Another bad day at the office

“Can’t stop the pass or the run. Otherwise we’re in great shape.” – John McKay, from his early days as coach of the Tampa Bay Bucs.

Billy Napier knows the feeling all too well but unlike John McKay, he hasn’t anything clever to say about the way his defense has played all season. The word ineptitude comes to mind, but Napier is far too diplomatic to say it, but what else can you say after Florida’s 45-35 loss to LSU in which the defense gave up 13 chunk plays that were good for 315 yards and eight third down conversions that netted 125 yards?

Ineptitude. That’s a very harsh word to use, particularly when you’re talking about kids but in the seven games the Gators (4-3, 1-3 SEC) have played it’s a recurring theme. A week ago the Gators gave up 225 yards on 11 chunk plays and they couldn’t get Missouri off the field on third down. It was that way against Utah, South Florida and Tennessee as well. Even D1AA Eastern Washington spent the entire day converting third downs on the UF defense.

LSU (5-2, 3-1 SEC) had eight pass plays of at least 15 yards that were good for 220 yards with two of them – a 24-yarder from Jayden Daniels to Brian Thomas Jr. and a 54-yarder from Daniels to Jaray Jenkins – going for touchdowns. The 54-yarder was a third-and-eight conversion. The Tigers had five running plays that netted 95 yards including a 50-yarder by Josh Williams on the first play of the third quarter. Three plays later, Daniels scored on a 9-yard run.

When the Gators did get a huge play on defense – an interception by Jason Marshall Jr. with 5:32 left in the game LSU holding a shaky 42-35 lead – the zebras made their presence felt by calling roughing the passer on Gervon Dexter Sr. Dexter came straight up the gut on the pass rush and made a perfect form tackle to take Daniels down a split second after he released the ball. It was a hard tackle that planted Daniels on his back. That is indisputable. Dexter, nearly 6-7 and 310 pounds, was moving full speed and was within a couple of feet from Daniels at the point of release. Unless Dexter is lithe and flexible enough for a starring role with the Bolshoi there was no avoiding the hit. The flag flew and the boos cascaded from the crowd of 90,585. You will never convince them that it was a late hit on the QB.

Instead of Florida football at the Gator 42 with the momentum of two straight touchdown drives, it was LSU football, first-and-10 at the UF 46. Right then and there you could feel momentum slipping away.

Was it a late hit? Did it merit a roughing call? This is a contact sport and you can’t protect quarterbacks from the inevitable, particularly when it’s a clean hit and not delivered with malice or intention to hurt.

“It’s a judgment call, a bang-bang,” Napier said. “The guy (back judge Tom Fimmen) thought it was unnecessary roughness on the quarterback. We didn’t get a replay of it. I wasn’t able to see it. It wouldn’t be right for me to comment on it.”

That’s a polite way of saying, “If I say what I really feel and know to be true I get fined by the SEC for criticizing the zebras.”

Now, it goes without saying that the Gators still could have gotten off the field if the defense had risen to the occasion once the Tigers were given a fresh set of downs, but LSU squeezed off seven more plays and took another 3:35 off the clock before Damian Ramos came on to nail a 47-yard field goal with 1:57 to go in the game. Trailing by seven, the Gators had the momentum if they could have just gotten the Tigers off the field without giving up any points. Trailing by 10, the Gators were reduced to needing a miracle ending that would rival changing water into wine.

They didn’t get the miracle they needed and the game ended with Florida having surrendered 45 points, 528 yards (349 through the air, 179 on the ground), 26 first downs, 8-12 conversions on third down, 2-2 conversions on fourth down and 31:47 time of possession. That offset three explosive plays by the Gators – a 51-yard touchdown pass from Anthony Richardson to Justin Shorter on Florida’s second offensive play, a 39-yard touchdown run by Montrell Johnson Jr. and an absolutely brilliant 81-yard touchdown run by Richardson at the beginning of the fourth quarter that got the Gators back in the game.

“Anthony’s a guy who wants to do his absolute best for the team, and that one play it was a good example of that, but when we get it to two scores and we get a stop, we’re going to get sick when we watch the tape,” Napier said. “I think ultimately we got to do more for our players and I think we’ll see a lot of opportunity when we watch the tape.”

The offense was neither consistent nor was it efficient, but the Gators did score 35 points and they were within seven points when the interception was wiped off. Generally speaking, whenever you put five touchdowns on the scoreboard, you figure you’re going to win the game. You have to wonder if the Gators could have gotten a sixth touchdown to tie the game at 42 if that interception had counted.

The interception didn’t count, though, and therefore the Gators lost a third perfectly winnable game. You really can’t fault the defense for the Kentucky loss, but it’s the only one of the seven so far in which the defense showed up. Only one Kentucky TD can be pinned on the defense. It was the offense that was a no show in that game. In the losses to Tennessee and LSU, the Gators did more than enough offensively to win but the defense didn’t hold up its end of the bargain. Instead, the Gators once again followed that way too familiar pattern of blown coverages, missed tackles and third down failures.

