ORLANDO — Somewhere between Thanksgiving weekend and Tuesday at 1 p.m., the Florida Gators lost their edge. Whatever they had going for them when they beat Florida State Thanksgiving weekend to finish off a November to remember was in the locker room or someplace else because it certainly wasn’t on display against Michigan in the Capital One Bowl.
The Florida team that laid waste to four straight teams in November, hanging 51 on the Old Ball Coach and 45 on Bobby Bowden, was a no-show Tuesday. Florida couldn’t stop Michigan’s offense and there was a carryover from the defensive letdown to the offensive side of the ball. The Gators made uncharacteristic errors in the red zone and after the midway point in the second quarter, they couldn’t offer a whole lot of protection to Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Tim Tebow, who threw three touchdown passes but only managed 154 yards.
Michigan’s 41-35 win over the Gators before a crowd of 69,754 at Florida Citrus Bowl Stadium was a testament to the maturity of a senior-laded team. It was the presence of seniors like Chad Henne, Mike Hart, Mario Manningham and Adrian Arrington that made Michigan one of the favorites when the season began to win the national championship. The Wolverine seniors didn’t realize that dream but they did get to close out their college careers with a bowl win over the Gators and that enabled them to send retiring coach Lloyd Carr off with a win in his final game as the Michigan head coach.
Henne completed 25 of 39 passes for 373 yards and three touchdowns. Hart carried 32 times for 129 yards and two touchdowns. Manningham caught five passes for 78 yards and a touchdown and he ran seven times for 53 yards. Arrington caught nine pasess for 153 yards and two touchdowns.
Those are the kind of things you expect of seniors who have incentive to end their careers on a winning note. The Gators had incentives too. They wanted to send their few seniors out with their 32nd win in three years and they wanted to get a jump start for a 2008 season in which they will be one of the preseason favorites to win the national championship.
Michigan was mature enough to close its season out the right way. Florida was too immature to snatch victory away from the Wolverines even with an abundance of opportunities. Michigan turned the ball over four times including twice on fumbles inside the Florida five and the Gators were able to keep a scoring drive going with a Chas Henry pass to Aaron Hernandez out of punt formation on fourth down. But, even with gifts like the turnovers, success with the fake punt and a 242 yard day (165 yards rushing for a touchdown; 77 receiving yards and a touchdown) by Percy Harvin, the Gators couldn’t pull out a win.
It was a frustrating afternoon for Urban Meyer who cited maturity, or a lack of it, as part of the problem for the Gators. He also pointed the finger at himself and his coaching staff.
“I don’t think we coached very well in certain areas,” Meyer said. “I’m going to watch and evaluate and make sure we’re doing the right things.”
One place he will have to look is the play in the secondary. A year ago the Gators were a ball hawking unit that rarely gave up big plays. Against Michigan, the Gators gave up 11 pass plays of 10 yards or more including big plays of 65, 37, 24 yards and 21 yards.
The opening drive for the Wolverines was a sign of things to come. Henne sliced and diced a Florida secondary that would spend the day looking dazed and confused. He hit six of seven passes for 73 yards including a 21-yarder to Arrington for a touchdown.
Whenever Michigan needed a big play, Henne only had to look to Manningham and Arrington. Florida tried to play zone and that didn’t work. The Gators tried to play them straight up. That didn’t work either. The Florida corners, it seemed, were always a step too late.
“I’m very disappointed with our pass coverage to give up that many yards and take nothing away from their personnel because they have very good personnel but I didn’t feel like we were getting to the quarterback and we weren’t contesting throws,” said Meyer. “We have to get better and we will. We’re going to get some things corrected.”
Meyer said some of the corrections could come in the scheme.
“We expect more out of our corner play than that,” said Meyer. “That’s one of the areas that we’re going to have to improve greatly and also maybe change up some coverages and do some things to give those guys a chance or recruit or develop. That’s an area that’s sub-par right now and we have to get that fixed quickly.”
The corners weren’t the only ones that had a rough game. Florida’s offensive line didn’t have one of its better efforts and that showed in Tebow’s stat line. He completed only 17 of his 33 passes for 154 yards and he rarely had time to look downfield. His longest completion of the game was 20 yards. Michigan combined good pressure from the front four with a couple of new blitz packages that Meyer said the Gators hadn’t seen before.
