By David Parker
Thoughts of the Week: Auburn Week (10-05-19)
That sound you heard over the weekend was the Gator program emerging. It took such a huge step Saturday, both in terms of advancing on the long-term goal of building ourselves back to the elite national level, but also in terms of national recognition. Though we were both 5-0 and ranked in the top-10, Auburn was the only team on the field that entered the game with legitimacy, according to the national press and fan collective. They were being widely discussed as having the horses to mount a national title run this year. Florida was just a nice story with the backup quarterback winning a couple games against SEC back-markers.
Beating Auburn in convincing fashion, make no mistake, has given the 2019 Florida Gators legitimacy in the eyes of the nation. So much so that I have actually heard a few national guys pick us to beat LSU, and start to scrutinize the Bayou Bengals’ schedule as a joke, much as they did to our schedule leading into this game. We will see next Saturday how that dynamic plays out, but it can’t be overlooked just how tectonic this victory was and is for the Florida Gators program.
Stream of Consciousness
— The game really started off fast for the Gators, scoring on a long touchdown strike from Kyle Trask to Freddie Swain on UF’s second offensive play. But that was the sixth play from scrimmage on the day – the Gators’ huge start could have begun even earlier. On the very first play of the game, Auburn quarterback Bo Nix had to commit intentional grounding to avoid a huge sack (the refs refused to call him for this infraction he repeated several times during the game, just as they refused to call Auburn for offensive holding, which was how they were able to stop Play 1 of the game from repeating a few dozen times on the day). Then on the second play of the game, Auburn’s center launched a snap two yards to the right of the quarterback. Luckily for them, their running back was lined up to Nix’s right and was able to snag the ball on the fly and make a couple yards. Had he been lined up to Nix’s left, or had Auburn used an empty set, or had he just not had quick enough reflexes, that shotgun snap would have bounced at least inside the 10, possibly recovered by Florida, possibly scooped up for a touchdown by Florida. Then on the fourth play of the game, Auburn punted and Florida’s lead rusher came mere inches from blocking it, which would have created the same options as the errant snap would have.
— It feels like the Gators haven’t given up a second half point since Dan Mullen got off the team jet and did that iconic Gator chomp at the welcome wagon of fans. UF threw their third second half shutout of the season, and tossed their fifth consecutive fourth quarter shutout. In six fourth quarters on the season, Florida has given up just 1 score, a touchdown to Miami in Week 0. The Gators are now +95 points over their opponents after halftime, outscoring them 112-17. They also improved to a +42 mark before halftime this year, 82-40. And they are now a net 53 points better relative to their opponent in the second half than in the first half.
— As head coach of the Gators, Dan Mullen is now 6-1 against Florida’s blood rivals (FSU, Miami, Tennessee, LSU, Auburn & UGA).
— Not to be critical of him, since he has probably been our best offensive lineman this year, but if Brett Heggie doesn’t whiff on his block on the linebacker, Lemical Perine takes his fourth quarter victory-sealing touchdown to the house untouched.
— Florida has now won the last 5 matchups of two top-10 teams in The Swamp, dating back to 2005 against #5 Tennessee (remember when they were good?). Two of those top-10 victims were LSU. Next week, Florida plays another top-10 game against those same Tigers.
— The Florida defense leads the nation in interceptions, are 1 off the national lead in both sacks and turnovers, are fifth in the nation in scoring defense, and perhaps most impressive of all, they lead the nation in red zone defense – and decisively so, with just a .385 opponent percentage (Temple is #2 at .500, Ohio State #3 at .538).
Trask Master:
The running update on Florida’s scoring balance since Trask took over starting duties for the Florida Gators: Florida has outscored three SEC teams and a top-10 FCS team over the last 13 quarters of football by a total of 115-16. That’s an average of 35-5 per game against perhaps the 4 best teams we have faced this year.
