By Will Miles
Keyontae Johnson
News that Keyontae Johnson has been released from the hospital was a welcome relief this week. The fact that he’s helping out as an additional coach was even better.
You fear when someone goes down like that that it could be deadly. Then you fear that their brain may be deprived of oxygen. Then you fear that they may not be able to play again.
The playing again part is still up in the air, as despite reports in the Gainesville Sun, Johnson’s family has not released his exact diagnosis. But considering the first two scenarios, the third scenario really seems insignificant.
I hope Keyontae can play again, and at a high level. I hope he can fulfill his NBA Draft potential. But our understanding of where he is at is in such a different place compared to where it was just a few weeks ago, and I’m so thankful that’s the case.
Cotton Bowl Demolition
Well, that was an ass-whipping.
For all of the publicity that Dan Mullen’s thumb wrestling comments got a couple of years ago, it does not appear that same energy was brought to bear against the Sooners.
In many ways, that’s completely understandable. Florida put all of its eggs in the SEC Championship basket and lost focus both before and after that one. The opt-outs certainly didn’t help either, as the offense couldn’t get going with all of the drops.
But this reminded me of the 2017 game against Michigan in the same stadium just after the Gators suffered a series of suspensions due to a credit card scandal. That team got blown off the field because it didn’t have the depth to suffer those kinds of losses and still compete against a talented opponent.
Sounds familiar.
I think Dan Mullen is a much better coach than Jim McElwain. But you can’t have a defense that just continuously gets gashed and not see changes. The minute Kyle Trask struggled and needed the defense to carry him for a little bit, it gave up 684 yards.
Ouch.
Trask’s swan song?
Earlier this week over at Read and Reaction, I wrote about why Kyle Trask should come back next year.
I suspect Trask is going to go to the NFL, but it may be a little bit more difficult after this performance. He was fantastic all year long, carrying the Gators to multi-score wins and close losses when his offense still put up 35-plus points. But leaving off of a 158-yard, 3 INT performance might be a tough pill to swallow.
This is going to affect the way people look at Trask, but it really shouldn’t. No doubt he had an awful first quarter, but he also had the offense in position to cut the Oklahoma lead to four points late in the first half and delivered a dime to Keon Zipperer. Like a vast majority of the passes on Wednesday night, that pass was dropped.
Then on third-and-8 to open the third quarter, he launched a deep pass to Justin Shorter. Pass interference should have been called, but the ball hit Shorter cleanly in both hands and again, was dropped.
Trask didn’t play well. But neither did any of the Gators. And I’m going to remember his play against Alabama much more than his play in this game, because it is much more indicative of his overall year.
Opt-outs
I don’t begrudge the Florida players who opted out their decision to do so. They have the right to do so and they are risking their long-term earnings by going out there to compete.
But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
One of the rules with our kids is that once they agree to do something, they are committed. If that means my daughter toughs it through a softball season, then so be it. She doesn’t have to play next year, but she made a commitment to her teammates – but more importantly, to herself – that she was going to play.
I don’t blame the players at all. After all, they’re the ones risking injury while wearing giant Goodyear patches on their jerseys.
But part of college is helping people understand what is important in life. College football, in its quest to maximize every dollar, has taught its players that cash is prioritized over everything. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the players have learned that lesson and decided they agree with it.
But cash doesn’t solve all of life’s problems. Don’t get me wrong, it helps. But there’s value to inculcating virtue into society. Things like partnering with people who help you achieve success. For too long, the NCAA has hidden behind the “student-athlete” label to avoid having to treat its players like partners.
All we’re seeing now is the players recognizing that bowl games aren’t necessary to get what they need out of their schools. They’re just doing what the schools have taught them.
How to fix it?
I get that opting out is only going to become more common. It’s going to lead to trying to change the system, likely expanding the playoff to have more “meaningful” games at the end of the season.
But that’s not really addressing the problem. I think these guys want to play. I just don’t think they want to take on the risk the schools are asking them to take on in games that the NFL doesn’t care about.
So how do you address the problem? Insurance and a winning stipend.
Get draft grades for players prior to the bowl games and pay for the insurance that will reimburse them for injuries. Again, if these are your partners, wouldn’t you want to treat them as valued members of your organization rather than disposable parts?
And then incentivize the players to play in the games. Florida and Oklahoma each earned $4 million dollars to play in the Cotton Bowl. Surely there’s some room in there to make it worth everyone’s time and effort to fight for the win.
Grantham gone?
I don’t see how Todd Grantham can come back last year.
He’s absolutely loathed by the fan base. He isn’t bringing in elite recruiting classes. And his defense just gave up more than 600 yards for the third time this season.
When Jim McElwain was still the head coach at Florida, all my colleague David Waters and I ever talked about on Gators Breakdown was wanting to see offensive progress. That’s all Gators fans wanted to see out of the Florida defense this year.
