By Will Miles
UCF 2-for-1
Well, it didn’t take long after Danny White left UCF for news to break that the Gators and Knights are going to play a 2-for-1 series sometime soon.
White’s contention was that a 2-for-1 was beneath UCF and he got much of that fan base to agree with him. But as is often the case in college football, eventually it becomes clear that the big boys rule the sport and so UCF will agree to what White should have agreed to long ago.
But I do wonder whether he did lasting damage to his program by the way he acted. Yes, UF is going to play UCF. And yes, the games will have a little more juice because Florida fans are going to enjoy making little brother shut up on the field. And yes, White got UCF a little bit more attention than they would have otherwise have gotten.
But Scott Frost left for Nebraska. Josh Heupel left for Tennessee. And now UCF had to agree to a 2-for-1. It turns out, it was a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Copeland #1
Well, Jacob Copeland has some big shoes to fill. It was announced this week that Copeland is going to wear number 1, following in the footsteps of players like Percy Harvin and Kadarius Toney.
Toney was given number 1 last offseason and I think lots of fans had some doubts about whether he would deliver. He had shown explosion his first three seasons, but hadn’t put things together. That….sounds familiar when talking about Copeland.
Copeland had 5 explosives in 2019 (on 37 targets) and 8 explosives in 2020 (on 40 targets). If we expect him to get 80 targets in 2021 (Toney had 86 in 2020), then we should expect somewhere between 11-16 explosive plays. Toney had 17 in 2020.
Yes, Copeland needs to be more consistent. I’d love to see him increase his ratio of catches to targets (57% vs. 81% for Toney in 2020). But the reality is that if anybody is going to replace Kadarius Toney’s production in 2021, it has to start with Jacob Copeland.
AR15
When Anthony Richardson threw a laser for a touchdown late in the Oklahoma game, my Twitter lit up.
Richardson is a huge, athletic player who just looks like he will be a handful when he’s finally given the keys to the offense. While his athletic gifts are significant, I like even better that he appears to have a confidence that is necessary to be an elite QB.
That’s the only way you can explain how Richardson – who clearly understand the history of the number 15 in Gainesville – chose to actively make the change to number 15 for this season. Part of that is the AR15 moniker, which let’s be honest, is really freaking cool. Maybe he just likes that number and that’s all there is to it.
But I think it’s a really good sign that Richardson plays a position where you need a little bit of an edge, and there’s no better way to say you have that edge than to embrace the number of a Heisman-winning QB whom many consider the best player in college football history.
He isn’t just embracing expectations for QBs at Florida. He’s actively inviting them.
SEC Media Days
After what has seemed like an eternity, football is almost back.
We get the first indication of that when the preseason magazines come out in early summer. But we really get a taste when all the SEC media get together to predict what will happen at SEC Media Days.
This year is much more normal than last, when we didn’t even know at this point whether there would be a season. We also didn’t know that the Big 10 and Pac 12 would completely cancel their seasons only to reverse course when it became clear that the SEC and ACC were going to tell them to pound sand.
It’s just a bunch of talking. We all thought Florida’s defense would be a strength last year (boy, were we wrong). I didn’t think Kyle Trask would be able to make a Burrow-type leap (boy, I was wrong). Nobody thought Mac Jones would be the heir apparent to Tom Brady (note: still don’t).
So while it’s good to have football content back in our lives, I’m not sure there’s a lot to get excited about. I’d rather hear news about a couple of 5-stars committing to Florida than hear Mullen’s opinions on replacing Trask, Toney and Pitts.
Prediction Accuracy
With all that said, the SEC Media hasn’t done a terrible job of picking things the past few years.
Last year, they had the Gators and Tide meeting up in the SEC Championship and 77 of the 96 voters picked the Tide to win. Of course, they also had Texas A&M finishing fourth in the west. And if we look to 2019, SEC Media again picked the Tide to win the west with Georgia winning the east and didn’t think a lot of LSU. They picked Alabama and Georgia again in 2017 and 2018 and were half correct in ’17 (Auburn) and correct in ’18.
I point this out to say that the teams the media picks are the logical, heavy favorites. There’s pretty much no doubt that the media will pick Georgia and Bama again for 2021. But history says that there are upstarts who make their way into the game just about every other year.
So that would mean one of Florida, Auburn, LSU or Texas A&M is going to make it. Of those four, Florida has the easiest path.
Let’s go!
Miller and Carter
Ventrell Miller and Zachary Carter are representing Florida at SEC Media Days.
Some have complained that there aren’t any offensive players attending, but I’m not sure who really deserved that placement. I mean, do you bring Emory Jones considering he’s basically going to be asked questions about his lack of experience? Or do you bring Miller and Carter, two leaders who are going to be trying to help a defense that was embarrassed in 2021 right the ship?
I’ve got to be honest, I’m much more interested – and concerned – about the Gators defense in 2021 than I am with the offense. I mean, Dan Mullen is a coach who won 9 games with Nick Fitzgerald at QB. I suspect he actually could put up 30 points with Clarabelle at QB.
