Podcast: Recapping the Florida Gators 42-20 win over USF

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David: What’s up folks of Gator Country? This is none other than your boy David Soderquist, along with Andrew Spivey. Week 2 of college football is in the books, and Florida made the work look easy in the first half against USF, but the second half had its dramatic moments here. We’ll get all into that here in a second, but first, man, I have to go ahead and put it out there. Go, Jacksonville State.

Andrew: Wow. After Florida it was a good day. My South Alabama Jaguars come from behind to beat Bowling Green. For the first time in our short program history, we’re 2-0 on the year.

David: There you go.

Andrew: Go, Jags. Then I get into bed, and I was watching the Braves game. Unfortunately, we lost. Then I see the Jacksonville State thing, and holy cow. First of all, Miami barely pulls it out. Notre Dame barely pulls it out. Then Florida State loses on, I mean, prevent D. Come on. There’s ways to lose football games, but that, the way Tennessee lost on the heave to cleave, there’s no reason for that. You practice that every day in practice, every game. You play prevent D. Nobody gets behind you. They did. Florida State’s not back. Miami’s not back. All of that lies, they’re lies.

South Florida, by the way, they’re one of the worst teams I’ve seen in a long time. That is a bad, bad football team. I don’t know what Jeff Scott’s doing. I thought Jeff Scott would do much better at South Florida. Charlie Strong didn’t do well there at all. Taggart was okay. They’re bad. UCF would run them out the building.

David: Yeah. We’ll get into where Emory Jones turns the ball over here. The first turnover they were right there at the goal line. On, what? Was it 3rd or 4th down? You snap the ball over the quarterback’s head, and it pushes you back to kick a field goal. You should have had seven points there. As far as you going with this FSU thing, I don’t understand. I’m not going to talk too much about it, because we can talk about it at the end of the podcast, but you’re four minutes and 30 seconds into that game. You’re up by 10 points. You should not lose that game. Somehow, some way, Florida State still finds ways to lose games. Now, you can’t give us any Georgia Southern jokes anymore, so that makes it even better.

Andrew: The killer instinct. We’ll talk about this in a second, because it pisses me off with Florida. There’s a killer instinct about good programs. I mean, not good programs, good teams. Where when you get an opponent down, you just step on their throat. You step on their throat, and you make them quit. I don’t know that Georgia did that to UAB, but, yeah, they did do that to UAB in a way. You want to see that. Again, Florida State, they allowed Jacksonville State, who is a not good football team, to stick around, and guess what? They found a way.

UAB, that was their everything. That was their championship right there, and UAB had just blew Jacksonville State out. You see that, and you just wonder. Where is the, I don’t know. Where are things for them? For me, that’s a lack of culture. A program with an identity and a program who’s trending up don’t lose those football games. These are Norvell’s guys for the most part. These are guys that Norvell is bringing in, and they’re starting that mentality. It’s not good.

David: We also found out that Notre Dame is a little overrated as well. Should have probably lost to Toledo, but wound up pulling it off. Now that Florida State thought they were all high and mighty, almost knocking off the #9 team. The #9 team did not look like the #9 team at all. As a matter of fact, the #9 team looks like they should be the #50 team in the nation.

Andrew: It’s Notre Dame every year. Every year they say they’re good. Every year they’re supposed to be back, and every year they’re not back. Just isn’t good. They’re not a good football team. We talk about Miami. They’re really bad. They’re really bad. 25-13, they barely beat App State. App State’s not a walkover anymore, but still. 25-23, excuse me. Not a good game for them. They’re not a good program either. Then Florida’s opponent next week, Alabama beat Mercer, 48-14. Nick Saban was pissed. He was pissed. 48-14, you win by 34 points. He used the rat poison. It’s rat poison. The guys are thinking too much and looking at the scoreboard. They didn’t look good on Saturday at all. Like Florida, they found a way to win. They came out a little more healthy, but not fully healthy either. We’ll get into that in a minute. Both teams are coming into this game undefeated, but with some injuries.

David: As pissed off as Nick Saban is, he’s coming into Week 3 playing Florida at home, and he’s this pissed off. You’ve got some issues. I can have a million words for that right now.

Andrew: I always say you want Bama to blow out the team they play before, because you don’t want Saban pissed. You don’t want Saban with any fuel in his fire.

When I see Nick Saban get made for blowing out a team 34 points, when he thinks he should have blew them out by 60, that’s one of the head coaches that I would love to have on my team. We’re going to discuss this game. You had USF on their heels already. 35-3 at halftime. Even in my mind, I was saying, this game’s going to be like 60-3 or 70-3. Then you come out after halftime and only score one touchdown?

Andrew: You got beat in the second half. 17-7. I mean, obviously, that’s taking a trophy for winning the second half, but if you’re USF, I’m sure Jeff Scott went into the locker room, and he said, go out and win the second half. That’s all you can control. Win the second half. They did.

