PD’s Postulations: Thoughts on the Florida Gators-LSU Game

I’m not going to write about the game today. This is Monday; trash day is Thursday. We all saw it. No need to relive the ugliness, and no need to analyze what isn’t there. Ed Ogre-on talking about the “win” after the game looked like a school boy who just found a deposit bottle. Only this “win” was worth less than a ten cent refund. And I put “win” in parentheses because LSU did nothing to win the game, except add the jet sweep to their laughably simplistic offensive play rotation. But the Tiger offense made Doug Nussmeier’s effort on the Florida side look like a rotting corpse. With just as much imagination, creativity and aggressiveness as a cup of cold chicken broth. To borrow from one of my favorite cartoonists, if Nuss were a conductor writing a piece of classical music, his assistant would whisper, “Shhh! The maestro is decomposing.”

This week’s column, and as a direct result of the game-of-the-living-dead, is about the program.

Uncoordinated

I don’t know if we have the worst offensive coordinator in the country.

I don’t know if we have the worst defensive coordinator in the country.

But we positively, beyond any shadow of a doubt have the absolute worst combination of offensive and defensive coordinators in the country.

Randy Shannon and Doug Nussmeier are currently locked in an epic battle to prove which one of them is the biggest coward in college football.

Yes, I used the word “coward” to describe the quality of two football coordinators’ execution (and to borrow from another great humorist, I’m in favor of it)

The word “gutless” is a bit too narrow, and “painfully conservative” implies that there is at least somewhere in the mix a plan to win. Neither Randy nor Doug has a plan to win: only not to lose. That isn’t Florida football and it has to change. And Saturday proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that those two will not change their approach, so Jim McElwain must change his coordinators.

Because I don’t care how great the talent is on the field, Florida will NEVER be a great team again with those two running the offense and defense. I do have faith that Mac will get this fixed in the long run, but I don’t think there is any way he can do it without firing both of these guys.

I said earlier in the season that we have an identity problem. Well, there can be no more doubt as to why that is. Because we have two coordinators with blank slates for identities. And they seem stubbornly determined not to let anyone chalk up their blank slates, either. It’s more than just a hunch that Mac has been putting the pressure on Nuss to get aggressive and stop calling plays like we are afraid of our own shadow, and that he has in fact directly intervened in the play calling at times the last two weeks, which made the difference in two needlessly close games. Just as clearly is that Nuss swung the pendulum back as far as it goes Saturday to the game plan and play book of the brave, brave Sir Robin.

Offensive coordinators should not need to be micromanaged. Nuss requires far more than micromanagement. He needs his hand held. And when you reach that point, the person holding his hand – Mac – needs to lead him by the hand right out the door.

The Head Coach’s Job

It is easy for the passing fan to put all of the program’s current issues on the head coach. But I caution that this is an easy way out of thinking the thing through. It’s an inch-deep, one-note conclusion that leads only to a permanent coaching merry-go-round like they have had in Knoxville for so many years.

To go more than a layer deep into the issues, consider that the head coach’s job is to manage the program. Unless he is one who decides to coordinate the offense or defense himself, it is not the head man’s job to meddle in such things on a micro level. He sets the tone, the game plan, the larger strategy, and sometimes has direct input to situational planning and drive scripting, but it’s the job of the coordinator to devise and operate the offense within the construct of the head coach’s vision.

That simply isn’t being done. On defense, but particularly on offense. And it likely only shows up more on offense because the defense has a lot more play makers on their side of the ball. Because neither our offense nor our defense are being put in position to make plays.

Mac did a great job – and absolutely great job, bordering on jaw-dropping, in fact – managing the program in his first two years. There is no other way to view it without stretching the definition of self-deceit to uncharted territory. This year, he has not done a great job. He has struggled to manage the program, for sure. And yet…yes, “and yet”…you have to view the context with a more critical eye than just looking at results to get your feet set properly here.

What would this season look like today if not for the avalanche of bad things that have happened beyond Mac’s control? It’s no stretch to see Florida sitting at 6-0, in the top 10 right now, possibly top 5 – even though that would be over-ranked, it’s not out of the question – if not for the avalanche. And I ask you, what could he have done and what could he do now to change things?