So I want to hear from Carter and Miller. I want to know what it feels like when you can’t stop Texas A&M no matter what you try. I want to hear about whether they watched tape of Najee Harris this offseason to figure out how to stop that kind of player in 2021. I want to know what they think about the vitriol sent their way by their own fan base.
Because this team is going to score enough points to be pretty good. But if they put up numbers on defense similar to either 2018 or 2020, it’s still going to be a long season.
Grantham’s Time
Todd Grantham is on the clock.
I wrote a little blurb in this column last week and expanded this week at Read and Reaction about how the 2018 defense was just as bad against SEC opponents as the 2020 squad. That doesn’t bode well for a coordinator who has worn out his welcome with fans at just about every step along the way.
But this is also an opportunity for Grantham. Improve the defense and he’s going to get an opportunity to be a head coach somewhere in college football. His name was mentioned two years ago after the defense played pretty well in 2019 and Mullen worked to retain him, and now Mullen has stuck out his neck for Grantham after the 2020 debacle, so he clearly must see something in him that others are missing.
We often see players excel when they are in contract years (Adrian Beltre in 2004 is a prime example), but rarely do we talk about that with coaches. Well, Grantham is essentially in a contract year.
We’ll see what he can do.
Pete Alonso and the HR Derby
Former Gator Pete Alonso put on a show this Monday at the home run derby. With all of the attention on Shohei Ohtani, Alonso let it known he was there to win when he put up 35 home runs in the first round.
But perhaps the thing that invigorated me most about Alonso and the derby was that he actually wanted to be there. It’s embarrassing for baseball that Fernando Tatis, Jr. and Vlad Guerrero, Jr. weren’t in the event. I get that there is a reputation that the derby ruins your swing (the actual evidence of that is minimal), but we’re talking about an event that had a huge buzz but was missing a bunch of the game’s best stars.
But that’s sort of the point. Alonso loves the game. He is the kind of guy that MLB needs to be marketing. Forget Mike Trout (who I love, by the way), who is an excellent player but doesn’t seem to have a desire to actively promote the game or the charisma to engage a national audience.
Alonso is playing in New York, the Mets are in first place, he has 17 home runs (and has been worth 1.4 WAR) and he clearly loves the game and appreciates the big moment.
Give me more Pete Alonso, MLB. Highlighting guys like that is how you grow the game.
MLB and the 2017 Gators
Florida won the 2017 College World Series, but Alonso was a huge part of building that team, helping the Gators reach the CWS in 2015 and 2016. He then went into the draft after his junior season, but that 2017 team was loaded, which got me thinking about which ones have made an impact in MLB thus far.
Tyler Dyson is in A-ball. Michael Byrne, Dalton Guthrie, J.J. Schwarz and Alex Faedo are in AA. Jonathan India, Jackson Kowar, and Brady Singer have made it to the show.
That shows how hard it is to actually make it. I would have bet just about anything that Faedo was going to be a star. Instead, he’s working his way back from Tommy John surgery in the Tiger’s system. Only India is going to probably end up ranking as an above-average major leaguer this year, which is amazing for a team that won the whole thing in 2017.
Certainly there is more time for a bunch of these players to make their way to the majors and make an impact, but considering what Alonso is doing, it should make us appreciate him even more.
MLB and the 2021 Gators
All that said, the Gators had a bunch of players drafted in the 2021 MLB Draft.
Both Jud Fabian and Tommy Mace were selected in the 2nd round. Nathan Hickey, Christian Scott, Jacob Young, Jack Leftwich and Franco Aleman all were selected as well. That makes 95 players drafted under Kevin O’Sullivan in his time with the Gators.
As I showed above, it’s probably a fool’s errand to try and pick which of these players will succeed and which will fail. India, Singer and Kowar were all first round draft picks, but so was Faedo. I do think it suggests though both 1) why the odds are against these guys that the 2017 class only has first rounders in the majors and 2) why the 2021 team failed to live up to expectations.
Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker were both selected in the top-10. Florida didn’t have any first round selections. The lack of high-end talent in baseball usually shows up in consistency, and that’s where Florida struggled.
Still, I wish these players the best. They’re all embarking on their dream and just being selected is an honor that only a select few get to experience.
All Star Game
I already mentioned Alonso in the home run derby, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the All Star game as well.
My kids are half-Chinese. My 9-year old plays baseball, but he fell in love with baseball in large part because he looks a lot like Shohei Ohtani. To see someone who looks like him go out there and excel gives him hope that he can too, and I’m not sure I appreciated the effect that can have on someone before experiencing it with him.
But it was really fun to see his love for the game grow and to experience that together. That’s what baseball was when I was a kid, and it’s what Gator football has turned into as I’ve become an adult. Because my family all has a connection to UF, it means that football season becomes a time to bond, a time to enjoy each other’s company and a time to participate in a shared experience that we all enjoy.
Ohtani is a special case for MLB, and particularly for my son. But it did make me look forward to the football season even more, because I suspect the Gators are going to give him and I a couple of those moments during the 2021 season.
Is it September yet?