You look at Florida after halftime. Interception, interception, turnover on downs, turnover on downs, touchdown, punt, end of the game. It was 42-20, and nowhere in that game did I think it was close and that USF was going to win that football game. USF is one of the worst football teams that I’ve seen in a long time at the Division I level. They’re bad. 283 yards total offense in the game. They’re just bad. They’re not a good football team. They’re not going to win very many games. I would say they win less than four game. Probably two or three games this year. They’re a bad football team.

David: No. You saw the same mistakes from Emory Jones in the second half. The first half, he was fine. Looked great. Looked like he was finally kind of turning around the corner a little bit and maybe just had a bad game. Maybe had a bad first game against an FAU team that, obviously, we should have beat. Then you see the same mistakes. He’s staring down his receivers. He’s throwing to people in triple coverage.

He gets to the goal line, Anthony Richardson brings you all the way down to, what was it, the three or four yard line, with a 1st down, and you can’t even punch it in. You make crappy decisions at the end of that drive, and then you throw it in triple coverage on the 4th down play, which could have been another interception. You throw two more interceptions, needless interceptions, for no reason. One should have been a pick six, and if it was against Alabama, it would have been a pick six. You just saw the same mistakes from Emory Jones.

He had an excellent first half, but, good grief, dude, the second half, it looked like night and day. You had good Emory Jones in one half, bad Emory Jones in the second. As in his press conference, he said he looked at his mistakes on film, and he’s going to improve, he’s going to do all this. It looked like he did from the first half. The second half I just was like, good grief. The only reason that game was even close was because of those turnovers.

Andrew: 4 for 8 in the second half. 4 for 8.

David: 4 for 8, two interceptions, and how many yards did he have in the second half?

Andrew: 27 yards. He threw one that was behind the line of scrimmage that went for -5 yards. Here’s the thing for me. I don’t know that I’m giving up on Emory Jones, but I’ve seen enough of Emory Jones for there to be a quarterback competition. Now, there’s not a quarterback controversy this week, because Anthony Richardson on his long 80-yard run pulls his hammy. He strained his hammy.

I’ve been around the game enough to know that that’s not something you want out of your quarterback, especially a guy that is mobile, who likes to run. He’s questionable for the game is what we heard after all the tests on Sunday. We’re taping this on Sunday, so as of Sunday night, he’s questionable. He’s probably going to be limited this week in practice, and we’ll see how much he’s able to go. I’m not a doctor. I obviously don’t have the opportunity to see Anthony’s scans. Wouldn’t know if I saw them anyway, what that would mean.

Still, you’re able to see that, and you say, this is going to be Emory Jones’ game for the most part. Anthony may have a little bit here, but there’s nothing that I’ve seen so far from Emory that gives me confidence he can do it. Now, maybe Dan Mullen is throwing us all for a freaking loop, and Emory has just done nothing in the first two games on purpose. Maybe. I’ve seen it before. Wouldn’t be smart, but maybe. Maybe he comes out and looks like a totally different guy against Alabama. If he will, I’ll come back and eat my words.

For Dan to come out after the game and his quotes were just, they were that. When asked if Emory Jones was his guy, he said, “Well, yes, why wouldn’t he be?” He comes back, and he says, “We’re grateful we have two quarterbacks. They’re both doing really well.” Then he goes on this long list of things of what Anthony does wrong. I get it. You don’t want Anthony’s head to get too big. He needs to continue to improve, and nobody’s saying Anthony Richardson’s where he needs to be as a college quarterback to be playing every game and to win a national title. Nobody’s saying that. I get it in a way. Emory needs to be coddled a little bit. His confidence needs to be boosted up a little bit.

At some point, whether it’s to the media or whether it’s to the fans, or whether it’s just behind the scenes, Anthony Richardson has deserved the opportunity to lead this football team. This football team is a different football team when Anthony Richardson is in the game at quarterback. That’s just the truth. There’s no way of hiding it. We always say the eye test is everything. I’m a guy, you can throw every number at me in the world, I don’t care. I want to see what my eyes tell me. My eyes aren’t going to lie to me, and my eyes are telling me Anthony Richardson gives this team a better chance to win football games.

David: He went 3 for 3 for 152 yards, two passing touchdowns. Also, four rushes for 115 yards and a touchdown. Averaging 50.7 yards per pass and averaging 28.8 yards per rush, with a passer rating of 745.6. That kid is a freak of an athlete. You know what? All the offense that he had in that game was over one third of the total offense of the whole team in seven plays. Seven plays he had over one third of the offense for that team. You can allude to last week. He did the same thing. He had the same magic.

