Monday, November 28, 2011

'11 Florida Gators: Who's to Blame?





by Arnaldo
 .500: in baseball if you're a .500 team you're having a good season, not a great one, but a good  one.  In the NFL breaking .500 means you're not a failure, no one is getting fired, but you still have a lot to work on for next year.  Only in top tier college programs is a .500 record considered failure; miserable, miserable failure.  It didn't stand for the '10 Gators, and they broke .500 by 3 games.  Fans were relieved when Urban Meyer retired, blaming him for somehow "losing his touch".  Funny enough, those same fans weren't too pleased to hear he'd be "losing his touch" at Ohio State in 2012. But 6-6 to end the regular season is no laughing matter.  Here's a list of who you can point your foam fingers at in violent anger.

1.  Yourself.  I know this whole thing sounds like a trick but follow me here.  First year coaching staff, transitions in both offensive and defensive schemes, and one of the most difficult schedules in all of college football.  After losing four in a row, when asked what was wrong with the Gators, Lee Corso replied, "nothing, they lost to four teams who have a combined four losses."  Do you know how many other teams had to face the top two teams in the nation back-to-back? One: Tennessee, and they're next to dead last in the SEC.  If you honestly had high hopes for this season, shame on you.  Then again, I will admit I didn't see a .500 regular season coming either.

photo: photo-gator (flickr)
2.  Lady Luck.  Yeah she can be quite a b... she's not nice.  It's no secret John Brantley hasn't been the shining star we'd all hope he could be but he's not all to blame.  Sure he threw three interceptions in one quarter of play against FSU but those are honestly uncharacteristic of him.  Up until then, he had only thrown 3 all year.  When he's been healthy and focused, he has the ability to be a little Tom Brady out there, picking at secondaries with ease. Refer to his short time in the Bama game where he had a very successful 11/16 before being sacked twice in a row in Hail Mary situations sending him straight to the locker room and out of the game.  Enter Jeff Driskel the top QB recruit in the country and like an unlucky charm, everything that can go wrong with him on the field, goes wrong.  I watched the poor 18 year old drop a snap onto his shoe, which bounced through the line of scrimmage and into the hands of a Bama defender.  There's no skill to be measured here, it's plain bad luck.  Injuries didn't stop there, several key Florida starters were injured in subsequent games leading to 9 Gators sustaining injuries during the FSU game.  No one can expect to win under these circumstances.

3. Not the coaching staff.  Curse your various deities please, but leave Will Muschamp and Charlie Weis out of your finger pointing.  Weis admitted he had to "teach himself" how to effectively run from the shotgun again, but game in and game out, I've watched Weis do something I've never seen an offensive coordinator do.  He adapts, then he adapts again if the circumstances demand him to.  First he's brought into a team that was built for a system he doesn't coach, not a problem.  He refits the players he's dealt into his system, and then reforms the system around whatever limitations he finds.  Florida has no big back type playmakers that are usually a very key ingredient in Weis' offense.  No worries, Weis impliments strong Is, weak Is, and full house sets to get the two tiny yet explosive speedsters into the outside as fast as possible.  This works like a charm up until Alabama whose linebackers are too quick and clog up the sides before Demps or Rainey can manage and the pass game seems defeated without a healthy Brantley.  Weis starts implementing the old spread option techniques because Trey Burton has had experience running them.  And for a time, they work great.  When Brantley returns but doesn't have the mobility to step back into coverage, he introduces the pistol formation to keep Brantley from moving too much in the pocket, while getting some charge out of our runningbacks and the merger has some success again until Brantley recovers going into FSU.  Count them up, Weis' pro, innovative shotgun and I variant running, spread option, pistol, wildcat (left that out).  Charlie Weis has had to work harder this year than he probably ever did with any other team just so we can win 6 games.  He's by far the most valuable individual on our team and without him, we'd be looking a lot like Ole Miss right now.

When can we expect results?  Give these geniuses 2 years.  It may sound like a long time, but I honestly don't think we'll be having this conversation on our way to Atlanta in 2013.

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