re: A Tough Road Game Against Vandy -W

I didn't say it was a big trap game, but after the emotion of Les Miles firing, getting the win Saturday night, now traveling to Gainesville for a noon start against a team they feel they should beat, sounds a lot like a trap game to me.

Keep denying reality. I've never root against UF to lose!

Nobody is denying reality. They sucked against Tennessee and they sucked against Vandy. But they've had a backup quarterback for both games and that has severely handicapped the offense.

You, however, have always been a shitty poster and you don't have an excuse for that. You're rooting against the team, rooting against the coach, and it must be miserable.

I imagine if Florida beats LSU, you won't be coming back around here spouting off about how terrible Mac is.

quote:

---

324 posts

Oct 2, 1:08 PM

Some of this is in the terrific Marty Cohen column from this morning.

Some of this is the longer view.

Here's what's clear.

1) Mac isn't on the hot seat. You don't land on the hot seat winning an "ugly baby" game in a city where the program almost always struggles to play well.

But the honeymoon is over.

The reality is he's 1-5 vs ranked teams.

And while all Gators get that he's 1-0 against ranked teams with his starting QB, and he's had bad luck in that department, at some point you have to produce. That's the sport now. Year 3 is the "make or break" year and at elite schools, there's a ton of progress made in year 2. If you think it is unfair to compare new staffs to the type of year two success Les Miles had at LSU, Nick Saban had at Alabama, Mark Richt had at Georgia, and Urban Meyer had at Florida, well- that's fine but it isn't the reality of this league and it isn't in keeping with the reality of the sport. There's too much money involved and Florida has tremendous built-in advantages. Time to start winning big games.

2) There are coaching choices that need to be corrected too. It isn't just bad luck with the quarterbacks.

The 4 RB rotation has to stop. Perine and Scarlett are the best backs. Cronkrite has a specific role, which Marty identifies in the column. He's also probably as good/comparable to Scarlett in pass protect. So he'll play. Thompson is slower in pads than he was supposed to be and doesn't break tackles. It looks like he'll fall about 800 yards short of his 1,000 yards before Georgia goal. Oh well..

5) Outside of the SEC Championship, the Florida defense hasn't played great vs a good offense in a while.

Florida's backup defensive line was gashed by Vanderbilt between the 20s yesterday and that's not great. Some of that is gap control stuff. Some of it is backup linemen getting sealed at the point of attack. All of it has to be fixed next week by a LSU team that has flat bullied Florida's front the last two seasons.



7) The 1-5 record vs ranked is the biggest mark against Mac but the Gators have minimal tailwinds in recruiting. Mac has a blue chip problem.

He's landed three 5 stars, being generous. One, Martez Ivey, is struggling. Whether that is because he's playing guard and not tackle or because he's just not that good is up for debate, but yesterday was one of his worst games as a Gator. It was also against a NFL caliber DT, but he was beat a ton. Another is Cece Jefferson. The leap hasn't happened yet and he's one game from being halfway through his sophomore season. A flash here and there but little consistency. The third is Antonneus Clayton. He played a good bit yesterday. There's reason for optimism and I love how Collins was using him as a "jet" on the edge, lining him up on basically no one and just letting him go. Smart.

But all in all, he's got a blue chip issue. Zach Carter and Daquon Green are the best players in the current class. It's too early to say neither won't get a fifth star but at present, neither has one.

Muschamp recruited at an elite level until the 4-8 campaign. After that he went from 15 4 and 5 star players to 9 in 2014. Mac's first two classes had only five 4 or 5 star players in 2015 and 9 in 2016. That's 14 combined.

Compare that with Florida's rivals. Georgia matched Muschamp's 15 in 2013, then signed 13, 14 and 13 in a transitional class under Kirby Smart. So without coaching a game, Smart, who coaches Florida's archrival, signed one less 4 or 5 star than Mac has since arriving at UF.

FSU, the biggest in-state rival? They signed only 10 4 or 5 star players after losing at home to the Gators in 2012. But since they've inked 16 in 2014, 14 in 2015, and a mammoth 18 last year. All of those numbers beat or tie the TOTAL under Mac. Not good.

When put in relation to class size (number of players signed), the Gators do even worse under Mac. In 2015, only 23.8 percent of Florida's players were "blue chip" recruits. 70.9 of FSU's were!!! In 2016, the Gators "improved" that number to 36 percent. Georgia's under Smart, however, was 65 percent.

I get that you find Antonio Callaway's sometimes. But it isn't a viable long-term strategy simply to develop your guys. It works at places like Miss State, where an Orange Bowl every 50 years is a gold standard. It doesn't work at Florida, where a Sugar Bowl in 2012 made some of y'all mad.


Why does everybody say Vandy always plays us close in Nashville?

1992: 41-21 
1994: 24-7 
1996: 28-21 
1998: 43-13 
2000: 43-20 
2002: 21-17 
2004: 34-17 
2006: 25-19 
2008: 42-14 
2010: 55-14 
2012: 31-17 
2014: 34-10 
2016: 13-6

There were two close games under the Spurrier years, a close game in 2002 when the Gators were not very good and then 2006 when we went in there after a brutal stretch of Alabama, LSU, Auburn and Georgia.

The "vandy always plays us close in Nashville" is an excuse

---

.

And for the record, the argument that Mac needs to cut down on the four man running back rotation is a very fair criticism. And one that I agree with. Mac needs to choose two guys and let them be the featured guys.

Mac should be subject to criticism. But calling for his head after a year and 5 games is a joke and deep down you know it's unreasonable. The recruiting is steadily improving. They need more OL (another fair criticism) but overall the recruiting is becoming elite and on its way to consistently top 10 and top 5 in the nation. As we continue to stock pile talented players in the coming classes, we will continue to see execution improve. That's our biggest problem right now. We have a good scheme offensively we just don't have the players that are able to execute it consistently, yet. Wait until Mac is able to get an elite quarterback (check out Artur Sitkowski in the 2018 class) that's when you'll see our offense explode IMO. There's wide open receivers running all over the yard, when we get a quarterback who can hit those guys, watch out.