He can’t go back in a time machine and un-stupid all the suspended players. And no, in case you were wondering, no coach is capable of, nor legally permitted to, monitor the personal financial transactions of his players. So no, this was not a preventable fiasco. He can’t wave a magic wand and un-injure any players. He lost the quarterback of the offense AND the defense to season-ending injuries. One after playing less than a full game, and one before the season even started.

And make no mistake: the quarterback of this team in 2017 is and was always going to be Luke Del Rio. I said it since Spring, that unless Franks makes some really big strides before the season starts – or early in the season – that LDR was the only guy we had who can lead us to another East crown and be competitive in the SEC title game. Like everyone else, I wanted Franks to be the guy, because his tools are so great and his ceiling so high, but with every passing month, that became more and more a pipe dream. We now know just how far off that pipe dream was.

And I don’t want to pile on the kid. He’s a great kid of great character and he puts everything he has into the program. He’s a great teammate as well and his brothers love and respect him. But he has been here a long time. Two springs, two summers and half way through his second fall season. We should not expect him to be hitting anyone’s Heisman ballot by now, but he should at bare minimum be able to operate the offense. The whole offense – just run the plays, period. Not be a super star, but at least be able and trusted to run the plays. He is neither trusted nor able to run the offense. To date, the only thing he has been able to do is hand off and throw wide receiver screens. After the Tennessee game, Mac was asked what Franks showed him with that game-winning touchdown bomb. He said he showed him that he can throw it a long, long way. His fans said he was being folksy and funny, and his critics said the same thing, but with a different tone and insulting adjectives. Well we now know he was not being folksy or funny. He was being literal.

And the critics come back then to blaming Mac for not developing the quarterback. Forgetting apparently that the quarterbacks coach for the Gators is not Jim McElwain. It’s Doug Nussmeier. Again. They also forget the words of the greatest Gator of all, Steve Spurrier. And they are forgetting the history of failure Spurrier had in developing great quarterbacks.

Yes, Spurs developed Shane Matthews, Danny Wuerffel and Rex Grossman, three of the best signal callers in SEC history, even NCAA history. But he also failed to make great quarterbacks out of Doug Johnson, Jesse Palmer, Brock Berlin or Noah Brindise, and failed to make even serviceable stand-in quarterbacks out of Luke Bencie, Antwan Chiles, Bobby Sabelhaus, Tim Olmstead, Kevin McKinnon and Chris Stephens. And there were a lot of Parade All-Americans and even a couple national players of the year in that group of abject failures. Spurrier said himself in the mid-‘90s when asked why Sabelhaus did not pan out, and he remarked rather curtly that he can’t just make a great quarterback out of anyone he wants to.

Neither can Mac. Especially when he’s not the quarterbacks coach (Spurrier was the QB coach at Florida). He has taken a ton of heat over his Clarabelle comment, that he could teach his dog to play quarterback. Well the many different translations of that comment have been bent into fake news through an often intentional game of telephone. What Mac actually said is this, in full context: “You got to understand this. I believe I can win with my dog Clarabelle. That’s the attitude. There’s good players here. That’s just our responsibility to get that going.” He never said he could develop Clarabelle into a great quarterback, or that he could field a dynamic offense with Clarabelle taking snaps on all fours. He said he could win.

Guess what? He *has* won. A lot. And I would argue that he has done it with the equivalent of his dog Clarabelle at quarterback for the vast majority of those wins and two championships in two years.

And he and the Gators still control their own destination in year 3.

On Discipline

Here is another issue Mac has had in managing the program this year. We play like the stupidest team in America. We gave away that game to LSU so many times. On the final series that mattered, we had ourselves in position after a shanked punt to make a few modest runs or one decent throw and kick the winning field goal with no time left. But one of our players lazily skipped by the punter like a school girl on the way to the park, allowing the standard punter’s flop to go into effect. The next punt pinned us deep in the shadow of our own goal posts. Game over for this offense at that point. More than a dozen similar plays happened Saturday that were indicative of the lack of individual discipline on this team.

