Florida Gators Football: Kurt Roper Notebook

Florida Gators offensive coordinator Kurt Roper met with the media Tuesday for his weekly press conference. The Gators are coming off an open date that gave the offense extra time to work on turnovers and establishing playmakers on the team going forward. Now back to game week preparation for Saturday’s contest against Georgia, Florida will face a fast defense that has forced 17 turnovers this season. The Bulldogs are also fifth in the conference in total defense, allowing 320.6 yards per game.

Here is some of what Roper had to say Tuesday:

Offensive issues:

“Right now, turnovers. Sometimes it’s a different theme, week-to-week. We obviously haven’t been as good in the passing game all season long. But, specifically, in the last game, it’s turning the football over. If you look at it, it’s kind of the trend. We were good in the first game, second game we were pretty good in, I think we had one. It’s been a theme of three until we doubled the three. We’re an offense that has to take care of the football better right now. It’s the primary goal going into this next opportunity.”

Not scaling the offense back for Treon Harris:

“There’s not going to be a whole bunch of scale-back. The whole thought process is to not turn it over is the big thing right now and try to take care of the football. We put him in in the third series if I remember right in the Missouri game and we had a 3rd and long so we put him in a drop back pass and we turned the football over. I think he’s got really good understanding of what our base is. And what I’ve been saying all along it’s really not that complicated in the sense of once you get the grasp of the overall scheme. So I think he has a pretty good feel of that. What we haven’t done is grown a whole bunch offensively because we’re trying to get better. And so hopefully that helps him with his understanding.”

Balancing not turning the ball over and taking chances throwing:

“It wasn’t that long ago, 1999 when I first started, I was a first-time full time coach in the SEC and the whole thought process was take advantage of short fields when you’ve got them. And every exchange was underneath center for the most part with the quarterback. And the exchanges were in a run-game, reads really didn’t exist unless you were in the triple option and all those things. So you really minimized mistakes. So that was the whole focus to it. And then obviously offense has evolved and grown and the ball is in . . . you just, I don’t want to say you take more chances with the football, but there’s more going on. There’s more asked of guys that are handling the ball. It’s not just the pass game, it’s run game too. So you do want to be explosive, you do want to make plays, you do have to score points to win in any league. And really, that’s who we are offensively. But right now until we figure out how not to create those issues, that’s where our mindset has to be.”

Difficulty in not getting into a drop-back game:

“It’s difficult. Everybody talks in terms of, or the phrase that we use anyway is the term multiple option plays. So you might have a run with a pass or you might have flare screen with a draw. You combine what a lot of people are doing in the spread offense is combining plays, multiple plays. What you’re trying to do is have answers based on what the defense is obviously doing. Well, the ultimate multiple-option play is a drop-back pass. I mean, it has multiple options on every play based on, it’s got answers for every coverage, hopefully. There’s obviously some issues with certain things, but you know, that’s one for a play caller when you’re not sure exactly what’s going on if you’ve got a guy that can help you in the drop-back game, you know it definitely helps. But it takes time to grow. I sat there and watched Eli Manning. It took time to grow in his understanding of what we’re doing. But those places to put it simply are multiple-option plays that help you as a play caller.”

Coaching a player like Harris that improvises and the surprises that may come along:

“No, it’s not that far out of whack, at least I hope, you know, I don’t want to see some of… doubling back and all sorts of things like that, you know what I mean, you want it within the framework of the plays, you hope the surprises are, you know, sometimes there’s a timing to all plays that you build and you hope the surprise if the play is made outside of that timing, you know, he can scramble and get yards or he can scramble and find somebody down the field or something along those lines. But you hope they all are good surprises, you know.”

On the thought of Jeff turning the corner earlier in the season:

“You know, I mean you look back at it there’s been ups and downs, LSU game there were a lot of good things Kentucky game there were a lot of good things, Eastern Michigan. Tennessee was a challenge for us. The last game I think, here’s the thing, he works hard, he’s prepared. He cares, it means a lot to him. You know just made some mistake in that last game that weren’t typical mistakes that weren’t necessarily mistakes he’d been making earlier in the year, and so I can’t necessarily put my finger on it why, it just is what it is. Last game we couldn’t run him, we couldn’t help him with that aspect with trying to run him with his back. You saw him when he got sacked the one time that that was painful so we lost that aspect to his game, which I think he’s really good at some of those things.”