There’s one thing about playing teams that you should beat and pulling off great plays like that, but for somebody, it doesn’t even matter what opponent it is, for somebody to be that consistent and pull off that much yardage, even if it is against an FCS team or a lower rated team, that is really hard to do. Consistently, that’s really hard to do. There was a stat posted by ESPN that said Anthony Richardson is the first quarterback to pass over 100 yards and rush over 100 yards in a game since Tim Tebow came on campus. That’s impressive. I don’t care. I’ve seen enough in two games to know that Anthony Richardson’s the better quarterback right now. Obviously. He’s 100% the better quarterback.

Like you said, Andrew, maybe Dan Mullen’s throwing us for a loop. Maybe he knows Emory Jones. He’s one of those guys that schemes around the strengths of his quarterbacks, so I think honestly he’s going to come into the Alabama game with a different scheme and a different plan. Obviously. It’s Alabama, you got to have a different kind of scheme or whatever to play.

Andrew: We haven’t seen the kitchen sink of the playbook.

David: We haven’t. No. We haven’t. But what concerns me the most is the mistakes that Emory Jones makes are what rookies do in their first year as a freshman starting, and he’s been in the system for almost four years. That’s really concerning. Now, it could be the fact that Dan Mullen said, let’s try this. Just go ahead and try this, see if it works. We’re up 35-3 here. Let’s try this and see if it works. You don’t know what he’s telling Emory Jones on the sidelines. Emory Jones may be doing things that he’s not comfortable with, and he’s like, okay, and he’s throwing it in triple coverage and there’s two interceptions and all that.

You notice at the beginning of the game, Emory Jones wasn’t making those kind of mistakes at the beginning of the game, because the game was technically still on the line. 0-0, and you’ve got to build yourself to where you can make mistakes, right? Maybe he got a little bit more comfortable and started trying new things. We don’t know that. We have no clue. I think there’s an upside to Emory Jones. I just don’t trust his quarterback IQ right now. I don’t, because I haven’t seen enough.

Andrew: The thing for me is this. Alabama’s going to come into this game, Nick Saban’s not stupid. You don’t win like he does. He’s not stupid. He’s going to go into this game, and whether it be Emory or whether it be Anthony, the ball’s going to have to go in the air for Florida to come out with a win on Saturday. Period. End of discussion. If the ball doesn’t go in the air on Saturday, and Florida doesn’t throw for 250, 300, Florida’s not winning this football game. Because Alabama is going to stop the running game. They’re going to. That is going to be their mission.

Emory Jones and Anthony Richardson are going to have a spy on them every single solitary play. Unlike FAU and unlike South Florida, they have SEC linebackers that can run with you. They got dudes who can run with you. I don’t know that I trust Emory on that, to throw the ball. I say this respectfully, but he’s thinking too much out there. I don’t know why that is. I don’t know if that’s he doesn’t trust himself, he doesn’t understand something. I don’t know what it is, but he’s thinking way too much.

He’s late on everything. You saw the comeback route that should have been a pick six. The ball needs to be thrown five seconds beforehand. The ball should have been hitting him as he turned around, not you throwing it as you turn around. The interception that was into triple coverage, that ball has to be thrown away or to someone else. You had another checkdown receiver. Check it down. Be done with it. You have to do that stuff. He had the 4th down play where it was in the endzone, and he overthrew Elknis. You can’t throw that ball there. That ball has to be thrown up in bounds, so Nick can go get it. That’s your tight end. Go get it. You can’t throw it out of bounds there.

There’s so many things that concern me, as in things that aren’t fixable mechanic wise, the mental part of things. That’s the part that concerns me and scares me is things are so slow for him right now. Things are not slowing down to the point where it’s just habit. It seems like everything is going 100 miles an hour for him. Those are the things that are concerning to me.

The offensive line, for the most part, played well. They did rotate a lot of guys, but you did see some pressure. If you seen pressure from USF, guess what’s coming?

David: A freight train. That’s what’s coming.

Andrew: Yeah.

David: You’re right. There’s some drives where I’ve seen Emory Jones in this FAU, USF game where he played great. He would drive the team down three minutes, get a score, get a touchdown, get off the field. I mean, that shot he took to Xzavier Henderson, it was a 50/50 shot.

Andrew: That was the most beautiful ball that I’ve seen Emory Jones throw.

David: It was accurate.

Andrew: Yeah. It was Xzavier and nobody.

David: Yeah. That’s the kind of stuff you like to see. From what I’ve seen from Emory Jones, he throws the deep ball pretty accurately.

Andrew: Right.