Maddening. Unthinkable. Inexcusable. Right?

Sure it is. All of those things. But what it also is is commonplace at Florida, whether the year is down or dynasty. Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer won three national titles and 9 SEC titles between them, and they were consistently one of the most undisciplined teams in the nation. Every single year, Spurrier’s and Meyer’s Florida teams led or nearly led the nation – certainly the SEC – in penalties and penalty yards. Used to make both of them throw apoplectic fits on the sidelines every week.

Maddening. Unthinkable. Inexcusable. Right?

Big difference is that we were always winning big in those days. Mac’s teams have been winning the whole time, too, but not big. Therein lies the perception gap. And the reality gap, too. Because getting 10-yard holding penalties on consecutive 1^st down plays, as sometimes happened with Spurrier and Meyer teams, can be overcome when you have the best offense in the nation. One year against Georgia, we had to try to score a touchdown on three consecutive plays because the offense kept making mistakes and drawing a flag. And Spurrier just kept running the exact same play – a middle pass to Doering – for a touchdown until it finally stuck with no flags. They were so god that they could run the same play three times in a row, from farther away from the goal line every time, the defense knows it’s coming every time, and still score a touchdown every single time.

We don’t have that luxury with this offense anymore. And Nuss has no good plays for any down and distance, so even 5-yard penalties are devastating now.

The point here is that winning doesn’t change the lack of discipline. Doesn’t change the frustration among the fans and coaches. But it makes the anger and anguish go away. Because we win. Big. The “big” part unfortunately is part of the deal.

The New Normal…NOT

There has been a lot of talk lately about how this year’s struggling offense is the new normal for Florida football. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because of the word “new”. There is nothing new about this.

A struggling offense has been the norm at Florida since the 2008 season’s national championship game ended. The 2009 offense put up yards and points, but significantly less than the rest of the Tebow/Meyer era, and it was a major struggle game to game, down to down. In 2010, the offense went straight down the crapper and has never come back. This is not new. Please do not be lulled into a false sense that Mac created this. He has actually maintained and even nudged the offense up a little when you consider he inherited only 4 offensive linemen, no receivers or running backs and has not had a quarterback for more than a couple games in all three years.

So let’s please not fall back on clichés is they don’t even apply. Nothing about this is new. And nothing about this is normal, either. There is no page in the Mac book of coaching strategy that talks about having a moribund offense and a team of players who sleep walk through games and play down to the level of competition each week. These are problems he is working to fix. And they comprise some of his toughest decisions as a professional. Because his character and style is to allow unwanted assistant coaches to finish the season and seek work elsewhere, so that their departure can be seen as taking a better opportunity rather than getting canned. But it is not likely that is possible for all the assistants (and I count four of them) that have to be let go either during or immediately after this season concludes.

The Future’s So Bright

Let’s do a little resume checking for a second before looking to the future. Because the noise is the Gator system right now is very warranted, but hysterically misdirected. Some of it is trying to get Mac fired. Absurd. And here’s only a little angle on why it’s so absurd.

Coach 1 has been running his formerly national elite program for TEN years. He has had TEN years to get the recruiting top shelf, to get his systems, culture and vision deeply entrenched, and most of all to ensure that he has fool-proof succession planning for every position on the depth chart, especially quarterback. Coach 1 loses one player – ONE player in Game 1 – and his team is now completely helpless and hopeless, is 1-3 and headed for a nightmare season. This should never happen because your team loses ONE player, especially in the ACC. Better fire Jimbo Fisher.

Coach 2 has been running his formerly national elite program for three years. He has been touted as one of the greatest coach in college football history and NFL history, something not just elite, but special. He was billed on hiring day to be the next great college legend who would bring annual runs to the national title back to his alma mater. In his first two years, he has failed to win a national title, a conference title or a division title. He is 1-4 against the school’s two big rivals, and only 1-1 in bowl games. And he just got embarrassed by losing the cross-state rival for the 2^nd time in 3 years, and that rival program is in a major downswing. Better fire Jim Harbaugh.

