It’s only two weeks in but Kyle Pitts may have already won the Mackey Award, could a tight end win the Heisman?
Is this hyperbole? I don’t think so and if you’re reading this you probably don’t either. We all knew and talked about how good Kyle Pitts was, how much of a mismatch he is for opposing defenses, and his potential. But did anyone predict six touchdowns in six quarters? At one point on Saturday Kyle Pitts had more touchdowns than every other team in the SEC. Not every other player, he had more touchdowns than 13 teams in the league he plays in. That’s absurd. Pitts was on the Mackey watch list but you might be able to go ahead and just hand him that award. The real question will be, how can a tight end get an invite to the Heisman ceremony, or better yet, how can you not invite Kyle Pitts to the Heisman ceremony?
Pitts’ second touchdown reception this afternoon was the 12th of his career and tied the school record for career receiving touchdowns by a tight end.
Pitts has already matched his receiving touchdowns total from last season (five), which is tied for the third-highest season total by a Gators tight end since the start of 1990. (Cornelius Ingram (seven in 2007) and Kirk Kirkpatrick (seven in 1990) jointly hold the single-
season school record for receiving touchdowns by a tight end.)
This is not your normal Florida defense
Sitting through years of miserable offenses during the Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain eras I often wondered, what would it be like to cover a team that could actually score. I would watch teams in the Big 12 not even pretend to play defense and think, man, that would be fun to watch all that scoring. Well, I’m here to tell you that watching stinky defense isn’t fun.
South Carolina’s offense was supposed to be the medicine for a Gator defense that looked sickly in Oxford. Bed rest for six days and then take this South Carolina offense out back, beat up on them for 60 minutes and get your swagger back. Instead, South Carolina posted 329 yards, held on to the ball for 36:23, went 5-6 on fourth downs, 11 conversions, and it would have been worse if their receivers knew how to catch.
We certainly have to get a lot better with how we finished the game. Offensively should have finished the game much sooner. Defensively have the opportunity to get off the field. I think the first time we stopped them, right, was on the last play of the game there. I mean we gave up 11 conversions today. We gave up good opportunities, whether it’s third or fourth down, so we’ve got to do a better job getting off the field. Like I said, when it came down to it we made the plays that won the game.”
The comparisons to LSU 2019 are starting and they’re not crazy
The defense has a long way to go but this Florida offense reminds me a lot of the 2019 National Champion LSU Tigers. Florida’s offense is going to average more than 30 points a game easily. The way Florida can attack you will make sure of that. Sure, Kyle Pitts is on pace to catch a million touchdowns but Florida had 11 guys catch a pass in week one and nine more catch passes in week two. Three guys are capable of running the football and Kyle Trask is the perfect quarterback to continue taking what the defense gives him. The Gators are going to put up an insane amount of points this season and right now it looks like they’ll need to.
In addition to having scored 35-plus points in each of its last four games, Florida has scored at least 35 points in consecutive games against SEC teams for only the second time since the start of 2009. The other occurrence was in 2012, when Florida beat Tennessee, 37-20, and then Kentucky, 38-0.
Tale of two halves on offense
Well, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows on offense, despite what I just wrote above. In the first half Florida scored 24 points, Kyle Trask was 14-17 with two scores, the team converted 2-of-3 third-down attempts, and averaged 7.8 yards-per-play on 31 plays. The second half was not pretty.
The Gators scored twice but only had 106 yards on 22 plays. That low play total was partly due to the defense not being able to get off the field and allowing South Carolina to sustain long drives but the offense was also only 2-6 on third down in the second half. South Carolina held the ball for a mind-numbing 21:06 in the second half.
“With the capability and potential of our offense, the playmakers that we have, we expect to score every single time we have the ball. And we should have scored every time we have the ball,” quarterback Kyle Trask said. “There were little things that we did…Me personally, I can’t put the ball on the ground. We can’t give the ball to the other team. We’ve just go to out and do a better job of cleaning up those little things. If we do that, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll be able to score on every single drive.”
Kadarius Toney continues to come on
He’s always been exciting with the ball in his hands but he was like an untamed horse. The coaching staff didn’t trust Kadarius Toney enough to get him on the field and we hadn’t seen his full capability because of it. Whatever Toney did in the offseason to earn that trust is paying dividends.
“KT does a lot. You can see how he’s grown as a player for us in his ability to get open, his consistency in his route-running. Obviously he makes you change what you’re doing, you saw that in the kicking game. They started trying to kick away from him during the course of the game,” Mullen said after the game. “He’s a guy you can move all over the place, put him in the back field, motion him out of the back field. To be able to do all the different he has to be smart and not really just intelligent, but a smart football player to learn how to do all the different things. He did a really good job of that today.”
Toney’s 86 receiving yards eclipsed his previous career high of 72 (Nov. 3, 2018, Missouri),
and he equaled his career high for receptions (six – which he had against Idaho on Nov. 17, 2018). Toney’s 57-yard touchdown reception was the second-longest of his career, behind only his 66-
yard touchdown reception in last year’s season-opening win over Miami. He now has two plays of 50+ yards this season.