David: The problem is you’ve got to get him schemed enough to where, like Kyle Trask, and I’m going to compare him to Kyle Trask, because Kyle Trask was an elite quarterback in himself. You got to get him to where he’s got so much of a familiarity with his receivers that he’s able to hold onto the football, within two seconds knows where to go with it, at least. Can go through those reads within two seconds. Knows where to go with it or throw it out of bounds or whatever he has to do, dump it off to a running back, if he’s getting pressured, whatever. You don’t see that. It’s like a Treon Harris kind of moment. It’s giving me flashbacks almost of where Treon Harris would sit there with the football for five, six seconds, then eventually just throw it out of bounds or take a sack. You don’t want to see that. Or throw an interception.

Andrew: Not to interrupt you here. Again, this isn’t fair to say with Emory, but I’m just saying. The elite quarterbacks, the experienced quarterbacks, 9 times out of 10, when they get to the line of scrimmage, and they see the defense, they know where they’re going with the ball. I don’t know that that’s the case there. They trust their guys that they’re going to be there. I talk about the comeback route. You have to trust that on that comeback route, was it Xzavier?

David: I think.

Andrew: I believe.

David: I think it was Xzavier.

Andrew: Or Shorter. One of the two. You have to trust those guys that they’re going to make that route, and they’re going to be there on that comeback route. You have to trust it. Guess what? Throw the ball. If they’re not there, that’s on them. Now, us fans, we’re going to gripe at you, because we only saw you throw an interception. Behind the scenes, you’re going to be okay. When you throw the ball late like that, there’s nothing good that’s ever going to come of a comeback route that’s thrown late. Nothing ever good. A cornerback is flying up with an opportunity to take it back the other way. It’s never good.

Even the stuff across the middle is late. That’s the stuff that’s going to get you in trouble is that. When you go against a team like Bama, who is going to make everything speed up even further, that’s where my concern comes of, oh lord, it’s speeding up even faster. He was already not comfortable when it was slower. Where is it going to be?

David: Yeah. You bring up a good point with that. As I alluded to earlier, Dan Mullen likes to scheme around his quarterback’s strengths and his weaknesses. We’ve seen Dan Mullen do it with way lesser talent. Nick Fitzgerald was not a highly rated quarterback. Dak Prescott wasn’t a highly rated quarterback.

Andrew: He won football games with Feleipe Franks.

David: Right. If you can win football games with Feleipe Franks, you can win football games with Emory Jones. I expect the game plan coming into Week 3 to be a lot different. I think the offense is going to look a lot different, whether it’s bad or good. I don’t know, man. The decisions, like I said, I see from Emory Jones, it’s baffling. At the same time, maybe that’s not what he was supposed to do. Maybe that’s not what he schemed Emory Jones to do in the first place. We’ll find out in Week 3.

Andrew: We used to have a saying around here, and I’m the biggest one who does it. Every game, every big game, Dan Mullen finds a weakness in the team, and you’ll see him go with that. Go back to Mississippi State his first year. Speed option. Mississippi State couldn’t touch it, and he ran it to death. Speed option. The LSU game that year. LSU, for whatever reason, played 10 yards off the ball, and he stand passed, screen passed, them to death. To death. Georgia last year.

David: Wheel route.

Andrew: They couldn’t stop a tight end and a wheel route to save their life, and he wheel routed them and tight ended them to death. Bama last year. They couldn’t stop Kadarius Toney going straight up the middle from his slot position at the slot receiver all game long, and he went back to it. So, there is going to be something in this game that Dan Mullen goes to, and it’s going to look different. I hope that whatever it may be it helps Emory Jones there. If not, the leash has got to be very quick, if Anthony Richardson’s healthy.

You see Gervon Dexter after the game tweeted, and he deleted it, and we all think that was to do with the quarterback thing. I don’t know. We’ll see. You can’t lose the football team over your quarterback position. You can’t. He said after the game it’s not a seniority thing. It’s nothing like that. He picks the best person to win the football game. We’re going to see. I hope it’s Emory Jones, but we’ll see.

David: I always used to say seniority over skill with Dan Mullen, but we’ll see.

Andrew: I’ve said the same thing for a while.

David: It also just depends on Anthony Richardson, the extent of his injury too. If his hamstring is still not 100%, they’re not going to roll him out there.

Andrew: You can’t. What does 50% Anthony Richardson give you? We don’t know.

David: It gives you nothing. It could set him up for an even more extensive injury, to where we may not even have him all year.

Andrew: You tear it off the bone, and you’re in trouble, and you’re gone for the year.

David: Right.

Andrew: While this is a huge game, the games coming up, Jacksonville, that determines whether you get to Atlanta. You have the opportunity to face Alabama twice. Alabama’s going to probably win the West. A&M maybe give them a run. I don’t think so. But you can’t risk the season.

David: Me personally, I even talked to somebody on Twitter about it. I said, look, I would rather Emory Jones play this game, and if Richardson’s hurt, rest him. Don’t put him in the game. I’d rather save him for Georgia, Tennessee, whatever game he’s going to be available for. If you roll Emory Jones out there, and you lose to Alabama, so what? So be it. If you can win with Emory Jones and Anthony Richardson the rest of the year and play them again in the SEC Championship, I’m not mad at that. If Anthony Richardson is hurt, I say don’t play him. I would love to see him play. Don’t get me wrong, but I say don’t play him.

