GC VIP: Orange and Blue Musings — 3/29/20 Edition

Stay safe, everyone

It seems odd to write about sports in the current environment that we’re in. After all, sports are relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

At the same time, I know you’re probably getting restless sitting indoors and social distancing. So if this can provide some respite from the news and politics of COVID-19, I’m glad to help provide that.

All I’d ask is that in return for reading this that you wash your hands (you should have been doing that anyway) and call your Grandma. She’s got to be bored out of her mind at this point.

2020-2021 Basketball Expectations

The last time I wrote something here, the basketball team had just blown a second-half 18-point lead to Kentucky. The noise was going to continue all offseason regarding Mike White’s future as head coach, especially if he paired that loss with flame-outs in the SEC and NCAA Tournaments.

In a way, the cancellation of the season is great news for Gators fans. White was never getting fired after this season, regardless of the team’s performance and what you heard on Twitter. And fans who’d made up their mind were never going to let him win back their hearts next season.

Instead, White – and the team – gets a reprieve.

But here’s the thing. We’re now going into year six of Mike White as head coach of the basketball program. He has had time to get all of his players in, to manage any roster deficiencies and imbalances he may have had and his young players were good, but not good enough to declare for the NBA (I don’t think).

So recruiting is no longer an excuse. Youth is no longer an excuse. 

White defenders have made it a point to compare his record to Billy Donovan’s. Well, by year six, Donovan had at team that finished 15th in the AP Poll and rose as high as second. Yes, that team lost in the first round of the tournament to Creighton, but it was the first in a six-year stretch where Florida was ranked first or second in the country at some point during the season, except for 2004-2005 where they ranked 16th.

So that’s the standard that White has to live up to. I’ve got to be honest. How he does in the tournament is much less important to me than how he does in the SEC regular season. This team needs to win and win consistently enough to be ranked in the top-half of the AP Poll.

Otherwise, it’s time to find someone who can make that happen.

  

No Spring Game

Coronavirus has canceled spring practice and thus, the spring game as well. For a fan of a “football school”, this is excruciating.

With the early signing day now in effect in December – and thus National Signing Day in February fairly anticlimactic – it already seemed like an eternity between the bowl game and the spring game. But now we’re likely going to have to wait until the opener against Eastern Washington in September to get our first look at the 2020 Gators.

Perhaps the saving grace is that the spring game doesn’t really mean all that much. I mean, we may have tried to forget due to our McElwain PTSD, but it’s hard to forget how exciting it was to see Luke Del Rio light things up in the 2016 spring game.

But even last year is a good example that we shouldn’t put too much stock in the game. Feleipe Franks threw for 327 yards and 4 TD but was injured early in the year. John Huggins read a throw by Trask out into the flat well and returned his interception for a pick-6. Huggins wasn’t on the team by the time the fall started.

And Trask – who floated that ball out there to Huggins in a way that made me cringe all the way from the stands – put up a 25:7 TD to INT ratio in 2019 and didn’t throw one pick-6 the entire year.

The point is that the spring game doesn’t seem to portend anything for the actual season so missing it isn’t a huge deal for the success of the team. 

It just is a bummer for those of us who are going into football (and sports) withdrawl.

No Spring Practice and the Offensive Line

The cancellation of spring practice, however, might end up being a bigger deal.

Florida is fortunate in that respect though too. One of the areas that really needs to be shored up is the offensive line.

The line was a work in progress all of last year, but everyone who comes back started at least one game last year. If you read any of my analysis last year, the issue with the line wasn’t that they didn’t have the physical ability. It was that they were missing assignments and not being physical at the point of attack.

I don’t think the players weren’t strong enough. I think they were being tentative even when they were in the right place because they were unsure of themselves. That kind of thing can be fixed in the film room. 

Yes, you’d much rather be able to rep it on the field over and over, but the coaches are going to know who was studying when they get back on the field in the fall. That might actually be a good thing too, as understanding who took the break seriously is a valuable thing when deciding on playing time.

The other thing to consider is that Michael Tarquin, William Harrod, Riley Simonds, Kingsley Eguakun and Ethan White are all in year two in the system. 

While White was the only guy to get significant playing time in 2019, the fact that these guys were all practicing during the season means that there is going to be more competition for the starters. We saw White and Richard Gouraige able to bust into the starting lineup late in 2019. 

Expect to see the same in 2020 with some of these guys, especially if last year’s starters continue to struggle.

No Spring Practice and the Wide Receivers

The other area that is going to need to have some guys step up is at wide receiver.

That’s not because of underperformance last season. It’s because the graduating seniors – Josh Hammond, Freddie Swain, Tyrie Cleveland and Van Jefferson – accounted for a large percentage of the Gators production at the position.

But again, I think there are reasons to be encouraged there as well.

