(Note from Editor Ray: This posting was delayed a couple days due to our server migration)
By Will Miles
Injury Luck
I’ve been looking at various previews throughout the offseason, and I’ve been surprised at how strongly the experts expect LSU to bounce back.
Part of that makes sense. I think Coach O is undervalued because of his gruffness –after all, this is a guy who won at USC as an interim and has a national championship on his resume – and so believing he’ll be able to put things together isn’t a huge stretch. Still, LSU just wasn’t all that good in 2020.
Of course, the Tigers also had a ton of injuries. And that’s something I think we often overlook when evaluating coaches or trying to predict what will happen: what happens if key players get injured.
We all saw the effects of this in 2013. Will Muschamp seemed to have the Gators riding high after a successful 2012 season and everything fell apart as Jeff Driskel and then Tyler Murphy went down with injuries. All of a sudden, we were watching Skyler Mornhinweg starting against South Carolina and Florida State.
But injuries don’t always come as just the entire team turning into a MASH unit. Instead, there are just key injuries that occur throughout the year. Interestingly, Dan Mullen’s first three years in Gainesville have been marked by incredible health. There was the major injury to Feleipe Franks, a shoulder injury for Kadarius Toney and the nagging injuries to Jabari Zuniga in 2019. 2020 started with an injury to Ethan White in camp, but Florida made it through a 10-game SEC schedule relatively unscathed.
That doesn’t happen all that often. To play in the SEC, you need significant depth precisely because injuries do happen. Now, I don’t think Florida is “due” for a year with bad injury luck. But I do think that the Gators will have a year that regresses to the mean at some point, which means their depth will be tested.
We’ll see if they have enough.
Arrival of Elijah Blades
Florida did get some help in the depth department with the announcement that corner Elijah Blades is transferring in from Texas A&M. Blades’ name should sound familiar to Gators fans as he has committed to the program before, but has found his way to Gainesville after stops in Nebraska, Arizona, Oregon and Texas.
Transfer Jadarrius Perkins and Blades are now going to likely be in an open competition with true freshman Jason Marshall and potentially Jaydon Hill for the starting spot opposite Kaiir Elam. Perkins, Blades and Marshall are all 6’2” and so Florida will have the option of players who should be able to high-point the ball.
For all of his leaping ability, Marco Wilson was only 6’0” tall, and so against larger receivers (i.e. 6’5” Caleb Chapman), he struggled with the ball in the air. The hope is that the players stepping in to compete will be better in that capacity just by virtue of their size.
If nothing else, Blades addition increases depth at a position that already seems to have considerable death. There are places where Florida would really struggle if a starter went down, but corner is likely a place where Florida could absorb an injury.
Brenton Cox participating
In other news on the injury front, Brenton Cox is participating in fall camp and looks to not be all that limited either.
After a Georgia site revealed that he had foot surgery, they also speculated that he would miss fall camp and perhaps even some games early in the season. While the surgery part was true, clearly the missing camp and games part was exaggerated.
However, I don’t think this changes all that much. Florida needs to keep Cox fresh for the games against Alabama, LSU and Georgia. He might be able to pad his stats against FAU and USF, but I’d much rather see him at full-go when the Tide come to Gainesville.
That might mean some players up-front playing out of position to start the year, but it likely would be worth it. Grantham’s defenses need pressure to thrive, and Florida is good enough to win the first two games without a thriving defense. They’re not good enough to beat the Tide without it.
Grantham’s 3-step plan (DT play, play the ball in the air, cohesion)
Todd Grantham revealed his three-step plan to improve on defense this year. In some ways, I think it makes a lot of sense.
The first step is defensive tackle play. This isn’t a secret if you watch any tape last year. The linebackers were constantly getting mauled because the defensive line wasn’t getting any push. To address this, Florida brought in transfers Antonio Shelton and Da’Quan Newkik. These guys are going to be a huge part of the success or failure of the team this season and so I’m glad Grantham is keying on them.