There were some other interesting stats from this game though. There was three players that would average over 10 yards per rush. Anthony Richardson was one of them, 28.8. Dameon Pierce, five rushes for 55 yards, averaging 11 yards per rush. So did Demarkcus Bowman, three rushes, 33 yards, averaging 11 yards per rush. There was three people that averaged over 10 yards per rush this game. That’s the typical Dan Mullen offense, but that’s good to see that Florida is still able to get push against teams that they should get pushes from. I’m curious to see when Alabama comes to town how much of a push they’re going to get. I highly doubt they’re going to be able to run the ball like this against Alabama. You’ve got to be figure there’s got to be some kind of options, some out routes or something like that, that they’re going to set up for Alabama.

Andrew: The wheel route.

David: Yeah. We haven’t seen a lot.

Andrew: You haven’t seen the tight ends get involved. You only had really two, to my memory, and my memory sucks, but Elknis in the endzone was the only to a tight end. What’s really interesting though, after that one drive Dameon Pierce was MIA.

David: Yeah.

Andrew: Mullen said that’s because of the deep running back room and everything else. They did do a lot of rotating on the offensive line. Michael Tarquan played a ton at right tackle. Obviously, Jean Delance hurt his knee, aggravated his knee. We’ll see where he is for the Bama game. Was on crutches after the game, so we’ll see where he’s at for the Bama game. Tarquan played well, I thought. Braun got a lot of run at right tackle, and I thought he played pretty good. Was able to see Will Harrod play a little bit. I know I’m missing somebody. There was a lot of guys that played, so that was good.

Had a lot of guys play on defense. I thought that was another good thing. By the way, props to Jacob Copeland. The man finally went out there. I’ll be honest. I texted you during the game. I said, he would be the first receiver since ’14 to have a 200 yard receiving game. It was crazy. Demarcus Robinson was the last one.

David: D Rob.

Andrew: Yeah. Copeland put it together. I was glad to see that. He had a good game. Like you said, Xzavier Henderson had that beautiful touchdown catch. That was fantastic there. Dameon Pierce had the one catch. Again, overall, there was some good things in the game. It goes back to what we said a little bit, and that is you want to see that killer instinct, that put your foot on the throat. This game should have been 55-0, 60-0, or 60-3, whatever. You want that killer instinct, but there was some good things there.

I thought there was some stuff on defense that was good and some things that were bad as well. I thought Diabate played well. I thought Ty’Ron Hopper played well, for the most part.

David: For the most part. Yeah.

Andrew: Rashad Torrence played well. Kaiir Elam got the first interception of the year there. Zach Carter, him and Jeremiah Moon, those two guys, they just continue to play really, really good ball. Avery Helm, he had some good moments, and then he struggled some. Thought Jadarrius Perkins played really well. I think Jason Marshall, though, definitely has a little bit of that freshman in him, where he’s still learning. He’s taking some chances that maybe he shouldn’t. I’m going to say you got to give the nod to Perkins this week at that corner.

David: I love Jadarrius Perkins, man. He’s consistently, for the past two games, made plays, whether it’s been rushing or passing in coverage. I like Jadarrius Perkins. I think he needs to get more starting time, to be honest, if you ask me. Jason Marshall, obviously, he has the skillset, but he’s got to learn. He’s a freshman guy out there. Chris Steel was one of the guys that was supposed to be tapped to have that position. He transferred to USC. He didn’t really do too hot last night against Stanford. We’ll get into that later.

As far as the receivers, Jacob Copeland, man. He had five receptions for 175 yards and two touchdowns. Averaging 35.5 yards per reception, so that’s fantastic. That’s elite right there, if you want to ask me. There was five other receivers that would average 10 yards per reception. Xzavier Henderson, Justin Shorter, Rick Wells, and Dameon Pierce also would have an average of 10 yards or more per reception. Overall, through the receiving game and all that, it was actually pretty good. Just minus those two bad interceptions. Emory Jones throwing it in triple coverage a couple times. He’s going to have to learn from that. Alabama’s coming up Week 3. Overall, receiving wise, a great game. A great game. I can’t complain.

Defense looked stout. Defensive line played pretty good. I’m not going to say they played elite. They played pretty good. They only had one sack the whole game.

Andrew: A lot of that was USF dinking and dunking, and they were definitely trying to get rid of the ball. McClain did a better job, I felt like, of when the pressure was coming stepping up in the pocket.