The first is that Kyle Trask was much more democratic than Feleipe Franks when it came to distributing the football. Freddie Swain – who turned out to be the most explosive Gators receiver in 2019 – didn’t catch a pass against Miami in the opener, one against UT-Martin and then three prior to Franks’ injury against Kentucky. He wound up with 34 receptions over the Gators next nine games.

The second is that while Florida is losing a lot, they have a lot coming back too. 

Kadarius Toney was injured for most of 2020 but has proven to be a playmaker when given the ball the past two seasons. Trevon Grimes could have gone to the NFL but decided to come back and could have been considered an equal – or even superior – to the four seniors who are leaving. Jacob Copeland showed some flashes and got playing time in big games as the season progressed. And of course, Kyle Pitts emerged as the best receiver on the team (even though he’s a tight end) and is poised for a huge 2020.

This doesn’t mean that Florida won’t have to have some new guys step up. But what it does mean is that those new guys are going to have some time to be able to find where they fit. That’s a far cry from Georgia last year who didn’t have anyone returning with experience at all.

No Spring Practice and the Bulldogs

Speaking of Georgia, I wrote earlier this offseason that 2020 is the year Dan Mullen has to get the Bulldogs.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that Jake Fromm is no longer the QB and Jamie Newman is.

Newman has been a perfectly adequate QB in his time at Wake Forest. His Yards above Replacement (YAR, a metric I developed to compare dual-threat QBs to pocket passers) was 0.28 in 2019, which is slightly above average. Fromm was worse than that in 2019 but was significantly better (around 1.0) in both 2017 and 2018. 

The other thing to consider about Newman is what he did when he played decent opponents. Against Power-5 opponents, his QB ratings were the following: 128.0, 139.4, 124.4, 155.3, 110.3, 38.9, 164.6, 76.6, 128.1. That 38.9 is against the only team Wake Forest played that ended the season ranked in the top-25: Clemson.

Newman has experience. But coming in to be the QB of a team with championship aspirations is difficult, even with a full spring schedule. The QB has to not only play well, but has to be the leader of the team and inspire confidence in his guys when things aren’t going well.

Add to that the heat that is going to fall on Kirby Smart if his offense struggles (again) and it really just sets up as an unfair situation for Newman.

Georgia is going to be good because of its defense and overall talent level. But coming into 2020, I would have taken Trask over Newman straight-up. Without a spring practice, I think that decision is even easier.

No Spring Practice and the SEC

The elimination of spring practice won’t just have ramifications in the East. 

  • Newman at Georgia, along with replacing nine starters on offense.
  • Myles Brennan the new starter at LSU, along with all of the players who declared early for the NFL
  • Tua Tagovailoa to the NFL along with Henry Ruggs and Jerry Jeudy

There is about as much uncertainty at QB in the conference as there has been in quite a while. The “big boys” are rebuilding in a way that they usually don’t have to as opposed to reloading. This is an opportunity for Dan Mullen to take the next step even while his team isn’t quite as talented yet.

I mean, who’s going to step up? Ryan Hilinski (5.8 yards per attempt) was terrible last year. Kellen Mond (6.9 yards per attempt) wasn’t much better. The only team with above average QB play with its starter returning is Tennessee.

The underlying statistics for the Vols’ QBs actually look really good. The problem is that there is a significant difference between Florida, Georgia and Alabama and the South Carolina, UAB, Kentucky, Missouri, Vanderbilt and Indiana stretch (6-0) that helped save their season.

With that said, it’s been a long time since that Tennessee/Florida game has been circled on the calendar. If Florida demolishes the Vols yet again, I think it may say more about Florida being ready than it does about the Vols being terrible.

Gators hurt by no spring practice

There are, of course, going to be players who are hurt by not having spring practice.

The obvious ones are the early enrollees. Jahari Rogers, Issiah Walker, Ethan Pouncey, Antwaun Powell, Anthony Richardson, Joshua Braun, Rashad Torrence, Lamar Goods, Richard Leonard and Jeremy Crawshaw all lose an opportunity to get reps on the field in an environment where it’s not taking them away from a guy who is more important in the fall.

But the two players who I think are really hurt by this are Tyron Hopper and Keon Zipperer.

With David Reese leaving, there is a huge void at the linebacker position that needs to be filled. Hopper was an early enrollee last season and was the 88th ranked player nationally coming out of high school. He was also classified as an inside linebacker, meaning that my expectation was that he’d be the one to step in for Reese.

That may still happen. Hopper did get on the field for two games last season and had 0.5 tackles for loss. I’m sure he got a ton of practice reps as well. But there’s a difference between getting practice reps when you know you’re redshirting and getting spring reps when you’re preparing to compete to be the starter.

Zipperer is an interesting case as well. The 104th nationally ranked player out of Lakeland High School, Zipperer found himself moving around the field quite a bit towards the end of the year, even lining up at H-back. 

