The Gators had been working endlessly to prepare for the new helmet technology that allows one coach to communicate with a player on the football field. While other teams across the country have struggled with the crowd noise and malfunctioning radios, Florida struggled with communicating to each other on the gridiron, which led to UF getting beat soundly on both sides of the ball.
“Could have been a lot better,” junior linebacker Shemar James said on the helmet technology. “There were times where I feel that I could have communicated better to the back end, to the D-line, but all this stuff can be fixed, just minor things, better communication, verbal and non-verbal communication, and then just get your hand in the dirt and be ready to play ball.”
Co-defensive coordinator Ron Roberts has preached overcommunicating in defensive meetings, but that wasn’t the case on Saturday.
“Overcommunication, that’s what we always preach in the defensive meetings and I feel like we could have communicated a little more and got guys lined up a little quicker,” James said. “We just ended up getting beat.”
Florida was awful in 2023 at allowing explosive passing plays and that continued in week one of the 2024 season as Miami’s Cam Ward connected on 10 different passing plays of at least 20 yards. The primary factor here was the lack of pass rush from Florida’s defensive line.
“There was just a lot of explosive plays that was on our mess-up, not nothing that they did special but more on our end. The biggest aspect is just going back, watching film and seeing what we need to do better, seeing how we need to communicate better,” redshirt junior Justus Boone said postgame.
The other area Florida clearly lacked some level of communication was on third downs, where the Gators completed just one third down in four quarters and failed to complete one in the entire first half.
“Third downs were very tough today,” redshirt junior Jake Slaughter said postgame. “I think they did a very good job disguising issues I think we need to communicate better, I think we need to execute, at the end of the day, you’ve got to block them, and hats off to their defense, they created issues for us.”
The lack of communication was the theme of the postgame press conference. Florida believed the helmet technology would be a good thing for them, but it didn’t go smoothly in week one.
“It comes down to good communication, good execution. At times out there we did not do that,” Billy Napier said postgame.
Florida has the week to prepare for their next matchup against Samford in week two.