Sure Jimbo has a national title under his belt, but even FSU fans are starting to chirp about how that was nothing but a mediocre coach riding the Winston-Cook show to two year island of great results in a ten-year ocean of mediocrity. And for all the hype and media love and fan envy around Jim Harbaugh, in Power 5 college football, he still has not. Won. A. Single. Thing.

I mention this to peak at the impact of timing and perspective. Take the current years – or several years – out of context of their entire careers, and they look pretty miserable. They are given the benefit of the doubt because of their brief – and I mean to say very brief – successes in the past. Yes, brief. Jimbo is basically 2-for-10, and Harbaugh in four years at Stanford only had one good year; it was a great year for them in 2010, but they still only finished second in their own division. His first two years at Michigan he won nothing but ten games.

Mac won 10 games in each of his first two seasons (yes, including the lost hurricane game), but he actually won two division titles those years, too. Mac did it while overcoming a mountain of crazy obstacles and adversity, while Harbaugh’s path has been as smooth as a baby’s behind. Yet the prevailing perspective is that Harbaugh has been killing it since 2015 and Mac has just been staggering along, barely surviving.

Yes, it has a lot to do with 9-straight years of boring, struggling offense. But it has more to do with simple perspective, patience, vision and timing.

Because I am here to tell you that when the Florida Gators class of 2018 hits campus, all this goes away.

Maybe not immediately, but very soon.

GatorCountry has published multiple stories as well as insider threads about elite recruits reaffirming their commitment to UF and this class. There is a tendency for fans to come unhinged with fear after any loss or ugly win, fear that that the whole class is about to defect. But that simply isn’t the case. No matter what coaches stay or go, Mac is going to be here for a long time. And it is Mac and the Florida program – the Florida family – that these kids have committed to.

And even though this LSU game couldn’t have gone any worse from a recruiting standpoint, short of Florida being blown out, the one really good thing that screams loudly to recruits after this type of game (and the games we’ve had every week this season) is how much opportunity there is for true freshmen to start from Day 1.

Matt Corral “MattyIce” knows he will be the starter in his first game as a true freshman. No doubt in his mind, I can assure you (none in ours, either). Every wide receiver in this class knows they have only their fellow class of 2018 signees to beat out for the two receiver spots lining up with Tyrie Cleveland next year as true freshmen.

Safeties? Linebackers? Tight ends? Linemen on both sides of the ball? Every single signee this year knows they can start next season as true freshmen, maybe from the first snap. Cornerbacks and running backs are the only ones who see any real competition on campus, because we have true freshmen already starring at all 3 positions, but we play a lot of guys in rotation at DB and RB when we can, and they too will have every chance in the world to start as true frosh if they can beat them out.

And like the pain and anguish over the undisciplined play, the boring offense, the angst over play calling…all of this goes away in 2018.

I can’t make any promises, because Lord knows the last several years have proven that there is literally nothing under the sun that can’t happen to deter our progress. But I am extremely confident. Tebow’s The Promise level confident. Folks have said, and I have said, “Just wait until Franks is running the offense…IF…” And it’s been that big “IF” that was always the variable. So far that “IF” hasn’t happened, and I don’t think it will. But with Corral, there is no “IF”, or even a lowercase “if”….there is only “when”.

Imagine if you will, the 2018 Gator offense. MattyIce, with the FULL playbook at his disposal, throwing to Tyrie Cleveland, JaMarr Chase, Jacob Copeland, Kadarius Toney and some tight ends to be named later (in 2019, Tyquan Thornton will take Tyrie’s place, for an even faster deep threat), handing off to Malik Davis, Lemical Perine, Adarius Lemons and one or more of Dameon Pierce and Iverson Clement. And the offensive line that is coming together so nicely now will have even more beef and talent while only losing one cog in 2018, in the form of early NFL draft entry Tez Ivey.

All we need is someone to call the plays. And I am very confident we will.

Ohhh the points will come, Ray. They will definitely come.