Friday afternoon I wrote that the Florida Gators needed to do three things if they wanted to pull off the upset against Georgia.
The Gators needed to 1) protect the football. 2) Make Hutson Mason beat you. 3) Get creative on offense.
On Saturday, the Gators checked all of those boxes and the result was a dominating 38-20 victory over their hated rivals.
Let’s take a look back at those keys to the game and just how Florida was able to execute in each area.
1) Protect the football
Georgia came into this game with a +13 turnover margin — tied for tops in the country. Florida was on a nasty streak, giving the ball away 15 times in their past four ball games.
The Gators managed to walk away with just a lone turnover — on a botched handoff from Treon Harris to Matt Jones. The Gators also forced a turnover, evening the score with Georgia.
“We kept the ball. I mean, we had 15 turnovers in the previous four games,” Will Muschamp said on Monday. “When you don’t have ball possession, it’s hard to continue to do that.”
Not turning the ball over allowed Florida to get the running game going, which, in turn, allowed the offense to be productive against what had been a very stout Georgia defense.
2) Make Hutson Mason beat you
When Georgia scored first it was a bad sign for the Gators. Nick Chubb was gashing the Florida defense and already had more total yards than the Gators came into the game allowing on the ground.
After Mike McNeely scored on a fake field goal and Kelvin Taylor scored from two yards out, the Gators finally made Georgia play from behind. Matt Jones punched in a score and Frankie Velez kicked a field goal in the third quarter to give the Gators a 24-7 lead and now things were desperate on the Bulldog sideline.
Without a lead, Georgia had to pass the football — something they were only doing on 34% of their offensive snaps coming into the game — and Hutson Mason showed why Georgia had been so run dominant this season. Mason wasn’t able to lead the Bulldogs through the air and forcing Georgia to become one-dimensional on offense spelled the end of a three-game losing streak to Georgia.
3) Get creative on offense
The Gators ran the ball 60 times on offense, far from creative. They did, however, execute just the second fake field goal in the Will Muschamp era.
That’s creative enough for me.
The point of saying that Florida needed to get creative offensively was that Florida would need a big play, a spark, to get things rolling against Georgia. That play didn’t come from the offense but McNeely’s 31-yard scamper into the end zone was as creative as the Gators have been all season and was the turning point of the game and possibly of the season.
I agree that fake was pretty sneaky but that’s Muschamp. I remember last year when they faked on 4 down and had Tyler Murphy punt the ball out of the shotgun. That play was wild to say the least but it worked. He’s seems to aways have something up his sleeve.
McNeely deserves a statue out there with the Heisman guys. HA! That absolutely turned the game around. Look at the still shots of the people in the background as he runs in – the cheerleaders, it’s classic. That was our version of the missed field goal that was run back for a TD against Bama. It couldn’t have come at a better time. And from there it only got better. And the game ended in typical Gator fashion, with angst and nail biting until the clock ran out and we realized it really was a win against Georgia. Woo-Hoo…Go Gators.
Well there was creativity in the blocking scheme and the receivers finally blocking on running plays. They also executed the plays properly a good example was the fake, two perfect blocks make the play possible and perhaps easy. Execution has been poor, no blocking, dropped passes, turnovers. So make the offense (and defense) simple enough that the players can execute it properly and things improve.