Recruiting - Defense

Yeah, the defensive recruiting is starting to worry me. Totally missed on DT this cycle and CBs have been meh.

Need to bring in a big time recruiter for DB coach.

The homerism about how good this class is over on the GC boards is just fricking ridiculous right now.

The defensive class is atrocious, given the talent that was on hand in the state of Florida alone this year.

The offensive skill position recruiting was outstanding, no doubt, and the big thing is the EE's - 12 - which will help Florida in a big way right away I get that.

But jesus christ, with all that talent in state at DB this year they only get fricking McWilliams? HOLY frickING HELL.

And now they have only really recruited 1 DT in 2 years. And his name is Andrew Ivie, he has a brother on the team, and he is a project. Riles frickING RILES is going to have to move back from the OL to DT, and hopefully guys like Polite (not a bad player) and Ancrum (another project) can grow into DTs. Maybe Desir-Jones - you know, that guy we stole from FIU last year can move back to DT.

Point is, recruiting doesn't show itself until 2 years in the future, but UF will feel the burn from these defensive classes when these guys are expected to start against SEC offenses in 2017.

Anecdotes to the rescue.

Oh look, a 3 star guy is good, that means UF will all these 3 stars will beat Alabama, Georgia, and FSU with all their 4 and 5 stars.

We will see.

On the plus side, at QB, probably the most important position on the field, UF did recruit pretty well.

Here is my feelings about it:

2015 didn't teach us much.

Mac caught lightening in a bottle with Will Grier - and even so WAS EXTREMELY FORTUNATE to be 6-0.

The win against Tennessee was a miracle choke job on their part, and honestly, had ECU not just dropped the ball on the ground, we might be talking about an overtime loss to ECU.

UF then had close calls against South Carolina
A MIRACLE WIN OVER VANDERBILT when you consider how bad UF's kicker was all year long it's amazing that he made that FG.
The game against FAU was a fricking disaster and UF is fricking lucky that FAU didn't get that PI call in the end zone otherwise we are talking about UF's worst loss maybe ever.

So basically UF had 5 close games against ho-hum teams, and the one shining example everyone throws out is the Ole Miss game, where Ole Miss played maybe their worst game of the year, and we played our absolute best against a team that our defense just matched up really well against.

Then to end the year, UF puts out the WORST frickING OFFENSE in UF history in three straight games to just get utterly embarrassed on the national stage.

Give all of that, I had never really jumped on the Mac Bandwagon. I think he has a gunslinger mentality as a coach, and he tends to make decent decisions on game day which is huge, but he doesn't recruit particularly well give the two year sample size that we have (on paper anyways) and it is too early to really comment on his player development although we will see that this year - it wasn't bad last year.

So we will see. But unless he is the best player development coach of all time, he will not last long at Florida with these recruiting results.

That is.... unless he can throw 40 points a game on the board. If he can do that, he will be a god in Gainesville, the defense be damned.

Not looking at 2015 for the reasons you stated... mcwilliams and putu were b and c choices for the staff. They missed on every high profile ilb choice they went after and settled on reese. They missed on uche waiting for wilson. They havent hit their top target at dt since they arrived. I dont even know why this is worth defending for you. The defensive recruiting has been sub par

Not to go full GC on you, but I think you may be a little overly critical of our season. Yes we fell on our face when we lost Grier, but I hope that was simply Mac being stubborn and not mortgaging our future by adapting the offense to Treon. I like to think at the least it showed what Macs offense can do with a QB.

Also, it's easy to be critical looking back on the season, but rememeber what we thought this year was going to be like. The media picked us what 5th or 6th in the EAST. We were left for dead after Muschamp left and Mac breathed some life into that corpse so I am optimistic on the coaching front. Just gotta start recruiting.

I see where you are coming from. You made those points in your previous post. We were lucky for sure.

I am about to say something I can't stand because I like cold hard facts. Everytime I get nervous and then I hear Mac speak I feel better. He has that alpha dog auora where you just feel he's got this. He's a fixer. Remember our Oline situation headed into the season. We had like 6 guys and he went out, scraped and clawed and fixed it. He got us a damned good kicker. He developed a QB.....but the QB developed himself a little too much. He played a huge roll in getting us a full sized IPF, and getting the ground work done on new dorms. He kicked Callahan to the curb and replaced him with better.....timing was shite I will admit that. There are numerous other examples, but I need to work. Ha!

Point is he seems to know what the hell he's doing. He looks like learns from his mistakes and adapts. I remember Muschamp when things went South, often and he looked like a deer in the headlights. He would use complex coaching terms, but he never seemed to learn from mistakes. He just kept bulling his way into mediocrity. I mean he broght friggin band back together at USC!!!

For some reason I trust Mac from a coaching and Macro Management level of our program. BUT he HAS to get his arse in gear in terms of recruiting or the other stuff won't matter.

I think Mac got the main guys he set his sights on

Flipped a top QB from LSU
Flipped a kicker from Bama
Flipped a top WR from Houston
OL and DL must be a focal point going forward.

Again lets see how the 17 class is before we say he cant recruit.

Don't forget UT missing their fg or ECU. Wayyyyy too many close calls.

Vanderbilt vs Florida was one of the most poorly coached UF games I ever watched. UF fricking lucked out at the end. TOTAL frickING LUCK - because AUSTIN HARDIN of all people made a FG. THINK ABOUT THAT.

Tennessee took an epic comeback. Epic. That was such a choke job by UT. And even so, the UF defense still allowed them in FG range and UT missed it.... BARELY.

ECU was driving to score and force OT before their QB inexplicably dropped the ball on the ground.

Florida barely survived Kentucky on the road - which I guess is slightly better than barely surviving Kentucky at home... but still.

Florida was a missed PI call in the end zone from losing to a 3-8 FAU team that (and I'm sorry if you don't agree I guess) would have been destroyed by that 2013 Georgia Southern team.

Not to mention the three games at the end of the season were complete embarrassments for the program. I've never seen offense that bad, and that includes the Muschamp era.

I'm not saying that McElwain isn't the guy, but it's only been one year, and other than losing his starting QB, the dude had a lot of fricking good things go his way in games last year. It's too early to call right now. His recruiting on paper has been mediocre, which even he admitted he fricked up in Florida this past cycle - which resulted in him firing a coach.

So... let's stop comparing him to Muschamp. He's better than Muschamp - but how much better? Let's see what his first two classes do on the field this year.