The second step is playing the ball better in the air. I already mentioned that Grantham is going to have taller corners on the field this season, but we’ll see if that helps when they’re in position to make a play. But if we’re being honest, there were plenty of times when the corners were playing off-coverage and first downs were really easy to come by. I’m more interested in whether the corners are in position on a regular basis than whether they make the play.
The third step Grantham cited is unit cohesion. Certainly, COVID made things weird last year, but they were weird for everyone. For Grantham to cite cohesion though indicates that he didn’t think his defense played together very well. Unfortunately, that’s a coaching problem. If you don’t think your player are doing what they should, there needs to be new players on the field. I get what Grantham’s saying, and in principle I agree with it.
But you can’t have cohesion when nobody’s being held accountable for their mistakes.
Running Back Room
Apparently the running backs are ready for a larger role in 2021. Good, because we’re going to need it.
Florida’s top running back only had 503 yards last season (Dameon Pierce). The last Gators running back to top 1,000 yards was Kelvin Taylor back in 2015, and he did so with a 4.0 yards per rush average. Before that was Mike Gillislee in 2012 (4.7 yards per rush) and before that was Ciatrick Fason in 2004 (5.7 yards per rush) and Earnest Graham in 2002 (4.5 yards per rush).
Fason is a great benchmark and Gators fans remember him so fondly because of how explosive he was. To average a full yard more per carry than Gillislee while still putting up over 1,000 yards says something about how special he was.
That is why the running back room gets everybody excited. We’ve seen what Dameon Pierce (5.4 yards per rush), Malik Davis (5.1) and Nay’Quan Wright (3.6) can do. But with the additions of Lorenzo Lingard (7.6 yards per rush) and Demarkcus Bowman to the fold, this group has a chance to be the most explosive running game since Fason was around.
Now, we do need to be a little bit careful about what we wish for. That 2004 team went 7-5, with losses to Tennessee, LSU, Mississippi State, Georgia and Miami. Chris Leak was an above average QB, Fason ran wild and the Gators ranked 19th in points scored. But that team was also incredibly unlucky, losing four of its five games by one score.
The point is that the 2004 team – which led to Urban Meyer coming to town – was a really good team. It just didn’t show up in the final record, likely because of who was on the sideline. I don’t suspect that will be an issue with Dan Mullen.
Lethal Simplicity and FAU
This week, I’ve been thinking about Florida’s first opponent (that is an awesome statement to write). The Gators play Florida Atlantic and old punching bag Willie Taggart.
The punchline Taggart used for his offense while in Tallahassee – lethal simplicity – became a joke amongst Gators fans. As the Seminoles struggled to even put a competent offense on the field, the idea of anything being lethal was just hilarious. Still, I wanted to see Taggart succeed at FAU because he seems like a good man even if he wasn’t the right fit for Florida State.
Taggart went 5-4 in his first season, reasonably impressive given the changing of staffs in the middle of a pandemic. Certainly, he deserves a spring and fall camp to implement his system in a way he couldn’t last season.
But taking over for Lane Kiffin, FAU had offenses that ranked 10th, 18th, and 54th in yards per play gained form 2017-2019. Last season, that fell to 103rd under Taggart. Again, I think there were unique challenges to last year for Taggart, but this bodes well for the Gators defense and Todd Grantham in the opener as they look to redeem themselves for 2020.
Masks in the Swamp?
As COVID-19 cases spike in Florida, there’s more and more talk about what kinds of mitigation strategies are going to be undertaken. I suspect one of those strategies is going to be masking in the Swamp during games.
Forgetting that masking is incredibly uncomfortable, particularly in the Florida afternoon heat, I’m not convinced that it is all that effective in this particular type of situation. I mean, you’re packed in less than three feet apart to watch Florida play Alabama, you’re sweating to a point where the mask is completely saturated, and somehow this is supposed to keep you safe from the virus?