Let me quote myself from last week’s newsletter: “…finally started to show some weaknesses in the Trask, Kyle profile. First and foremost is that he has no mental clock when he is in the pocket.” That really poorly-written blurb was proven prescient Saturday against Auburn when Trask got sacked 4 times by holding the ball too long, with three of those resulting in lost fumbles. THREE lost fumbles. I’m not even sure how you can lose three strip-sacks in the same game and still win at all, let alone convincingly like UF did, but it is still a really dangerous thing he needs to clean up. He did extend at least one play in the second half by side-stepping the rush, and not standing in there like the proverbial statue, so the sense of an internal clock is coming. Hopefully it is learning process he can speed up a little, because opposing coaches saw how easy it is to shake the Trask fumble tree, and they’ll be focusing on that over the next several games, you can bet.
Other than that, of course, Trask was on fire almost the entire game.
Pay the Kids
I assume everyone has heard of the court decision in California that now makes it legal for college athletes in that state to accept money for product endorsements. It caused quite furor from fans in response, from mild panic to planning a fatalistic funeral procession for all of amateur sports. But in the end, when all the smoke has cleared, I doubt this will even be a blip on the screen. After all, when is the last time a team in Cali had a player whose name was known outside their own fan base and could take advantage of this allowance? Maybe a couple kids will make some extra beer money on t-shirt sales, but I doubt much more. Even a Heisman Trophy candidate: how much money will he really stand to make? If he makes enough to move the needle, look for states with elite P5 programs to follow suit – in fact some states, including Florida, have opinion-makers pushing hard to follow suit already – then it will all be even ground for most Power 5 schools across the board and it still won’t make much difference for those states that don’t follow.
And it’s not as if this is automatically the wild wild west. The NCAA will still regulate this. Schools will not be allowed to make endorsement offers along with scholarships offers. In fact, they won’t be allowed to partake in the process at all. This ruling just means that if someone were to offer a college player an endorsement deal, he or she can take it. Does that open up myriad chances for abuse by boosters who make backdoor guarantees to push kids to their schools? Of course…but how is that any different than what has been going on for the last half century of more?
And hey, what if college football does turn into nothing but a massive booster-funded pay-for-play sport? If Florida legalizes it like Cali did, that’s a PLUS for the Florida Gators. It means we can spend equally, along with all our cheating rivals, and be totally within the rules. Wouldn’t that be a refreshing change from having our hands tied by morality and ethics? Is it not a lot better than watching Georgia, Alabama, et al, go on cheating and paying players by the truckload while we toil in the shadows of our compliance department?
I’ve got no problem with kids getting paid. I have a HUGE problem with the schools paying kids. If the money comes from external sources and it’s legal?…What could possibly be wrong with that?
When Do We Know?
When do we know WHAT, do you ask? When do we know when we are back? We have seen so many programs start the mantra of, “We’re BACK!” waaaay too prematurely. It seems to be an annual sickness with our instate rivals FSU and Miami. But it raises the question of when do we know when WE are back. Dan Mullen actually made an allusion to that question a few times after the game Saturday, specifically when talking about the Swamp. He said several times that The Swamp was back to being The Swamp Saturday, and more importantly this isn’t “The Swamp of glory years past,” but rather this is, “The Swamp of the future.” However, he also said – every time I saw him talk about the Swamp, anyway – that he knows the Florida standard, and we’re not there yet. That we are still building.
Those words sent many messages. And that is one of the signs that Dan Mullen is a great coach and the perfect coach for Florida now. In the nearest term, the “building” part weaves in with his message to the 15 billion recruits at the game that they are needed as the final pieces to “be back”. In a broader near term, it messages to the Gator fans that he knows this is not the mountain top; that there is no room for rest, and that it will only keep getting better (which, let’s be honest, was partly a post-it note to the Gator fans among us who are still suffering from PTSD from the Muschamp and McElwain tenures, that they don’t have to pull down the shades and hide in the dark corners of their homes anymore, terrified of the next shoe to drop: this isn’t the same old same old that we have had to live through since he left for Mississippi State).
From Dan’s perspective, I expect him to keep saying these things until there is a new SEC trophy in the UF case. Then I expect him to keep saying it until we get another national title crystal ball trophy in the UF case. Then I expect him to KEEP saying it until we get more of both. Because that’s the Florida standard he’s talking about. However, we don’t, shouldn’t and can’t wait all that time to determine if we are “BACK” yet. Because we have to be “back” way before we can win all those trophies. And we won’t win any of them until we are already “back”.
