Florida Gators Special Teams—Buy Those Boys A Milkshake
My younger brother Chase and I went to the Orange and Blue Debut every spring. And right after the game, we’d head straight to the Steak ‘n Shake on US 441.
It was clock work.
And in 2016, after sneaking around the stadium to catch glimpses of the team as they left the locker room (rest assured, i wasn’t a student at UF, let alone a reporter at the time of my sneakiness), we finally made our way to our trusty eatery for a spread of burgers, fries and milkshakes.
Just as we were wrapping up our meal, in walked Eddy Pineiro.
I can remember Chase and I frantically looking at each other as if our maker had walked through the doors with the intention of ordering a steak burger.
But instead, it was Florida’s kicker. A kicker!
You see, more times than not, a football team’s special teams players go unnoticed and are under appreciated.
Have you any idea of what’s beneath the face masks of Evan McPherson and Jacob Finn? Would you recognize them if they walked into Steak ‘n Shake wearing street clothes?
Expecting fans to recognize the faces of special teams players is a lot to ask.
However, recognizing the importance of the role they play shouldn’t be. Especially after watching Florida’s specialists change the course of the game against Kentucky on Saturday.
Getting the Gators going in the first half of Saturday’s SEC East matchup was like trying to start up a winterized diesel engine. The patience needed couldn’t be understated.
Florida’s defense struggled to find its way off of the playing field, while the Gators’ offense sputtered around in a rare showing.
Fortunately, Florida’s special teams unit, made up of the same guys that are first to make their plates during team meals, shouldered the team and helped Florida out of a lackadaisical opening half.
Though the Gators’ offense scored on its opening drive, surely if not for a gutsy special teams play call from Dan Mullen, Florida would have punted the football away and relied on its defense to get the ball back.
Instead, Mullen just wanted to make it look like that’s what the Gators were doing.
On fourth and two from Florida’s own 25-yard line, Jacob Finn and the rest of the Gators’ punt team jogged onto the field to seemingly boot the ball away to the Cats.
However, with the use of a direct snap, Dameon Pierce rushed ahead for a first down in the shape of a 15-yard rush.
“One of the things we talked with those guys: ‘Be ready for that moment and execute.’,” Florida head coach Dan Mullen said following Florida’s win on Saturday. “You practice the fake punts, you practice them, you practice them… You get into a situation where we want to call it and then you’ve got to execute. I thought our guys came out, executed that very well.”
Ironically, one could make the statement that the punt team executed better than Florida’s offense on Saturday. Pierce’s 15-yard run during the fake punt stood as the longest run on the day up until the start of the fourth quarter when Pierce surged ahead for a 38-yard gain.
The specialists’ outstanding first half continued as Florida punter Jacob Finn pinned the Wildcats deep inside their own territory with back-to-back punts that were downed inside the 10-yard line.
Finn’s first punt of the day was hauled in at the Kentucky 8-yard line, where Kentucky’s Josh Ali signaled for a fair catch.
And after the Wildcats settled for a 22-yard field goal and Kyle Trask and the Florida offense stalled at midfield, the redshirt senior punter jogged out to the field with another opportunity back the Wildcats’ heels into their own end zone.
And with a 49-yard punt that could’ve been a poster child for the old saying “coffin corner”, Finn not only had the Wildcats backed up to their own goal line, he had Kentucky’s backfield starting well into its own end zone.
“You practice pooch punts all the time,” Mullen explained. “We practice it a bunch. We come out there, we execute extremely well.”
And while both Pierce and Finn’s special teams efforts collectively helped Florida get by with just enough to stay afloat in the first half, it was Kadarius Toney’s return efforts that really flipped the game’s momentum on its head.
With a word that I had never heard of, ESPN nailed it on the head.
“Florida dekes Kentucky for punt return TD,” the video title read.
What the video didn’t show was the research that had went into the Gators’ punt return scheme.
In scouting Kentucky punter Max Duffy, the Aussie who won the Ray Guy Award in 2019, the Gators learned that Duffy would roll out to punt, before kicking it in the opposite direction.
To counteract this, Mullen and the Gators fielded two players back deep -- Toney and Xzavier Henderson.
When Duffy, who was backed up into his own end zone, sent a punt flying to the right hand side, Henderson faked as though he was corralling the punt, which drew a majority of the Wildcats his direction.
Meanwhile, Toney actually hauled in the punt at midfield and made two Kentucky defenders miss en route to a 50-yard punt return touchdown, which helped Toney to be recognized as the SEC's Co-Special Teams Player of the week. Toney shared the honor with Vanderbilt's Sarah Fuller, who became the first female to suit up for a Power 5 football game.
“I think a lot of people use two returners to figure out where he is going to punt,” Mullen elaborated. “We wanted to use two returners to take advantage of that situation that they were in and see if he made a mistake. If he was supposed to punt it left and punted it right, you know, we thought, ‘OK, (Toney) is going to be all by himself.’ Or if he is supposed to punt it right, then Xzavier is going to be by himself.”
Mullen has always had a knack for placing an emphasis on special teams. Since his arrival in 2018, the efficiency of Florida’s special teams has improved exponentially. And while that partly has to do with Mullen’s mastermindedness, it ultimately comes down to the attention to detail.
The fact that Mullen and his staff scouted Kentucky’s punt scheme to that depth, says a lot to Mullen’s understanding of how special teams can impact a football game. And on Saturday, that game might not have been won if not for the most underappreciated position group in football.
To finish the story about Eddy Pineiro and Steak ‘n Shake, as Chase and I’s heart rates finally got back to a normal level, we scribbled onto a napkin something along the lines of, “Thanks for choosing Florida. We’re happy to call you our kicker.”
We then grabbed our waitress’ attention and told her to tack on a chocolate milkshake to our bill but to deliver it to the table where Pineiro was sitting. This was before I had a better understanding of NCAA violations. (Eddy, if the NCAA comes after you, I think the milkshake was like $3. You can make the check payable to me.)
To conclude, I understand Eddy Pineiro was different in terms of a specialist. Never have I seen a kicker get his name chanted any time he took the field.
But specialists deserve the credit. Saturday proved that.
Buy them a milkshake.
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