David: Yeah. They did have seven tackles for loss. I guess when a quarterback runs, and he rolls out, and he gets tackled, that doesn’t really count as a sack. I guess they count that as a tackle for loss. As long as you can get a loss, or you can get a no gain or a loss on a play, that’s something you like to see from the defensive line there. Like I said, they played good. I think they could have played better, to me. I think I saw a little bit better play from the defensive line last week against FAU, but overall defensive line didn’t play bad.

The good thing is you came out of the game mostly healthy. I’m pretty sure a lot of people out there, and I don’t like to see a player get injured, no matter what, but I’m pretty sure a lot of people, with Delance getting injured, aren’t too upset about that one. Just because of what people say about Delance out there. Anthony Richardson with the hamstring, we’re going to have to see. I’m pretty sure they’ll probably do another MRI, maybe Friday, to look at it further.

Andrew: Yeah. Usually, from my experience with it, from having a couple guys who dealt with that, it’s just ice. It’s recovery, recovery, recovery, and then he’ll try to do some light jogging probably. I would say probably Tuesday or so and see how it is. If it’s still bothering him on Friday, then maybe another MRI. It’s more about letting that calm down, because it’s very easy to tear it off the bone if you push it too much and have it significant. In baseball the one is significant enough that they go on the 15-day DL or IL now, and you miss a couple weeks. You don’t want that to happen. You obviously want to baby it as much as you can. I guess it goes back to this. How much does Dan trust Emory? I think that’ll be kind of what we see a little bit.

David: I’m not going to say the jury’s out on Emory right now, because we’re going to see what happens when they play SEC play. The offense is going to change. The scheme is going to change. Maybe we see a different Emory Jones, who knows?

Andrew: I’ll say this too, as far as Delance goes. I thought Delance had been playing pretty good.

David: He hasn’t been playing bad at all.

Andrew: I thought he’s been playing pretty good overall. I’m glad to see it. I never bash a guy for coming back and trusting yourself. Nobody in the world probably, besides John Hevesy and Jean Delance, trusted that he could come back and get better, but he did. He did. He’s looked better. Now, is if FAU and South Florida? I don’t know. Last year he didn’t even look good against those two teams. More power to him. You have one thing that will be interesting in this game is Bama has Will Anderson, who’s their top outside linebacker/rush end, he possibly could miss the game on Saturday. We’ll see. He had to leave the game early. Some are saying he’ll be questionable for that in the knee injury. We’ll see where that goes on Saturday.

Overall, like you said, I thought it was a good day, as far as getting guys out there. You’d have loved to have got out of there injury free. You’d have loved to put up more points. Guess what? It’s USF. If you go out against Bama, and you win 24-20 or 3-0, not a soul in the world is going to be crying.

David: Right. A lot of people were questioning the defense towards the end of the game, but a lot of those guys were second and third team guys out there on defense. I know for a fact that if Florida’s starting defense was out the rest of that game, I don’t even think USF would have scored a touchdown. Maybe on the turnovers.

Andrew: Yeah. You had to look at it too. They got some points off turnovers in the game. There wasn’t a fire in the second half.

David: No, there wasn’t.

Andrew: You like to see that, obviously, but there wasn’t. You got to fix it. That’s just what it is. You got to fix it. You’ve got to get better. The same team that showed up to FAU and the same team that showed up to USF doesn’t beat Alabama. Guess what? Alabama has to get better from Mercer. They played like crap. As Nick Saban said, the rat poison’s out there for them.

Got to improve and got to get healthy. Ventrell Miller, got to hope he’s good. I know people say that about Delance, but you want Jean Delance to be healthy. You want him to be ready to go. You want options there. If Michael Tarquan struggles, you want Jean Delance to be able to get in there. You want to be healthy. You want Anthony Richardson to be able to play, even if he only gives you a little bit. You need to be healthy in this game.

It’s going to be an awesome atmosphere. I’m so pumped for it. I’m jacked for it. SEC Nation’s coming. Tebow will be in the house. I’m pumped. I’m ready to see it. I’m here hoping and praying that Emory is ready to go, and he shows out, and it’s a different ballgame on Saturday.

David: Me too, man. I’m actually really pumped. It’s a sold-out crowd there. Like you said, SEC Nation’s going to be there. What I alluded to earlier, don’t worry about Anthony Richardson. It’s a small injury. He’ll be fine. He’ll be able to play sometime, at some point this year, as long as he keeps it rested, and they put him out on the field in due time. Whether he plays …

Andrew: Maybe it’s what Emory needs not to look over his shoulder.

David: Yeah.

Andrew: Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. This is what you come to the University of Florida for. We talk about it all the time. This is not FSU. This is not Miami. You come to the University of Florida to beat the Alabamas of the world. You want to get back to the standard where you go into this game, and you say, it’s a tossup. These are two really good football teams. This is a playoff game in the Swamp. That’s what you’re getting back to. That’s what you want to see all week from Dan Mullen. That’s what you want to see all week from his guys. Talking this game up. This is the game.