So when do we know? Well, I think there are two barometers that could be of very good insight into answering this question. Firstly, it might be a simple factor of where Dan started his narrative Saturday about the Florida standard. It might be as simple as looking at The Swamp every Saturday. We may be “back” when we see The Swamp rocking like a championship stadium EVERY WEEK again. Not just for the infrequent top-10 matchup against one of our oldest blood rivals, but every week, for every SEC or Power 5 opponent, and even getting a full house for the cupcakes. The fan base might be the best mirror through which we can view our status of being “back”.
The second big mirror is the national media coverage. And as much as we have seen that national media show an anti-Gator bias over the years, we finally have a head coach who is not going to be that magnet for media ire that Spurrier was because of his unconventional gamesmanship; is not going to be make an enemy of the media and be openly hostile toward them on a daily basis like Muschamp and McElwain were; and is not going to be a weird, robotic enigma like Meyer was. Dan is pretty warm and engaging. Dan is a guy reporters and talking heads want to root for, even if they don’t like Florida.
So we’ve got that going for us. Which is good. But beyond that, beyond whatever spin the media put on us, the bottom line is this: how are they covering us? Well, we just completed the halfway point of the regular season, and ESPN Game Day next week will be on site of a Gator game for the third time this year. Once in The Swamp, once on the road, and once at a neutral site. The biggest show in college football is following the Gators around the country like a loyal puppy. The Auburn game also marked the second time in 6 games where the Gator’s game was THE marquee game in the entire nation, bar none, and by a really large margin. Sure that has a lot to do with the happenstance of the schedules and the records of the teams playing Saturday (and that Florida’s game was the ONLY game in town, literally, in Week 0), but the road to get there doesn’t matter: the destination was still that the entire country of college football fans were collectively focused in on our game more than any other for 1/3 of our season so far. That not only reflects where we are and how far we’ve come, but also where and how far we are going. Because Florida won both of those games in convincing fashion. Yes, the scores were not blowouts, but they would have been if Florid hadn’t had a jillion turnovers – and those turnovers actually could have helped us in terms of attention, because it kept the national fans tuned in the whole game each time. And although the scores were often very close in both games, at no time in either contest did it ever feel like Florida wasn’t in complete control. Because they were in complete control for 120 minutes.
And speaking of the only show in town, how about the only team being featured this week by the biggest television studio on the planet, HBO. That amazing mini-documentary of the Florida football program, a week in the life, “24/7 College Football”, was an incredible exposé of how great it is to be a Florida Gator, was a perfect ramp-up to the big game against Auburn, and it will continue to be re-aired all week leading up to the giant clash with LSU. The production values of this program were so immense, it sometimes shocked me. Then I had to remind myself that this isn’t ESPN or GatorVision – both of which really do a great job with this sort of program or segments – this is HBO. This is the mother of all TV studios. This is the media giant that brought us The Soprano’s, Game of Thrones, The Wire, Deadwood, Veep, Curb Your Enthusiasm…you get the picture. This is big time on a level Florida hasn’t occupied before. Neither has anyone else.
So, while we as fans might be hesitant to jump too quickly to the phrase of “We’re back”, wary of having seen so many other college programs suffer from premature e-“back”-ulation, the national media – and with HBO, the global planetary media – seem to have already announced that we’re not just back:
We bacl.
Chomps from the GC Staff & Columnists —
ANDREW SPIVEY
The Gators picked up a commitment from OL Issiah Walker and it was a big one as he and Marcus Dumervil were the top targets on the Gators recruiting board for offensive tackles. Walker had set up an FSU visit for later in the fall but Walker has now cancelled that visit since he committed. Walker is now recruiting Dumervil to join him in Gainesville.
Speaking of Dumervil, the Gators entered this weekend’s official visit trailing LSU but coming out of the visit, the Gators are now even with LSU and may have even pulled ahead of LSU a little. The Gators will look to get Dumervil back on campus for an unofficial visit later this year before he signs early.
