If Florida is going to lose out and miss a bowl, and that seems like the most likely outcome now, then I’d much rather see efforts like that one against Missouri than half the team being utterly incompetent against LSU. It hurts a lot to lose it in the way that they did, but to even be in it at the end is an encouraging sign.
There were a lot of things stacked against them. First, the weather. The Gators generally play poorly in the cold. See last year’s loss to Vanderbilt for an obvious example, but they’ve never consistently played well when long sleeves are required in my lifetime. Heck, even the Tampa Bay Bucs used to always be terrible in temperatures below 50 degrees, which was really inconvenient back when they used to be in a division with Green Bay.
UF has also been slowly bleeding away key players to injury, and that continued with Austin Barber being out for this one. He’s not taken the step forward to being a potential all-conference contender that it looked like maybe he could’ve after last season, but he is the best offensive tackle on the team without a doubt.
And then, of course, the team lost its rock when Graham Mertz’s collarbone fractured on the first and only play of the year where he looked like the No. 15 who has a statue outside the stadium. Mertz has been a true leader for this squad this year, and I shudder to think where they’d be without him.
It’s manifestly obvious that the team hasn’t quit on its coaches. It’s an incredibly important fact to note since Billy Napier is absolutely coming back next season. Once a team gives up on its leaders, it’s next to impossible to come back from that.
I feel just so bad about Mertz, but as Napier loves to say at Monday press conferences after losses, we have to turn the page.
I couldn’t believe how relatively good Max Brown looked compared to the spring game. Seven months ago, he looked nowhere near ready to play at the SEC level. On Saturday night, he was a bit overly amped up — understandable, given the circumstances — but he was generally poised and confident.
To be sure, he’s still a bit raw. Most teams’ backups don’t fumble handoffs, though it’s much to Brown’s credit that he was entirely unfazed by it. I also am not sure why his cleat stuck in the turf on the third down before the Gators’ final field goal, but he managed to stay with it and complete the transfer safely.
However I do think he played well enough that maybe Florida might be able to MacGyver something that, when combined with some Swamp magic, could result in an upset against FSU’s backup quarterbacks this weekend. I haven’t seen an update on Jordan Travis yet as I write this on Sunday afternoon, but dudes seldom come back the next week after being carted off the field. Tate Rodemaker is and has always been a large step down from Travis, so don’t count the Gators out yet.
Again, I can’t say enough about the effort from the team. If you’d have asked me if they could be breaking off chunk runs in crunch time against a fringe top ten team with Brown behind center and Kam Waites and Lyndell Hudson at the tackle spots, I’d have said no. But there they were doing it in Columbia. Bravo, guys. Truly.
That’s not to say it was a wonderful game from start to finish, of course. It certainly was not.
The defense remains infuriatingly inconsistent. They can have two great downs in a row before giving up a massive play. I realize a lot of that is because there is so much youth all over everywhere, but it doesn’t make it any easier to see.
I still don’t know what to make of the starting corners. Jalen Kimber and Jason Marshall had tremendous plays on 2nd & 17 and 3rd & 17 towards the end. Why they can’t do that every down, I don’t know. They have been in college a while and are plenty experienced.
I also leave this game having a hard time with Billy Napier’s leadership. They still can’t get a play in on time, every time. It’s towards the end of his second season. They should have had that down long ago.
He also reverted back to last year’s form where the ends of halves were a problem. Florida got the ball with 1:21 left in the first half down six with a timeout. The first play was a swing pass behind the line of scrimmage to Tre Wilson, which lost yardage due to a missed block. About 30 seconds then elapsed before the next snap, which Montrell Johnson then broke for a nice gain. Suddenly getting into field goal range was on the table, but they had wasted so much time that it was a slim chance.
Then Napier went conservative again late, playing for the field goal once the offense got in the red zone on the team’s last real drive. I get that the runs were trying to either bleed clock or force Mizzou to use its timeouts, and things would’ve been different had Trevor Etienne not gone out of bounds on third down.
But would it? Missouri didn’t even use its final timeout to stop the clock, as it came after an incomplete pass. It gave Eli Drinkwitz a little extra time to think of what to do on 4th & 17, but it wasn’t critical to the passage of game time.
It’s a tough call because Napier needed the win in the worst way. The defense also hasn’t been trustworthy in over a month.
But to me that’s all the more reason to try for the touchdown, to give the defense the boost of knowing they just had to keep the Tigers out of the end zone. Florida’s offense did much better in the second half than the first, even after Brown went in the game. It’s easier to take a loss if you go down swinging.
Even though the offense hasn’t been the problem in most games, I hope the rumors are true that Napier will hire a real offensive coordinator. We need to know if he can fix all of the procedural and strategic issues, and taking OC duties off of his plate seems like the best way to find out.
Nothing would buoy the program for the offseason like upsetting FSU next weekend, so here’s hoping they can pull it off. Keep hope alive.