You come to the University of Florida to play on big time SEC football games on CBS at 3:30 in the afternoon in a sell-out Swamp. We haven’t had a sell-out Swamp in a long time. The Swamp hasn’t been rocking since two years now. It’s time. This is it. There’s no more. Emory, put USF behind you. It’s Alabama time. Play your best. You want to be a guy who goes to the NFL, Saturday is your opportunity to shut up everybody and say, I’m the starting quarterback at the University of Florida, and I just beat the University of Alabama, so shut up. That’s what he needs to do.

David: Right. It’s put up or shut up time for Emory Jones. If he has a fantastic game against Alabama, he will definitely be the starting quarterback. I’ll look at him differently too. If he can light Alabama up, throw zero interceptions, and have less mistakes, and the offense looks completely different because of the game plan, I’ll be all for Emory Jones. Right now, from what I see, from the eye test, Anthony Richardson is the better quarterback. We’ll see though coming Week 3. I’m pretty pumped. I got some bass in my voice talking about that.

Andrew: That’s me. I get pumped. This is what you come for. These are the games you come for. You said you were six points under Alabama last year. Okay. You’re at the Swamp, in your crowd that’s going to be sold out. The Swamp is one of the loudest football atmospheres in the world. It’s going to be there on Saturday. It’s going to be rocking at 3:30 when that ball is kicked, or 3:35 or 3:37, whatever stupid time CBS throws out there. It’s going to be rocking. Defense, come out. Defense can help Emory Jones. Defense come out. Bryce Young’s a freshman. He hasn’t played in front of this. He hasn’t seen 95,000 people hate his guts. Guess what? There’s going to be 95,000 people hating his guts on Saturday. It’s an opportunity. Go out and shine. We’re going to get into more of Alabama talk, but I’m fired up. This is what you play for.

David: Right. This will be the toughest defense that he has played thus far too. You got to think about that, because Miami’s just terrible.

Andrew: Miami’s terrible. Mercer’s not good. The thing you know is this. Alabama’s going to come in ready to play. Their defense is going to come in ready to play. Their offensive line is going to come in ready to play. I always say this, but a good offensive line can play anywhere in the country, road, neutral, home games, whatever it may be. You know that’s coming. So far, Florida’s defensive line’s been one of the best in the country. It’s going to be best against best. If Florida can come out and give Emory some time to settle into this game, and I know we’re getting deep into this, but there’s opportunity here. This is not a wash, by any means.

David: No.

Andrew: Is Florida the underdog here? Absolutely. It was 15 points, I think, at one point. They’re an underdog. Guess what? If you’re Emory, if you’re Florida, you take that 15 points as disrespect.

David: Yeah. The energy is also different for a big time SEC game, especially at home. The players play harder. They’re all amped up. The players are amped up, and they’re going to play differently. I want it to be Saturday already, so I can watch the game at 3:30. There was other games this week, if you want to go over some other games here. I did pick Oregon to win against Ohio State.

Andrew: You did. Ohio State, they couldn’t stop the run. Even without Kayvon Thibodeaux, those guys just balled out. Here’s the thing for me. I don’t know that either team is great. Ohio State’s going to have some trouble with some teams because of their inability to stop the run. Then they’re not great on offense either. Oregon, when they get Thibodeaux back, they’re going to be ready to go. I did get one right though that you didn’t.

David: What’s that? Which one? I think you did. I was thinking about that earlier.

Andrew: Arkansas put a pounding on Texas. Whoa, boy.

David: Yeah. I watched that game when they were up by two touchdowns. Arkansas did the same thing. They ran the ball down their throats, like the whole game. Texas could not stop the run, at all. Texas talks about I want to be in the SEC, me and Oklahoma, we want to join the SEC. Well, you just lost to one of the worst teams in the SEC West. Do you really want to be in the SEC now? One of the worst though. I think LSU might top that one this year. I’m not sure.

Andrew: Georgia. Georgia wins, as noted. Who ended up winning the Iowa-Iowa State game?

David: I think it was Iowa. Looked like Iowa won this game. It was pretty close. It was a 27-17 game, so Iowa did win the game. I think I did pick Iowa.

Andrew: You did. I’m looking at it. I went with Iowa State, and that didn’t turn out very well. Let’s see here.

David: Toledo almost beat Notre Dame. So, now we know Notre Dame and Florida State are overrated. I think Notre Dame is more overrated than I’ve ever seen them in a while.

Andrew: That’s saying a lot.

Andrew: Josh Heupel, welcome to Tennessee, because Pitt comes back and blows them out. South Carolina barely beats East Carolina. There was another one here. Missouri. I mean, Kentucky knocked off Missouri.

David: That was a good game too.

