.
Andrew: Yes. Some time the excuses just become stupid. I mean, I hate to be that guy, but they just become stupid and annoying. With what’s on the line right now for Florida, I mean, quite frankly, by the end of the game on Saturday Florida could be controlling their own destiny in the East. Do you want to look like a team that’s controlling their own destiny, or do you want to look like a team that is scapegoating into the East like LSU’s saying you are?
Nick: I don’t know. I’m tired of that whole LSU. I’m tired of that.
Andrew: You know what I’m saying. I used that excuse because that’s exactly what’s coming if they look bad.
Nick: I really think Florida will, and you and I talked about it, I really think that Florida will try to run the ball, but it was like against North Texas, I said, they’re giving up five yards a rush, just run the ball at them. Run the ball at them, get your win. Go home. Florida did the opposite. It was almost like, we’re going to prove a point. It was almost like, that’s the easy way to win it. We’re going to show you that we can still pass. It was like, stop that. Stop it.
I think Florida will just come out, you run the ball. You protect Luke. Get him healthy. He gets another bye week before you have Georgia, and that Georgia game will really, listen, Tennessee’s going to lose to Alabama. Sorry. I blew my pick for Friday’s show, but Tennessee’s going to lose to Alabama. So you make sure Luke gets through this week healthy, and then gets another bye week, a full bye week, before coming back and playing against what will be at that point in time the biggest game of your season against Georgia.
Andrew: I’m with you. You got to start showing improvement, and start showing improvement by doing it this week. When you start doing it this week, you want to go into the bye week with some positive. Let’s find some positive, go into the bye week, get everyone healthy. You get your defensive linemen back healthy, Sharpe, whatever shoulder injury’s bothering him he gets healthy. Tyler Jordan has another week, and Del Rio has another week. You look good. So go positive. That’s there, but we’ll see. Every time I feel like we predict a big win it happens the opposite, so I’m not going to predict that.
Nick: I’m not predicting a big win. I’m saying it would take a, I’m trying to think. It’s not about the score. You go back to how Florida beat South Carolina in 2012. I think Jeff Driskel threw for like 80 yards and four touchdowns, because everything was set up for Florida. Like I don’t feel good about that. If that’s how it is, if Missouri hands you the game, and turnovers put the offense in positions to score, gives the offense the ball inside the red zone, like South Carolina did that year, then I don’t feel good about that. I need to see Del Rio command the offense and to stay in drives. There’s too many 3 and outs. I need to see sustained drives. I need to see competency on offense, really is what I’m looking for. That’s what I’ll be, even if Missouri comes in with a great game plan, and you win 21-17, 21-20, if the offense looks like it took steps, then I’m okay saying that was a good game. I need to see progress from the offense, otherwise then it’s just a bad offense, and not a quarterback issue.
Andrew: Do you agree you need to see intensity?
Nick: Yeah. I need to see it. I need to see the kind of attitude of we were mad that we didn’t play last week. We understand why, but we were mad we didn’t play last week, and we’re definitely mad that you are lying or calling us out for a lie, and sorry, Missouri, but you’re the guys in front of us that we have to take that aggression out on. I need to see that.
Andrew: Right. We’ll see. Nick, a couple things real quick. I feel like we go to talk about Mike the Tiger. Mike the Tiger passed away on Tuesday. The little guy tried to get me last year in Baton Rouge, Nick.
Nick: He turned around. I’ve never seen you move so quick.
Andrew: You were laughing at me. You were going to let Mike get me.
Nick: Listen, if Mike decided he wanted to eat us, there was nothing that little fence or you or I were going to do. He was going to eat both of us.
Andrew: So you wouldn’t put yourself in front of him for me?
Nick: No. Absolutely not. I’d run. I might shove you closer towards him to hope that that would slow him down while I got a head start.
Andrew: Somewhere I think there’s a fat joke in there.
Nick: No. It’s going to take a while to eat any person. If it lets me get away.
Andrew: I want to ask this real quick. We’re winding down on time here, but I want to ask you this real quick. What’s your opinion on that? Do you like that? You hear some people say, “Well, it’s not cool to have a wild animal,” even though they adopt them from bad situations, that they don’t like that. What’s your opinion? I know you’re kind of an animal guy. You’ve got a dog. What’s your opinion on that? Are you cool with the wild animals?
Nick: Mike, listen, man, Mike got great care at the end of his life. If Mike’s out in the wild, Mike’s not getting put to sleep with an injection where he goes to sleep and doesn’t feel anything. Mike gets eaten by another animal out in the wild. I feel like people look at animals and think of like cartoons, that cute talking Tony the Tiger. It’s great! No. Mike would have been the one the other tigers left for other animals to eat him. Animals don’t care. Animals are savage. Mike would have ripped your face off if you would have given him the opportunity to, and another tiger would have killed Mike as soon as he looked weak, because he would have brought the pack down. Is he living a great life? Yeah. Does he have as much room to run around as a wild tiger? No. That other tiger will die if it doesn’t find food. Mike gets food given to him in the shape of the other team’s mascot, which is pretty cool.
Andrew: That’s kind of where I’m at.
Nick: That’s the thing I don’t get. People forget that wild animals are savage. Wild animals will kill you. Mike would kill you. Mike had a better ending because of where he was than a lot of other wild animals, or actual wild animals have in the wild.
Andrew: Like I said, he was adopted. He was brought into a good situation. I’m cool with it. I mean, if there was a Florida could have an alligator I think it would be pretty cool. I mean, Nick, you and I are fans of the game, and what’s one of the first things we did when we got to Baton Rouge? We went to check out Mike the Tiger.
Nick: I don’t play with animals. I would stay away from that gator. I felt too close. There was too fences in between me and Mike, and I felt like I was too close. I don’t play games with animals. I did like the short time I was around Mike. It was like, hey, what’s up, man? Don’t look at me and lick your lips like that. I’ll just go over there.
Andrew: Kill Andrew and eat Andrew.
Nick: Yeah.
Andrew: Lordy. Nick, let’s get out of here. Tell everybody where they can find us. We’ll get out of here. We’ll see everyone on Friday, as long as Mike doesn’t come back and get us.
Nick: Shout out to my boy, Ken Bone, stealing the election. Shout out to Ken. www.GatorCountry.com for all your Florida Gators news. On Facebook @GatorCountry. On Twitter @GatorCountry. On Instagram @TheGatorCountry. I’m @NickdelaTorreGC. He’s @AndrewSpiveyGC. Follow along. Subscribe on iTunes for the podcast, Monday, Wednesday, Friday 5:00AM, without fail. The transcript and audio is also on, if you are an android user, back to GatorCountry.com to find the transcript and audio of the podcast.
Andrew: Yeah. Absolutely. It will be there. We need some buy or sell questions, so get them to us. We need some. We got a few, but we need some. Follow along. Nick and I are tweeting about our baseball and all that good stuff. We’ll see you guys on Friday. Get us some buy or sell questions. We’ll have predictions and all of that good stuff. As always, chomp, chomp. Go Braves, and Butch and Mark, you still suck.
Nick: You stay classy, Gator Country.