I will be honest I was at a country music concert (Drake White and Dave Kennedy) during the Florida Gators Orange and Blue Debut game on April 7th.
However, I did see the tweets and hot takes flying all over the Internet when I checked sparingly. Between the commentary on quarterback play, the fairness of the teams, the lack of much tempo and chemistry, and whether the offensive play actually improved at all – I was curious how the game actually went.
Thanks to advancements in television technology, I was able to watch the game the next day – and the game, well, it didn’t show much and was quite boring.
Sorry!
I know that you all have waited months to get excited to watch a scrimmage, but the game was nothing more than that and didn’t really show much to allow us to disseminate anything more than short, high-level articles – similar to this one – that don’t say much.
But it wasn’t just a Florida problem – it was a South Carolina, Florida State, Auburn, Ole Miss, problem, too And it won’t get any better.
The same way season openers are a bore, teams are afraid of potentially putting, literally anything of value, on game film – not at the sake of boring fans to death with the same scripted vanilla year-after-year.
We watched the first team go against the second team – what did you we learn? That the first team was better?
You saw two quarterbacks who are battling for the same spot, not given remotely similar opportunities – so guess which quarterback looked better? The one playing with starters, obviously.
The play calling was so overly simplistic, you could barely see if Feleipe Franks or Kyle Trask were make their progressions; or see if there was any potential offensive explosive capacity outside of a second half-performance by a “running back playing quarterback” in Kadarius Toney. Hell, Franks and Trask threw a combined 29 times — what could we determine from that?
In the two-hour Orange and Blue Debut (by the way, when did they become so short?), we saw very few plays that would simulate an actual game, which begs the question? Is this game even really worth it anymore? Coaches are scared to death of potentially showing plays on television or someone getting hurt; so does this game do much for the benefit of the players or team?
I would argue that coaches should truly use this game to put nonsense on game film – run gimmicks, fake plays – to not only confuse opposing teams as they watch your game film, but to make the game more exciting for fans, because this game is no longer about the fans, but more about just checking the box that the game was actually played.
Last week, I wrote an article about what you should look for when watching the Orange and Blue Debut — next year, I am just going to tell you to go enjoy a country music concert that night instead.