The Florida Gators held their 2nd scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday afternoon. With just two weeks until the opening kick against 7th ranked Utah, time is of the essence.
During the first scrimmage the defense shined, and the offense displayed some inconsistencies. Yesterday’s scrimmage was sort of the opposite.
“There’s a lot of good on the tape, but obviously a lot of things that we need to work on, areas that we need to improve,” Napier said. “You know just overall defensively; I think more consistency across the board. I thought we maybe didn’t have one of our better tackling days, I thought we tackled really well last week and then hasn’t been much of an issue throughout, but you know more missed tackles then we’d like.”
Tackling is one aspect of fall camp that is incredibly challenging to teach without risking injury. It’s very clear the Gators staff has been placing an emphasis on tackling at practice. They will need to be able to tackle efficiently if they want a chance to take down Utah in the swamp. Let’s hope the Gators can get better here.
“We were much improved offensively in particular,” Napier said. “We didn’t turn it over on offense until the last play of the scrimmage in a two-minute situation. I think we had four technical penalties… I think we had one undisciplined penalty.”
Napier has previously mentioned that he wants the penalties they acquire to be technical penalties and not discipline oriented ones. Napier and his staff would like to completely eliminate discipline-oriented penalties from their game, having just one in the 2nd scrimmage is a good start.
“That’s an area where I thought we took a step forward. It was pretty clean,” Napier said.
Playing a clean game in front of a full SEC crew is great news for the Gators. This team already seems more disciplined than last year’s team.
Although the offense played with more consistency, there’s still plenty they need to work on according to Napier.
“I think the perimeter play needs to improve,” Napier said. “Tight ends on the edges, the receivers, not only the run game but all the perimeter concepts, and then situationally I think missed some opportunities in the red area. I thought we had some chances to really break it open and we didn’t do that. That’s an area two weeks in a row where we could be better,” Napier said.
“Offensively I think just another level of detail is out there,” Napier said.” We are carrying a lot right now, so the volume of things, the concepts, formations, whatever the case may be, but as we narrow it down, we are going to need to improve our detail.”
It sounds like the offense is starting to come together for the Gators. The Gators will look to clean up some of the finer things in preparation for game week.
Game prep for Utah will start this Thursday, August 25th.