Andrew: Yeah. What was it? They were trailing.

David: Yeah, for a while. It was pretty close. I think the final score was like 41-35.

Andrew: 35-28.

David: 35-28. Yeah. Something like that.

Andrew: Yeah. That was a good one. Some good games around the country.

David: Stanford.

Andrew: It always gets better now that conference play is getting going. It’s about to be time in the SEC to get going. Let me go back here and see who we picked player wise.

David: Stanford took USC to the woodshed too.

Andrew: They did.

David: That was a surprise. There was a lot of upsets. Lot of close games, lot of upsets. Miami upsets Appalachian State.

Andrew: For real. That was bad. I went with Dameon Pierce.

David: You did go with Dameon Pierce. I forgot who all I picked.

Andrew: I don’t know. He looked good. Five rushes, 55 yards. He had a touchdown. He had a catch.

David: I could give you a win for that, because it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t in the game afterwards. They did a lot with Nay’Quan Wright.

Andrew: I’ll take it. I’m all for taking some moral victories here.

David: I’ll give you a moral victory. How about that? Does that count as like happy points?

Andrew: You went with Justin Shorter, and I don’t know about that one now.

David: He had a reception, I think.

Andrew: Two for 23, but yeah. That wasn’t very good.

David: We’ll chalk that one up as a loss there.

Andrew: I’m about to say, we’re not handing out that many moral victories here.

David: You know what? Prove me wrong next week, Justin Shorter, and I’ll give you a pat on the back.

Andrew: There you go. Zach Carter was my pick.

David: Looked pretty good.

Andrew: Yeah. But I don’t know that I can take a win. Just three tackles, no sacks. Did have 2.5 tackles for loss, but I can’t a win. I’m sorry.

David: Okay.

Andrew: Trey Dean was your pick.

David: I didn’t see much of him. I really didn’t.

Andrew: Only one tackle in the game. Didn’t see him a play a ton in the game overall. They were rotating guys, obviously, to get a lot of playing time. I think that hurt him a little bit. You’re going to take a goose egg so far. Let’s see here.

David: No moral victories for me, man.

Andrew: No moral victories. Let’s see here. I got to figure out who my third pick was. Oh, Jason Marshall was my third pick. Ugh.

David: Oh no.

Andrew: That’s bad. Two tackles.

David: I forget who I even picked.

Andrew: I’m looking here. You’re going Anthony Richardson. That was your third pick.

David: I picked the obvious one.

Andrew: He got hurt. That’s a loss. So, we both go 1-3 in the game.

David: There we go.

Andrew: Not the best of days. We’re going to have to rebound here against Nicky Saban. We’re asking the team to put up big time. We’re going to have to put up big time. Get ready. I’m going to be ready. I’m going to be ready, David.

David: I am too. I’m going to be ready 3:30, and I will be drinking a beverage in my hand when that game starts. I may be drinking a few if we’re losing pretty bad, but let’s hope we’re not.

Andrew: The recruiting list, we’ll get into that more on Friday. Loaded. Loaded. That’s what you want. It’s loaded. Lot to talk about on Friday, but it’s a good week. You win. You’re 2-0. You’re playing Alabama, who’s 2-0. Opportunity to go 3-0. That’s all you can ask for, David.

David: Right. It looks like Auburn takes on Penn State next week too. That’ll be a good one.

Andrew: Auburn’s putting up points against cupcakes, but they’re putting up points. They didn’t do that under Gus. Bo Nix looks like a quarterback.

David: I was about to say. Bo Nix looks a little bit more accurate this year than he did last year.

Andrew: Maybe that Bojangles NLI that he got, maybe that’s helping him out there.

David: You got Georgia and South Carolina. Will there be another last minute missed field goal? South Carolina upset.

Andrew: Yeah. Stetson Bennett playing quarterback for them. I hope Stetson Bennett is playing quarterback in Jacksonville. I hope he is playing quarterback in Jacksonville. That will get so ugly for Georgia it won’t even be funny. But he was better than JT was in Week 1.

David: He sure was. South Carolina State’s quarterback threw for 132 yards against Clemson this week. Mean that JT and their quarterback might be on the same level?

Andrew: Maybe. I’ve always said JT’s not very good. David, get us out of here, man. We’ll be back Friday with lots to talk about. We got a ton to talk about on Friday, as we break it down.

David: We will be back on Friday. Florida faces off against Alabama at home in the Swamp. Sold out. Harmonic Woods will probably be there. Unfortunately, I will be here at home, but I will be there next week for the Tennessee game. That’ll do it, folks, for this episode of the GatorCountry.com podcast. You can follow me @SoderquistGC on Twitter, and you can follow Andrew Spivey @AndrewSpiveyGC on Twitter as well. That’ll wrap it up, folks, for this episode of the GatorCountry.com podcast.