But what became abundantly clear was that the same mistakes were being made over and over again and that players weren’t being held accountable for their mistakes.
Whether that was missed tackles, missed assignments, getting physical beat, not knowing where to line-up, not holding gap integrity, undisciplined penalties or shoe tossing, the starting lineup never changed and the same offenders were always out there.
That’s okay if the mental mistakes improved. But there we were again in the Cotton Bowl’s opening drive with Donovan Stiner lined up a country mile from his man and still getting beat deep.
That isn’t on Stiner. It’s on Grantham. At some point, the coach is responsible when the players aren’t performing.
Areas to improve in 2021
Obviously the defense is a major area that needs improvement next year. The Gators end the year surrendering 30.8 points per game. That’s just unacceptable and changes need to be made.
But the other place we need to look is the running game.
Florida has been pass happy – out of necessity – the past two seasons. That’s good enough in the vast majority of the games, particularly when Kyle Trask is your QB. But in the Cotton Bowl, after Trask had thrown a couple of interceptions and was clearly off, Florida didn’t have anything else they could do.
Good teams develop elite players at various positions who help them win games. Elite teams develop units that allow for the team to win even when one player doesn’t play his best.
That means building continuity and toughness on the offensive line. It means having the ability to run the ball down an opponent’s throat to help set-up your QB. Can you imagine how good Trask would be if he was able to pick on a defense that had to bring up a safety to help against the run game?
You can, because you saw it last week with Mac Jones.
Season Review
Overall though, this has been a fun season.
I know 8-4 isn’t what we as fans wanted, but it’s way better than the third-year performances we got out of Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain.
I do think we learned some things from this season.
We learned that Kyle Trask is a great QB and that Dan Mullen is likely going to have really, really good offenses at Florida as long as he is here.
We learned that Todd Grantham isn’t the right guy to lead this defense to where it needs to go. Steve Spurrier learned the same thing after an embarrassing loss to Nebraska in 1995 and brought in Bob Stoops for 1996 and won a championship. This defense has a whole lot further to go than that one, but it was an important thing that Mullen had to learn.
We learned that Florida can compete with Alabama, but that they aren’t consistent enough to both compete with Alabama and get to that game unscathed.
Mullen has talked a lot since his arrival in Gainesville about the Gator Standard. This season has proven we’re not there yet, at least not to be able to beat the big boys. Under Urban Meyer and Steve Spurrier, Florida was the big boy. The Gators were favored to beat Georgia, Alabama and Oklahoma.
That’s the Gator Standard.
Christmas recruiting wish list
With the season over, the next thing on the agenda is national signing day on February 3.
Florida already has 22 signed commits for the class of 2021, so the class is almost complete. And with 25 commits overall and a national ranking of 10th, the Gators likely aren’t going to move the needle much with the rankings come February. In fact, I suspect they will fall behind 2-3 of Miami, Michigan, North Carolina and USC before all is said and done and end up ranked somewhere around 12th-13th overall.
That makes Saturday – when 5-star offensive tackle Tristan Leigh will announce his commitment at the All-American Bowl – a huge day for Florida.
We all saw this year how Florida struggled at times in pass protection. And we saw all year long as the Gators struggled to run the ball. I think there is talent on the defensive side of the ball that can show significant improvement with proper teaching and a new scheme.
But when it comes to running the ball, you need some elite guys. Leigh would give the Gators a 5-star at their two areas of most need – coverage and OL. In aggregate it still wouldn’t be enough to get me truly excited about the direction of recruiting, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.
Happy New Year
It’s been an interesting year, to say the least.
From not knowing whether we’d have a season to the COVID break after the Texas A&M game, the virus has certainly brought lots of twists and turns to this 2020 season. That’s been true on the field as well, as Florida blew out Georgia, then dropped a game to LSU it shouldn’t have, but then turned around a week later and gave Alabama all it could handle.
Add to that Dan Mullen’s comments about packing the Swamp after the A&M loss, the Missouri fight and then the Darth Gator press conference, and this year really has had it all.
But through it all, I’m not sure we’ve given the players enough credit. While all of us have been affected by the pandemic, these guys have been getting swabs up their nose three times a week since probably June. They played a more difficult schedule after missing spring practice and in-person strength training during the offseason. Regardless of whether someone played well or played poorly this season, we should appreciate what they had to go through to even play.
With full-scale distribution of the vaccine on the horizon, hopefully those concerns will be gone for 2021. But 2020 has been a fun season, not the least of which because it made me appreciate how much Gator football keeps me connected to people at a time when connection is difficult.
So thanks for reading, interacting and connecting in 2020. I promise I won’t take it for granted in 2021. Hopefully I’ll just connect with many of you having a cocktail or six in Jacksonville next October.