One of the things Dan Mullen has loved doing the past two years is to split Lamical Perine out wide to create mismatches against the defense. You either cover him with a linebacker or if you bring an extra defensive back on the field, Perine motions into the backfield and you run the ball against a smaller defense.

Zipperer can provide that same flexibility if he can step into the role left by Lucas Krull’s departure. Kyle Pitts is always going to be the main target so long as he’s on the field. But one way to make up for the loss of Perine is for Zipperer to be a threat on the opposite side of Pitts. It also would significantly help the running game to be able to go with two-tight end sets.

But it’s hard to install those when you don’t have the practice time to do so.

Baseball Season Canceled

We can debate the impact that the cancelation of spring activities will have on football, but there’s no doubt that it had an impact on the baseball team.

The number one Gators had just suffered their first defeat to FSU, but still were sporting a 16-1 record and had a real chance to do something special heading into SEC play.

You feel for everyone on the team. You feel for the coaches who make this their livelihood to build up to a championship season and then have to give it up. You feel for the trainers and staff who may end up moving on and missed out on contributing to a potential championship. And you feel for the players – particularly the seniors – who may have missed out on a special experience that would put them on a pedestal at Florida forever.

The NCAA may end up granting eligibility back to players whose seasons were interrupted and that’s a good thing. But there is never a guarantee that the chemistry will be the same.

True freshmen are going to come in and push for playing time. Sophomores are going to have expectations of larger roles than they had as freshmen. And seniors are going to expect to get their senior year back and that will be hard if someone younger has passed them by.

I hope Florida can recapture the magic in 2021 that they had in 2020. But I think we should also embrace what the team did in 2020. That doesn’t mean I think we should hang a banner for them (copyright UCF). But I do think it means that we should take a moment to recognize the contributions from all of the players, particularly the seniors who contributed to the championship in 2017.

I’m sad they won’t get a chance to do it again. But I’m thankful for what they’ve contributed.

Favorite Gators Moment

With all of the time everyone has been spending at home, one thing that has come across my Twitter feed is a bunch of Gators moments (the official Gators Twitter feed had a 4-part series on the 2008 team over the weekend).

So that got me thinking what was my favorite Gator football moment. At first I thought of the cock block because I remember exactly where I was when it happened and how I went from feeling helpless to elated. 

Then I thought about the 2006 championship because it was so unexpected. The only problem with that is I may or may not have taken two shots of vodka immediately after Ted Ginn returned the opening kick for a TD and so my memory is slightly hazy.

I didn’t move to Florida until 1999 so my memories of the Spurrier era were as an outsider, not as a fan who grew up wanting to be a Gator.

Maybe I’m just succumbing to recency bias, but the “heave to Cleve” is my favorite moment. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t really mean much. The wheels fell off a few weeks afterwards and the Gators struggled to a 4-7 record. Jim McElwain made up fake death threats soon after and news of his departure leaked prior to the Georgia game.

And maybe I’m thinking fondly of this game because it, too, had events beyond our control impacting the game. I flew down to Orlando the Friday before the game and could see the elevated water and the destruction left by Hurricane Irma. Just the weekend prior, my brother had texted me from his bathroom in the interior of his house as the hurricane made landfall directly over him.

There was debate whether the game would even go on and whether it should, given that it would require police resources that could be used for issues caused by the hurricane. The stadium wasn’t full because all of the people with tickets couldn’t get there for the game.

But when Feleipe Franks dropped back, and the crowd saw both Tyrie Cleveland and Brandon Powell get behind the Tennessee safeties on each side, and then watched as Franks threw a strike nearly 70 yards in the air, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a sound quite like that.

I’ve heard the Swamp louder. I’ve experienced plays that were more significant. But everyone in that stadium had been through a collective experience that week that made it seem like that very play had been part of a bigger plan.

Hopefully we’ll be able to say the same thing in 2020.

Stay safe, everyone.

Raymond Hines
Back when I was a wee one I had to decide if I wanted to live dangerously and become a computer hacker or start a website devoted to the Gators. I chose the Gators instead of the daily thrill of knowing my next meal might be at Leavenworth. No regrets, however. The Gators have been and will continue to be my addiction. What makes this so much fun is that the more addicted I become to the Florida Gators, the more fun I have doing innovative things to help bring all the Gator news that is news (and some that isn’t) to Gator fans around the world. Andy Warhol said we all have our 15 minutes of fame. Thanks to Gator Country, I’m working on a half hour. Thanks to an understanding daughter that can’t decide if she’s going to be the female version of Einstein, Miss Universe, President of the United States or a princess, I get to spend my days doing what I’ve done since Gus Garcia and I founded Gator Country back in 1996. Has it really been over a decade and a half now?