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.
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| 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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