The 2021 class isn’t talked about a lot because everyone is focused on the 2020 class but the Gators have a good shot at having one of the top classes in the country in 2021. Several guys like Trevonte Rucker and Bryce Langston are close to committing to the class and both of those guys are top ranked guys for the class.
NICK DE LA TORRE
Six weeks, six wins, bowl eligibility, what’s next?
It doesn’t get any better than that for the Florida Gators, who are earning their respect, finally, on the national level. Last week was the game of the week and this week is too. Florida and LSU are bitter rivals, and the atmosphere is going to be insane this week.
First things first, injuries. Kyle Trask is the biggest one that is being talked about and I’m told that he is fine. He’s taking it easy, staying off of his feet as much as he can and he’s going to be good to go. Obviously he’s not going to be 100% on Saturday, he’s still playing on a sprained MCL but he’s not far from 100%. Jabari Zuniga was, as were were told last week before the game, cleared to play against Auburn. Mullen and Grantham decided to rest him and he’ll be close to 100% this week against LSU.
The Gators are one of the best defenses in the country, if not the best in the country. This week they face the top scoring offense in the nation and something is going to give. I think it’s LSU’s offense. They’re averaging 54 points a game but there’s no way, no way in the world, they hit that average this week. I don’t see them getting to 30 against Florida’s defense.
Now I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer here or downplay this game at all but I said it before the Auburn game that Florida would go 1-1 against LSU and Auburn and still be in great position in the SEC. Florida controls its own fate in the SEC by way of taking care of Auburn already. Even a loss to LSU would still leave Florida with the ability to win the rest of their SEC games and go to Atlanta.
DAVID WUNDERLICH
The Florida defense has been on fire this year, at least when tackling properly. They didn’t do that against Miami, obviously, and some big plays resulting from them not wrapping up allowed the Hurricanes to get some points. They had a rough time of it early against Kentucky’s Sawyer Smith, a backup they had no film on, but held the Wildcats to a single score after the break.
The defense has pitched two shutouts, albeit with an assist by an unforced fumble and missed field goal by Towson. They also completely shut down Tennessee’s offense, which managed to put two touchdowns on Georgia early last weekend via both big play and long drive. The Gators then gifted Auburn all 13 of its points with short fields following fumbles and a bad fake field goal. Outside those, the Tigers didn’t come close to scoring.
Here’s the fun realization: the starting defense has yet to all play together. Brad Stewart was suspended for the opener, while Jabari Zuniga missed Auburn as a precaution to make him 100% for this weekend. As good as the defense has been, the real starting 11 hasn’t played a single snap together. It couldn’t come at a better time with LSU’s legitimately good offense up next, but literally no one has seen this Gator defense in a game at full strength.
ERIC FAWCETT
Tuesday was a big day for basketball recruiting news. First, the Gators landed 2020 wing Niels Lane, a 6’5″ athlete who can really defend and play above the rim. He’s from New Jersey and is a close friend of Scottie Lewis who really helped in the recruitment. This means Florida now has 3 commits for 2020 with Niels Lane, Samson Ruzhentsev, and Osayi Osifo.
This has major implications when it comes to PJ Hall, a player who has long been Florida’s number 1 target. You see, the Gators only stand to lose one player (Kerry Blackshear Jr.) to graduation and while it’s wildly believed Scottie Lewis and Andrew Nembhard will go pro, the rest of the roster you can’t be sure about. For that reason the Gators aren’t looking to get any more commitments now. That means that unless PJ Hall wants to wait until the spring to see how scholarships work out, which he likely won’t do, the Gators are out. This, to me, is an extremely bold decision. Functionally, the Gators chose Osayi Osifo over him. Osifo was a player with all the athleticism and length you could desire but is someone who was seldom used in JUCO last year and has a long way to go. Florida was in a great spot with Hall and deciding to take a JUCO player in the fall to fill that scholarship is, well, a curious decision in my mind. We’ll see how things end up shaking out.
That’s all, folks!
All the best,
Your friends at Gator Country
…where it’s GREAT to be a FLORIDA GATOR!