The long offseason is finally over, and Florida is getting ready to face Miami in mere days from now. Here are three keys to the game for the Gators as they try to knock off the hated Hurricanes.
Play With Confidence
The last two seasons have been rollercoasters for the Gators, but last year ended on a real down swing. The team lost its last five games to miss bowl eligibility. A rash of decommitments hit the recruiting class. A real playmaker left on both sides of the ball, with each going to a different team on the 2024 schedule. Billy Napier fired assistants for the first time in his career and spent the offseason at the top of every hot seat list.
It’d be easy to see all the adversity and go into a shell. And in fact, Napier himself has shown tendencies to be conservative when the pressure is on.
To do so would be a huge mistake.
Miami improved its roster since a year ago thanks to picking up a lot of starters in the portal. What may have looked like a tossup game around New Year’s has turned into the Hurricanes being the favorite despite them being on the road. With plenty of media naming UM as an ACC contender at minimum, a Florida team predicted to struggle to make a bowl should be the underdog.
The way to deal with that is to take it to the opponent. Be aggressive early to try to get the crowd rocking. Transfer the pressure over to the other sideline, where Mario Cristobal has his own history of questionable game management decisions.
Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer were far apart in their preferred ways to attack a defense, but both possessed the same thing: real swagger. They were not just out to beat an opponent, but bury them.
Napier has yet to show much of that. The closest he’s come was his way of calling the offense in the second half of the South Carolina game last year, but a hopeless performance from his defense forced his hand. He responded to a big halftime lead against Tennessee by running on all but four plays after the half. His aw-shucks persona off the field shows up way too often on the field.
This is easily the most talented team Napier’s had in Gainesville. He himself has said this is the first year where all the systems are in place. Team chemistry appears from the outside to be good, and there was but a single off-field incident in nine long months of offseason. Things are looking up in a lot of ways despite how 2023 ended.
This is indeed the best things have been, so act like it. Be the aggressor. Force Cristobal to be the one making the hard choices. There’s no excuse not to.
Contain Cam Ward
Washington State transfer Cam Ward is fast, quick, and elusive, but make no mistake: he’s a slinger at heart. He’s not the kind of quarterback who’s going to be toting the rock 10+ times a game, and he scrambles for rushing yards as a last resort. He’ll use his gifted mobility to escape a collapsing pocket in order to roll out and keep his eyes down the field. And there’s a good reason for that too: he’s got good enough arm strength and accuracy to be dangerous on intermediate to deep throws.
But while he will chuck it long if there’s a good opening, he doesn’t do it gratuitously. Wisconsin turned him into something of a Checkdown Charlie last year by covering the deep stuff well and leaving space underneath. The Badgers still lost because they weren’t very good, but it was an effective way to keep Ward in check a fair amount.
The Apple Cup at the end of the year showed some of both the good and bad of him. Washington seemed determined to light him up, but they didn’t succeed every time. Ward managed to keep a lot of plays alive far longer than most quarterbacks would’ve, and he was a major reason why the Cougars only lost to the Playoff-bound Huskies by three.
But UW did get home quite a lot, as Ward can’t avoid all pressure all the time. He also was playing heroball for an overmatched team behind a bad offensive line, so don’t read too much into that.
One thing that did stand out is that Ward had a few miscommunications with receivers, one of which resulted in an interception. Such problems were not common in other games earlier in the season. Ward’s home/road splits show him being better in front of a friendly crowd, and Washington does have a loud home environment. It was the last game of his second year at Wazzu, so there aren’t any standard mitigating factors for the mixups.
Ward played well at Oregon last year, and it is one of the loudest stadiums in the country. Still, The Swamp is louder than any place he’s played, and it’s also bigger than most. Autzen Stadium may be in the neighborhood in decibels, but its capacity is lower by tens of thousands of people. The Rose Bowl, where UCLA plays home games, can seat more than Ben Hill Griffin Stadium can, but its low crowd sizes and gentle architectural slopes make it not that hard to communicate there.
If Florida can stay disciplined enough to keep Ward in the pocket and not give up the deep ball, it will neutralize his best attributes. It’s easier said than done, but that’s the blueprint. And the 90,000 people in the stands will have a chance to make a real impact on the game.
Run Things Smoothly
I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a Florida team less prepared for Game 1 than I did during last year’s outing at Utah. At the time I remember some excuses being floated here and there about the travel disruptions related to Hurricane Idalia, but those concerns were long gone by November 4.
There is now coach-to-helmet communication for both sides of the ball. The analyst running special teams can now be as fully involved as coaches have been on game days, as can the new special teams analyst hired from the Patriots in the offseason. It’s Billy Napier’s third year running the program, and the number of snaps going to true freshmen will be down considerably from a year ago.
Regardless of what the actual results on the field are, things should look smooth in the way the team operates. Maybe the offense goes three-and-out on a drive, but any substitution in there should be crisp, and every snap should get off without sweating the play clock. Every single play on offense, defense, and special teams should have exactly 11 Gators on the field, no more and no less.
It’s a low bar to clear this far into a tenure, but here we are. And it is true that Florida has real room to improve simply by not driving with the parking brake on. If the Gators are going to beat the Hurricanes, they’re not going to do so by being their own worst enemies.