It’s Senior Day Saturday, a time to put all the negativity behind us and try to send this group off with a show of appreciation. None deserve more love and respect than Ahmad Black.
I can’t tell you how impressed I have been with Ahmad, who has been the most consistent player on the field all season and therefore, in my opinion, the best football player. Not the biggest, not the fastest, not the strongest, but a guy with a big heart who loves to win and knows how to win.
Ahmad is not only a text-book tackler, but he’s a smart, instinctive player who may be small but plays with a lot of heart and want-to. He leads the team in special team tackles, tackles for losses, solos, assists, etc.
I wish more of the players had some Ahmad Black in them. Maybe he can bottle all that up and leave it behind for future generations, because he is a great football player. You give me 11 Ahmad Blacks on defense and I’ll show you a national championship team.
Gator fans owe them all a big thank you, but none more than Ahmad. He will be a symbol of light in a sometimes dark time.
This is how I want to remember this season, along with the win against Georgia, because these Gators fought through adversity at a time when the season was in jeopardy. And I don’t want that great victory to be diminished by whatever happened after that. So I shall cherish it no matter what.
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We are getting lot of questions about the defense these days.
Obviously when a 220-pound back rips your defense for over 200 yards rushing on 40 carries, it’s time to review your personnel and your defensive game plans, which I’m sure Urban Meyer, Teryl Austin and Chuck Heater – as well as other assistants—have done.
You ask: Where are the run stoppers?
Some people have said for a while that the Gator linebackers might be somewhat undersized, built more for speed than for strength and size.
I don’t know if philosophy plays a part in it, but they have already recruited the types of linebackers they thought they needed to stop the passing game in the likes of Jelani Jenkins and Jon Bostic.
I still think Bostic is big enough to be that big guy who can help stop the run and play up on that guard. But I really don’t know what the plan is, because the offensive philosophies change, too, and everybody seems to have a new wrinkle to the Spread offense as the Gators have seen this season.
We’ve got one coming up this weekend with Appalachian State. In fact coach Jerry Moore openly admits he mimicked Urban’s offense, visiting Gainesville numerous times in the off-season and leaving with pages of notes.
Moore’s attack is spearheaded by quarterback DeAndre Presley, another one of those Tampa athletes that seem to be leaving the state and coming back to challenge the Gators.
Presley Is versatile. He can spread ‘em out and throw it around, run it – he might be the best quarterback Florida has faced. He played high school ball at Middleton, where I saw him perform impressively.
Urban has warned everybody that App State (9-1) is a sound football team with excellent talent and will be a tough test on Senior Day – but I’m willing to bet that some of it will fall on deaf ears of the fans.
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The SEC is now pretty much a Spread league.
In a sense, Urban helped bring that about with his success in the single wing, with 235-pound Tim Tebow dominating SEC defenses.
Right now the main component of the Spread appears to be the big running backs and running quarterbacks, as we saw last week with Marcus Lattimore and will see in the SEC Championship with Cam Newton.
How does the Gator defense turns things around and finish off strong? Until there is more energy and everybody’s got a little more pep in their step and gets ready to play against top competition, that’s not going to happen.
Some of these young kids just don’t understand that you’ve got to get it up every week and rev it up if you are going to play against the best – whether it’s Vanderbilt or South Carolina, or Georgia or App State. For 12 straight weeks you’re going to get that in front of your face and you’d better get used to the idea that you have to come ready to play. If you’re not ready, then there needs to be somebody to take your place who is ready.
I don’t know what it is, but the synergy of the defense has got to emerge from four or five guys – and I don’t care who it is. It may be little late now, but you’d better come in energized against App State. Because they’ve got a handful of kids from Florida and would like nothing better to do to Florida what they did to Michigan.
Then you’ve got FSU next week and the bragging rights in the state, which will impact recruiting.
The focus Saturday, however, will be on these seniors who have brought a lot of honor and glory to Florida, despite this uncharacteristic season of struggle. And what can’t be lost is their body of work over the past four or five years. For that they have every reason to be proud.
(Scot Brantley was an All-SEC linebacker for the Florida Gators and a 10-year veteran of the NFL/Tampa Bay Bucs. He does commentary for the Gator Radio Network and is the defensive analyst for GatorCountry.com)