Then there were the problems in the red zone. The Gators blew a chance to take a 21-14 lead in the second quarter after a 66-yard run by Percy Harvin gave Florida the ball on the Michigan 14. Two more running plays gave the Gators a first down at the Michigan three but Florida self-destructed. After Tebow was stopped for a one-yard loss on first down, Tebow threw an apparent touchdown pass to Harvin but the Gators were flagged for an illegal formation.
“We told the officials it is an unusual formation,” said Meyer, who added that his players said they had seven on the line of scrimmage, not the six that the officials called. “It’s called an unbalanced formation.”
Meyer said he will look at the film to see who’s right, adding that, “If he[official did make a mistake I will be extremely upset with that one.”
Tebow tried the middle of the field on the next play but Harvin couldn’t come up with a catch of his low throw. On third down, Michigan brought the house and sacked Tebow. On fourth down, the Wolverines blocked a 35 yard field goal attempt by Joey Ijjas.
“Those are momentum shifts in a game that you can’t have,” said Meyer. “Teams that play well score in the red zone. We didn’t do that today.”
Florida also gave up the opening possession of the second half when Michigan tried a pop-up kick just over the first line of blockers. It was the third time the Wolverines had tried it in the game. The other two times, a Gator was there to make the catch. This time, the Gators let the ball hit the ground and Michigan recovered at the Florida 37. It took seven plays for Michigan to expand its 21-14 halftime lead to 28-14.
Florida answered that touchdown with a 56-yard scoring drive that was completed by a one-yard Tebow run for a touchdown and after Hart fumbled into the Florida end zone on the ensuing Michigan drive, Florida went 80 yards in eight plays to tie the game 28-28.
Meyer had to dig into his bag of tricks to keep that 80-yard drive alive. He called a pass out of punt formation from the Florida 23 with a freshman punter (Henry) throwing to a freshman tight end (Hernandez). Harvin would follow that up with a 44-yard run and the touchdown came on a 19-yard pass from Tebow to Bubba Caldwell with 1:26 left.
Florida had the momentum at this juncture, but here is where Florida’s immaturity showed up again. Instead of stopping Michigan cold after the kickoff, the Wolverines drove for a field goal.
Florida had a chance to seize the momentum of the game again when Mike Pouncey intercepted a Henne pass that Jermaine Cunningham batted in the air. The Gators went 34 yards in five plays, scoring on a 10-yard reverse by Harvin, to go ahead 35-31 with 5:49 left in the game but the Florida defense couldn’t contain the Wolverines, who drove 67 yards in four plays with Henne hitting Arrington for 18 yards and the touchdown that proved to be the game-winner.
“The deflator is when you go ahead and score with the fake punt and the drive,” said Meyer. “Great teams kind of feed off of one another and we weren’t able to do that. You have to answer score for score.”
Florida still wasn’t out of it but they couldn’t protect Tebow and therefore there was no miracle rally at the end. A mature team would have found a way to come back. The Gators had no miracles on this day.
It was one of those take a step backward kind of days. After the two steps forward during that four-game November winning streak, the Gators took the step backward. Meyer said the step back has a lot to do with maturity.
“Last year we graduated a bunch of players and a bunch of players moved on to the National Football League and we kind of felt like we had some answers early on and it took us awhile to figure out that we don’t,” he said. “Some young guys that we were counting on to play were not living up to the standards that we expect and I’m hoping that changes.
“Our goal is to be the NE Patriots of college football. I make that real clear to our players and I talk to them all the time about that. You see a guy like Randy Moss go in there and he’s a model citizen that plays his tail off and hugs his teammates after he scores and that’s kind of appealing to me. That’s what we want to be and we have enough personnel to get that going if we just take care of each other and have great chemistry. That comes with maturity.”
Maturity had everything to do with the way Michigan played. Those Michigan seniors didn’t want Lloyd Carr to leave the game with a loss, so they played hard and played their hearts out. They played with fire and the kind of maturity you expect of seniors.
When Meyer met Carr at midfield to congratulate him after the game, Carr offered consolation to his younger counterpart.
“He made a comment to me and said you know what someday you’re going to retire and your guys are going to play as hard as my guys played,” Meyer recalled.
Someday in the near future, long before he retires, Meyer is going to get his team to play with the kind of maturity Michigan had Tuesday. Michigan had it. Florida didn’t and that’s the story of a lost Florida opportunity.