When pain comes home to roost as a result of failure, there are two options to cope: 1) Dwell on it obsessively and seek revenge immediately; or 2) Get to work on the task and do the next thing until the path leads you back to the starting point. Urban Meyer eventually chose the latter.
For Meyer, the overlord of the Kiddie Corps, there was no time for vindictiveness. He had to teach them now to line up straight first.
“A lot of people are asking if there’s payback,” said Meyer. “A good majority of our team wasn’t with us last year during that game.”
THAT game, of course, was the one out of 14 last season that the Florida Gators lost. However, it was such a crushing blow that it felt like losing them all at once. In the nine seasons he had been a head coach, nothing took a toll on Meyer like the week of the 2009 SEC Championship. And nothing probably hurt more.
Shall we re-rack those events? (Warning: You may want to look away, or skip the next paragraph, if you are subject to painful flashbacks.)
Remember? Defensive end Carlos Dunlap is suspended after a DUI and misses game with Alabama. In a defensive meltdown, Mark Ingram breaks so many tackles Gator defense looks like tissue paper, as Crimson Tide rolls over No. 1 ranked Florida, 32-13. Later that night, Urban Meyer is rushed to the hospital with chest pains, leading to his decision to retire.
(I warned you.)
The pain was so excrutiating that it nearly wrecked a program. Without rechronicling the sequence of events after that ‘Bama fiasco, suffice to say that it will never be forgotten by The Gator Nation.
If it were a movie plot it would have been called “A Nightmare on Peachtree Street” –- a movie that would no doubt be required viewing for all 2010 Gators. So we just all assumed that Meyer made his players watch the tape of that game every night before going to bed, or maybe they put photos of Mark Ingram up in the weight room with a bull’s-eye on his face. Wrong!
Matter of fact, whereas the coaches were indeed watching plenty of tape on the Crimson Tide this summer, they didn’t allow their players to even think about that Oct. 2 game in Tuscaloosa that the rest of College Football America has circled in red. Even though it stuck it the craw of veteran players and coaches, they knew they had to do what a good cornerbacks do when they are burned deep on a touchdown pass: Forget about it.
To the eternal credit of Meyer and his coaching staff, they kept the minds of their young players focused on learning the fundamentals of the game -– remember “accountability” and “development”? — and didn’t let the revenge motive creep into their veterans’ psyche. In fact, of all the dozens of player interviews I’ve heard since early last August, the only time “Alabama” came up was when somebody in the media mentioned it.
Much like what Lou Holtz warned Urban before about the long practice period leading up to the 2006 BCS Championship, Urban wasn’t letting his players play the Alabama game until it was the next thing. And he certainly wasn’t going to dredge up all the agony from “A Nightmare on Peachtree Street.”
“We don’t need the motivation,” Johnny Brantley said Monday, pointing out that they were all aware of history.
Meyer said the staff had considered setting aside an “Alabama Day” in training camp each week to talk about this upcoming game, but decided against it. I asked him, then, how they were able to keep Alabama off their minds.
“We lost a lot of really good players, and we had to focus on developing guys who really weren’t ready to play,” Meyer answered. “So that (Alabama) has not been (mentioned).”
What changed his mind about having an “Alabama Day” was a tape that flipped on one day and was horrified to witness. This time it wasn’t the 2009 SEC title game. It was his 2010 team practicing.
“I saw how poor we were (practicing) and instead of worrying about Alabama, (I thought) we’d better learn how to catch the ball and put it away and not fumble,” he said. “And I think our coaches have done a good job. There has been no discussion about that. We’re just trying to do the best we can to get a little better this week so we’ll have a shot.”
Based on the gradual improvement since the Miami of Ohio game through Kentucky, Meyer’s on-the-job training appears to be working for his team. The offense showed up big Saturday and even though the movie was named “The Trey Burton Show,” there were some impressive supporting cast members.
The question is: Are these Gators ready yet for Prime Time in Tuscaloosa? For the first time in recent memory, they are underdogs, one reason being they are playing on Bear Bryant soil and not at a neutral site.
When last year’s team played ‘Bama in Atlanta, it was ranked No. 1 and the Tide No. 2. This time around Nick Saban’s club is No. 1 and Meyer’s No. 7. Alabama is a 9-point choice in Las Vegas.
When that rare underdog status was mentioned at his Monday press conference, Meyer broke out in an impish grin and asked, “Is that right?”
Deep down Meyer feels like he’s got a shot, providing practices Tuesday and Wednesday go according to plan, and providing the defense can tackle Ingram and Trent Richardson. Meyer said basically he plans to “put eight in the box and plus-one ‘em,” meaning he’ll be leaving cornerback Janoris Jenkins on an island against 6-foot-4 receiver Julio Jones, a future NFL No. 1 draft pick.
On offense, if Johnny Brantley can manage the game before a crowd of over 101,000 as well as he did in Neyland Stadium, and he gets the protection needed from his offensive line, it appears the timing he has developed with his young receivers could create problems for an Alabama secondary that Ryan Mallet shredded for 350 yards passing.
What looked to be worrisome for Florida, however, was the number of injuries last Saturday. Every one of the starters on the offensive line went down at least once during the game, but got up. A sprained foot sidelined Jeff Demps, who was wearing a boot this week. But the good news, Meyer said, is that he expects all of them to be ready to play.
The high drama of the setting is not lost on Meyer, who embraces these historic SEC venues and well remembers his last visit to Bryant-Denny Stadium when Mike Shula was the Tide coach. Urban took a 31-3 whooping and it was then he realized what it was going to take for his Gators to play Big Boy football.
So he’s back with a bigger boy team than before, albeit it a young one, none of whom were around for that 2005 game and half of whom weren’t involved in “The Nightmare on Peachtree Street.”
Sometimes it pays to have a short memory, or even no memory at all.