A win is a win is a win. It really is as simple as that, especially coming off of a 4-8 season. But, I think I speak for nearly the entire Gator Nation when I say that game was not pretty nor was it encouraging. I warned everyone on Friday that this wasn’t the Kentucky team Gators fans were accustomed to seeing. That said, six of the remaining eight teams on Florida’s schedule appear to be better than the Wildcats, some of them MUCH better. The jury is still out on Tennessee, but at this point I think that Kentucky is better than the Vols. Suffice it to say that the Gators must play much better than they did on Saturday if they hope to have even a decent season. Let’s start this review with a good, bad and ugly. It will be easier.
The Good: The Gators gutted it out and won a hard fought physical football game. Demarcus Robinson! What a breakout game for Robinson. Fifteen receptions for 216 yards and a pair of scores is a magnificent game for anyone and the Gators quite simply do not win this football game without Demarcus. Matt Jones! None of them will admit it now, but I have heard more than a few Gator fans talk about Matt being overrated. Saturday Matt had 156 yards on 29 carries. At crunch time, the coaching staff knew that Kentucky was too gassed to stop Jones and kept feeding the big man the ball. This dismayed some fans around me in the stands but I would have done the same thing if I were coach. It was working. There is one more item in the good column, Jeff Driskel. I can almost feel Gator fans writhing in anger as they read this, but although he did struggle in the first half, Jeff rebounded with 295 yards passing, three touchdowns and one interception. That just isn’t a bad day folks.
The Bad: Jeff Driskel! Are you happier now? Jeff started the game off horribly overthrowing long passes badly that would have put the game away early and changed Florida’s entire approach to the second half of the game. Hopefully, it was just an off day. All quarterbacks have them. If Jeff cannot be accurate on long passes that will severely limit Kurt Roper and this new offense. If Florida is forced to turn to a true freshman it is my belief that this will be a very long and destructive season for the Gator program. Florida desperately needs Driskel to be the answer, and he will have to play better than he did on Saturday to be that answer. Pass protection! In all fairness to Driskel, he is still getting pressured mercilessly on most pass plays. I watched and I don’t believe that Jeff is holding the ball too long like he did at times in the past. Most of his decisions were pretty good with the obvious exception of that horrendous interception. But, he is getting very little protection. This does not bode well for this Saturday. Hands! Can anyone on this team not named Demarcus Robinson catch the football? While Driskel did not play well in the first half he didn’t get much help from his friends either. When Jeff did throw the ball on target it was dropped. And, how many potential interceptions did the defense drop? I haven’t watched the game on TV yet, but it seemed like five or six drops by the defense. This could have been a six interception game and a blowout win for the Gators.
The Ugly: The secondary. This was the unit I was most concerned about all summer. What tends to happen with young, inexperienced and talented defensive backs is that they are usually in pretty good position but fail to make a play on the ball. I saw a lot of that on Saturday. Great defensive backs feel the ball in the air and turn to find it at just the right time. What we saw Saturday was defenders following a receiver with no idea that the ball was coming. The receiver makes an adjustment to the ball and the defender is either left out of position or forced to make contact and draw the flag. The bad news is that this problem tends to not correct itself a great deal from game to game and it the Florida secondary doesn’t improve a good bit there are some losses looming on the horizon. Finally, the officiating. Those who know me well know that I do not like blaming officials but that was a poorly called football game. There is a lot of talk about Florida being given the win by officials who did not call the delay of game on that fourth down touchdown in overtime. If they did indeed miss that call, and I think they did, it was just one of many missed calls in that game and cannot be given any more weight than any of the others since any missed call has the potential to change the game.
So the overview of this game is this, it wasn’t pretty but it was a win. Say what you want about Jeff Driskel but he drove the team into field goal range with less than half a minute to work with at the end of regulation. He didn’t miss that kick. He made a tough and critical throw on fourth down in the first overtime to extend the game. That ball didn’t just magically appear in Robinson’s hands. While some Gator fans think Florida reverted back to their old run the ball and kill the clock mentality it is worth noting that the Gators had over eighty offensive plays in regulation and Jeff threw the ball 43 times in that game. Roper’s offense worked for the most part to the tune of 532 total yards, but Florida must score touchdowns for it to matter. I know many fans wanted to see Treon Harris come into the game. I caution this again, be careful watch you wish for folks. True freshmen are true freshmen. Very few, if any true freshmen quarterbacks are ready to handle playing against SEC defenses. I think Treon will be a future star at Florida, but that really needs to be in the future.
What does all of this mean going forward? If this is as good as this Gator team is capable of playing, it is not a good sign. But, I heard that for two weeks about South Carolina and I gave them very little chance of upsetting Georgia. We all see how that worked out. Three ranked teams lost to unranked teams on Saturday. I would argue that Kentucky is as good as any of the three unranked teams that pulled off those upsets. Mark Stoops is a very good coach and his team is prepared every week. Florida fans will not have to wait long to find out where this Gator team really is. There will be no way to hide deficiencies against Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Good or bad, the Gator Nation will have a better idea of what the 2014 season holds in store by next Sunday. The staff needs to earn their money this week.
Great article!!!!!
I asked you to write things correctly , you did not. do you recall UGA game in 2012 ? or the UM game in 2013 , Florida lost both of those games 100% because of Driskell , 100% ====this is his junior year, he still cannot throw the ball, cannot read defenses and panics and gives up easy interceptions . if the ball does not bounce off the K defender is a pick six for K and Florida totally loses the game , he not only missed long passes ( which is a must for this type of O ) he missed easy throws one to Jones who was only 5 yards away from the QB , he has no clue how to change plays in the game once he gets to the line of S ——–when u have a potential star players and u as coach say you are going to play him , and u do not even if your QB played HORRIFIC this is very bad on WM’s part , I agree with u ref playing a true freshman at QB but when your starter plays so bad YOU NEED TO MAKE A CHANGE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS ——I am sure H can also hand the ball off to Jones but what I am also sure is that he would not have thrown the 8 bad passes that D threw , OVIEDO is far from BOOKER T WASHINGTON , probably would have lost by 40 to BTW ========Mike write it as it is D is not a good QB period , and we will lose game yet again because of him ===and if that happens is all on WM , period .