It’s always a disappointment to lose to a rival like Tennessee. Doubly so, since the Vols have had so much trouble beating Florida in the last 20 years.
That said, I spent nearly all the time I watched the game trading funny faces with my ten-week-old daughter. There’s nothing like parenthood to give you a strong dose of perspective. I’m doing just fine, thanks.
On top of that factor, I expected UF to go into this game and lose. It felt like 2016 to me, where Tennessee had the better and less mistake-prone team. UT also had a good quarterback in both contests who was a senior with about a million game snaps under his belt. Both times, I felt ahead of time that yeah, the Volunteers probably should win.
On top of that, Hendon Hooker is just better than Josh Dobbs was. Hooker has gone more than 200 straight passes without a pick. That’s good for top ten all-time in the SEC, and while I don’t know what the record is, he will challenge it if it’s not too far away. He also is athletic enough that when you don’t spy him, he can pick up huge chunks on the ground thanks to the offense being very spread out.
And on top of that too, Josh Heupel is a better offensive coach than Butch Jones is at any aspect of coaching. Heupel has a Billy Napier-like progression, getting fired as OC at Oklahoma after getting that job too early. He then rebuilt his career, had some success at a G5 program, and parlayed that into an SEC job.
To be sure, Heupel is probably not as good a program builder as Napier is. UCF deteriorated under his watch, while Louisiana was pretty much a straight line up under Napier. Billy is easily a better recruiter too, so in the long term, I’ll take the Gator head coach over Heupel any day.
But in this particular situation, everything lined up for a Tennessee win. And despite some late game heroics from the Gators, a Tennessee win is how it ended up.
I’m not going to tell you how you should feel, but I feel a lot better after this one than I did last week’s win against USF.
Anthony Richardson is not broken. He still had some obvious misfires with his passes, but he provided the kind of spectacular play that helped deliver the Utah win. AR still turns it over too much as seen by the fumble — the pick is a “whatever” for me because it was a Hail Mary situation — but UF would’ve been nowhere close to contention with a game manager like the still-injured Jack Miller or one of the freshmen in the game.
Funnily enough, I don’t have much else to say on the offense. Napier went back to something like the Week 1 scheme, and if anything, it worked better. If AR got hurt in practice between Weeks 1 and 2, as at least one person near the program has said, then that could explain the bland play calling in the two games between Utah and Tennessee. I hope that’s all it was because it’s completely inexplicable why Napier would veer away from something so effective. Especially for two weeks in a row when Richardson’s confidence got shot to pieces against UK.
The defense is the big point of concern. The only times all game that the Vols didn’t get points were on turnovers or when it shut its own offense down late to run clock instead.
Yes, there are a lot of young and inexperienced players who have some learning to do. There are also some much older and more experienced players who, at best, have a lot of bad habits to break from the old defensive regime. But as Will Miles pointed out on Sunday, execution aside there were some puzzling defensive calls.
I must say, I never figured out why so many people were so confident in Patrick Toney as a defensive coordinator. He is in his very early 30s and had never run a P5 defense before.
What’s more, Napier reportedly tried to find an experienced DC for the staff last winter to help Toney along until he was really ready for prime time. Chris Ash was the name thrown around the most, but he elected to stay in the NFL. The spot eventually went to co-DC Sean Spencer, who is a good recruiter and D-line coach but who has no real defensive play-calling experience.
Now that Georgia Tech has fired Geoff Collins, bringing Coach Money Down back to Gainesville would be the dream. I don’t know that he’d be willing to take a co-DC title with a guy 20 years his junior, and I don’t know a way to pull it off without making it look like a demotion for Toney. Finding a spot on the staff is the easy part with Collins a former LBs coach: encourage, shall we say, Jay Bateman to go find a G5 DC job and slide Collins right in.
I’m left wondering whether Napier would make such a power move, going after Collins or any other Ash-like figure to fix the defensive scheme stuff right away, or if he’ll just take some lumps while Toney gets his seasoning. I hope it’s the former. I don’t know why UF should have to wait for its DC to get on-the-job training. This is the SEC. The clock is always ticking.
Florida is now 2-2, having proven that it could beat or lose to anyone on the schedule. Maybe not lose to Eastern Washington, but that game may not even happen depending on what happens with Hurricane Ian and the availability of security and first responders. They may have something more important to do than facilitate a cupcake game on Saturday.
Again, perspective forces its way in. I hope all of you reading this stay safe this week. The Florida football program will always have issues that need addressing. Make sure you and yours will be around to cheer them on while they do it for a long time to come.