Florida Gators fast, not fast enough yet

“Fast, fast, fast,” he would shout. “Faster, you gotta be faster,” were the words that would come out of Kurt Roper’s mouth all offseason.

Last Saturday the Florida Gators ran 86 plays to the tune of 655 yards. The total was 20 more offensive plays per game than the Gators averaged a season ago and 14 more than Roper’s Duke Blue Devil’s averaged in 2013 as well.

It still wasn’t fast enough for the new offensive coordinator’s liking.

“We had 21 snaps on Saturday that were outside of 18 seconds on the play clock,” said Roper. “Our average was 14 seconds on the play clock, we would like our average to be 18 seconds on the play clock.”

Florida’s new up-tempo offense had fan’s heads spinning and whipped the crowd of more than 81,000 into a bloodthirsty frenzy, demanding that the Gators score 70 points late in the fourth quarter.

Roper wants the offense to move faster, get more plays off with more time on the play clock but he won’t sacrifice speed for execution.

Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, The Swamp, Gainesville, Florida
Kurt Roper was happy with the offensive output against Eastern Michigan but still wants the Gators to move faster. / Gator Country photo by David Bowie

“We’re at the ball we can play fast whenever we need to play but you know I’ve never been one to really harp on tempo,” Roper said. “It’s all about execution, staying on the field and those things.”

Like a new car, Roper didn’t slam on the gas as he pulled off of the lot last Saturday. However, with a game under their belts and the first game jitter out of the way, the team is ready to go full bore as they head into their first conference game of the season.

“You can try to do it in practice. You can go as fast as you want. It was a lot different doing it in the first game,” senior tight end Clay Burton said after a career high seven receptions last week. “I think that as an offense we looked pretty comfortable. I really enjoyed it, playing fast like that.”

If the key is execution, the players need to feel comfortable with the tempo they’re running plays at and with the plays themselves. That begins with the quarterback. Through one half of play against Eastern Michigan, Jeff Driskel had already broken a career high in completions. This offense suits him and when the quarterback can play calm as all of the moving parts around him are flying all over the place at warp speed, the offense will run smoothly and execute with precision.

“When you’re able to refine what you’re do and do it over and over again, you can be more comfortable with what you’re doing,” Jeff Driskel said. “And I think we played really fast.”

Driskel and the offense are getting used to the new speed that Roper is bringing to the table but Roper was only driving his shiny new car in third gear last week. With SEC competition starting this week, Roper and the Gators will shift into fourth and fifth and really start speeding things up.

Nick de la Torre
A South Florida native, Nick developed a passion for all things sports at a very young age. His love for baseball was solidified when he saw Al Leiter’s no-hitter for the Marlins live in May of 1996. He was able to play baseball in college but quickly realized there isn’t much of a market for short, slow outfielders that hit around the Mendoza line. Wanting to continue with sports in some capacity he studied journalism at the University of Central Florida. Nick got his first start in the business as an intern for a website covering all things related to the NFL draft before spending two seasons covering the Florida football team at Bleacher Report. That job led him to GatorCountry. When he isn’t covering Gator sports, Nick enjoys hitting way too many shots on the golf course, attempting to keep up with his favorite t.v. shows and watching the Heat, Dolphins and Marlins. Follow him on twitter @NickdelatorreGC