The good, the bad, and the ugly
We learned a lot about the Gators in today's game. First the good. Time Tebow is the real deal. 20 for 34, 262 yards and 2 TDs in the air to go along with 27 rushes for 168 yards and 2 TDs on the ground. That's a 6.22 yard per carry average. Of course we had plenty of announcer talk on Lincoln Financial Network about how long a QB could take the hits in the SEC. Funny nobody was ever worried about Alex Smith's health when he ran this offense at Utah. Granted the competition is different but so is Tebow. Do I worry for his health? Of course I do, but to paraphrase Hymen Roth, this is the offense we have chosen.
The bad: This game was way too exciting for my taste. Our defense, which all suspected was weak going into the season, is weak. Whether it was big chunks on the ground or getting torched in the air, Ole Miss did to Florida what Tennessee could not.
The ugly: 12 penalties for 108 yards. A particularly damaging one was the loss of about 25 yards on a holding call on a kick return. Instead of starting at mid field the Gators started the drive on their own 23. Luckily the Gators ended up mounting a drive and scored a TD but those types of penalties make it much harder and can "flip the field" when it comes to field position.
Mentioned in Austin Murphy's book 
2 comments:
i look at this two ways....
1. l$u is going to punish our defensive backs. we're going to be exploited by another team we should beat easily....perhaps spurrier does it again, kentucky, georgia, i dunno. our defense really scares me.
2. we needed this kind of game, psychologically speaking. our young defense needed to be reminded that 'we have a long way to go'. better to 'cut your teeth' in oxford, than in baton rouge, or lexington even! this is where good coaching comes into play. adjustments need to be made. while the tenn. game made us feel warm fuzzies, it was more an anomaly, a dangerous 'presumption' for an inexperienced ball club. we needed this game, and it came at a perfect time for us.
i hope that i can focus on '2' more than '1' in the coming weeks. i really think that l$u hasn't been tested, offensively, in any of their games. they appear to be great....true. but, if our defense can get battle-tested a little more against auburn, i'll be happy.
i guess what i'm trying to say is, i'm almost glad we didn't beat ole miss 48-10. we'd have come away from that game with illusions of completeness as a team. we aren't there yet.....this ole miss game was a much needed lesson.
... but yes, tim tebow is the real deal. he carried this young team on his shoulders today.
The youth and inexperience of our defense showed against Ole Miss; even though they put forth an effort and stopped their running game it was evident that we have a weak pass rush - going into both the Kentucky and LSU games this needs to be an area of focus in practice. Missed tackles are a problem that needs to be addressed in practice and "cleaned up", so to speak. Also, we need to be much more aggressive in capitalizing on turnover opportunities. Tony Joiner caught one INT and almost had another had he not caught that other one out of bounds in the end zone, but I'd like to see the rest of our defense step up.
The penalty issue needs to be worked on ASAP. This will come back to haunt us in an up-and-coming game if something isn't done about it now.
One thing this game did was expose our strengths and weaknesses as a team. We're heading into the difficult part of our schedule and can't afford to make many of the mistakes that were made on Saturday at Ole Miss going forward.
Still we won the game, which is what really counts in the end, nut that being said we have a lot of work ahead of us to do.
GO GATORS!!!!!!!
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