We keep waiting to see improvement, any sign of progress that will make us believe the Gators are ready to turn the corner on defensive ineptitude. Even in tiny amounts, progress would be appreciated and would offer a ray of hope to a fan base that is growing more and more frustrated with the same thing every single week.

It’s frustrating watching the Florida defense, but as frustrating as it is for us to watch the debacle that is unfolding on the playing field, imagine how tough it is for Napier. He’s being paid $7 million to right a ship that wasn’t sunk but listing badly after consecutive seasons in which the defense under-performed. He brought in a star-studded coaching staff that seems to be an upgrade at nearly every single position, especially on the defensive side of the ball. Yet the problems persist. We’re replaced “Third and Grantham” with “Third and (Patrick) Toney.” New year, same result. Nothing seems to have changed.

Napier knows exactly what the problems are and he knows exactly what has to be done to fix them, but when we see the same old mistakes popping up every single week we wonder if we will be too old to care when the issues are fixed. When will we seem tangible answers? The lack of progress and noticeable improvement lends itself to three answers that seem to fit the current circumstance: (1) Either the coaching isn’t getting the job done; (2) there aren’t enough good players or; (3) the players aren’t good enough.

Maybe it’s a combination of the three?

Napier is too sensitive to the fact that he and his staff are grown men trying to get kids to do something better than they’ve ever done before to ever call them out in public. He might have choice words for them in private meetings or collectively on the practice field or in the meeting rooms, but he’s never going to point public fingers of blame at his players whether it’s to say they aren’t good enough or they don’t have enough good ones, although that seems to be the clear case. For the most part, he doesn’t call out his coaching staff either. He either falls on the sword himself or speaks in coaching generalities as in “we as a staff.”

Saturday night, standing there in the South End Zone answering questions from the media, the strain on his face was obvious. His body language was tense. There weren’t any smiles and very little in the way of excuses. Napier didn’t duck any questions and about the only person he really assigned any blame to was himself.

“Ultimately, we didn’t do enough to win the game tonight, and when you’re in a leadership position, there’s only one answer: You’ve got to do better for people you’re leading,” Napier said. Later, he added, “So, it’s my job to position the team to win, to have success, and I can do my job better, right, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

There is no doubt that Billy Napier will work harder than ever before to do a better job and he will push his assistants to do a much better job as well. However, neither he nor his staff are the ones who blow assignments in coverage. They don’t miss the tackles. They don’t make all those mental errors that aren’t visible to the naked eye but contribute just as much to winning and losing, both on the scoreboard and on each individual play.

It is the players who make all those mistakes, but he’s the coach, the one who’s in charge of holding his coaches and players alike accountable for their actions. Accountability is all about changing the football culture one player at a time. He believes that better people make better football players and there are few press conferences when he doesn’t praise at least one player who has made great strides in becoming a better person.

But, when will the better people start showing they have become better football players? We’re past the halfway point of the season. Is there a lights go on moment when we’ll see defensive guys making plays to show their on-the-field abilities are catching up or have caught up with their character?

It won’t happen overnight nor will it happen without even more growing pains.

“There’s no shortcuts here,” Napier said. “There’s no shortcuts. You gotta go right through every single bit of adversity. It’s not easy for the staff. It’s not easy for the players. It ain’t easy! The key is to take these experiences and use them for the better. We create positive change. We adjust our approach. We have integrity and say, ‘I can do better for the team. I can coach better. I can play better.”

So here we are seven weeks into the season and the 8-4 or even 9-3 record that seemed do-able is starting to feel like 6-6 or 7-5 will be an accomplishment. There is a bye week ahead before the October 29 showdown in Jacksonville with No. 1 Georgia, but how much improvement can the Gators make in two weeks? Not enough it would seem to derail Georgia, which has looked like it is rounding into the kind of team that can make a run at a second straight national championship.

From the sound of Napier’s post game remarks Saturday night, it seems there will be plenty of soul searching which could lead to shuffling his personnel. Whereas he’s always been quick to tell us how he appreciates the older veteran players he inherited from the previous staff, is it time for some of these vets to be relegated to limited or backup roles while sending younger, more inexperienced kids onto the field of battle for what may turn out to be baptisms by fire? When veterans aren’t getting the job done with any measure of consistency, can the kids be any worse?

Only Billy Napier knows that answer for sure.

After one particularly frustrating Tampa Bay Bucs loss in his early days as coach, John McKay was asked what he thought about his team’s execution.

“I’m for it,” came the retort.

Billy Napier can relate and when he looks at the tape of the loss to LSU, he is going to see glaring and consistent lack of execution, particularly on the defensive side of the ball. He will be sick when he sees all the errors. Sick enough to make some wholesale changes for the five games ahead? Is there enough time left in the season to get the Gators on track to make noticeable improvement? Or are we too far gone and all that’s left is devise a series of smoke and mirrors that can allow the Gators to sneak in two or three more wins?

It's going to be dicey.