I know nobody wants to hear it (heck, I don’t either), but if you actually want to prevent spread, you have to do it by limiting capacity at games and with vaccinations. Limiting capacity is unlikely to happen and Florida seems unlikely to require vaccines to attend, but the cosmetic theater of fans wearing masks into a game after tailgating all afternoon without them is going to be a striking distinction.
There are public health measures that make sense when it comes to combatting a virus. But the sainting of masks as the best way to do that is just confusing to me.
OL Recruiting
Florida got beat out by UCF for Orlando offensive tackle Leyton Nelson, a 3-star recruit.
This isn’t a big deal in a vacuum. Florida should have plenty of options when it comes to guys ranked in the 500’s on the offensive line. The odds that Nelson turns into a draftable college player are somewhere around 15-20%.
But we don’t operate in a vacuum. Florida has struggled to keep elite prospects from Florida in the state, getting raided by the likes of Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State. The Gators have consistently been the 5th or 6th best recruiting school in the SEC over Dan Mullen’s tenure. And now they’re losing a commit that they want to UCF?
There are family reasons for Nelson to prefer UCF. But it seems like there are always excuses for recruiting misses and no real accountability. Win on the field and that isn’t an issue. But at 2-5 against LSU, Georgia and Alabama, 2021 is going to go a long way towards determining whether those excuses are acceptable anymore.
Mike Braun
Josh Braun is trying to win a job on the offensive line this fall. His Dad took to Twitter because apparently people have been bombarding him with questions about playing time, and he made it clear that he doesn’t talk to Josh about that sort of stuff.
He also made a point to mention the vitriol pointed at one particular person on the offensive line (Jean Delance) and how that criticism bothered him. It’s an interesting comment to me and points out the difficulty of playing at a place like Florida.
From Braun’s comments, it’s clear that the players and their parents hear the criticism. This is sad to me, as this should be the best time of their lives. Instead, they’re forced to perform perfectly for people who couldn’t do anything they are capable of doing.
Want to criticize Marco Wilson for throwing a shoe? I think that’s legitimate. That was a dumb play that cost the Gators a game, but I’m not going to tweet at his Dad about it incessantly during the offseason. Want to criticize Delance if he misses a key block during a game? Again, I think that’s legitimate. What isn’t legitimate is pointing out that deficiency incessantly every time he takes a practice rep or is announced in the starting lineup.
Lots of fans have Twitter bravery. Jean Delance is 6’5” and over 300 pounds. You would never insult him in the way he is insulted online if you had to do it in person. You’re not being pithy. You’re just being a jerk. And if you wouldn’t say it to his face, then it makes you a smaller person when you say it online.
Loss of Bobby Bowden
We lost an icon of college sports this weekend when Bobby Bowden passed away.
The architect of the Florida State program, Bowden’s folksy demeanor combined with the swagger that his teams played with sometimes rubbed people the wrong way. But regardless of what your opinion of Bowden, you can’t deny the success.
From 1987-2000, Florida State finished in the top-5 of the AP Poll. Those teams won two national championships and played for two others. They joined the ACC in 1992 and only lost two games in conference for the rest of the decade.
The Florida-Florida State rivalry of the 90s will likely never be matched. From 1990 to 1999, both teams were in the top-10 every time they played. In 1991, #5 Florida beat #3 Florida State, potentially costing the Seminoles a second shot at Miami and redemption for Wide Right 1. The Gators and Seminoles met twice in the Sugar Bowl, once after the “Choke at Doak” and again for a National Championship in 1996. The Gators pulled off the upset in 1997, again costing Florida State a shot at a title.
Bowden went 7-5-1 against Spurrier, but it never really felt like either had the upper hand. To have two icons of the coaching world two hours apart in one of the most talent-rich states in the country was a situation that I’m sure a lot of us fans took for granted.
As the Tennessee rivalry has waned, so too has the Florida State rivalry. It’s been replaced by rivalries with LSU and a renewed vitriol towards Georgia. But the point of a rivalry is that after you’re done and have won the game, you know you’ve accomplished something because your opponent was a deserving adversary.
Bowden always made sure Florida State fit that description.