Florida Gators: Maybe Just A Stay Of Execution, But It Felt Damn Good
- Buddy Martin
- Oct 6, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 7, 2024
You could feel the old Swamp vibes buzzing, if only for the 30 minutes when Napier’s team woke up the echoes, even if turns out to have been Fool’s Gold.
GAINESVILLE – So this is what it’s like to follow a winning football team again, even if just a tad over .500? It’s been a long drink of water since Gator fans felt this way. But on the same Saturday that the mighty had fallen elsewhere, as the SEC was littered with shocking out outcomes, perhaps the Gators were inspired with a half-glass-full of hope.
You could feel the old Swamp vibes buzzing, if only for the 30 minutes when Napier’s team woke up the echoes, even if turns out to have been Fool’s Gold. Damn, it felt good -- those flashbacks when Florida was Florida. Hey, when you are parched on a desert, even just a sip of water is heaven.
There was joy again in Hogville. At least for a half when Graham Mertz and DJ Lagway had the offense humming and Gus Malzahn’s attack was on mute. Then it flipped and Napier went on snooze control.
There were some defensive gems – a pass rush that made key stops and rung up five sacks of KJ Jefferson. But was that enough?
For the first time in SEC history, two Top Five teams lost to unranked teams. And by the way, other surprises — to wit:
• #1 Alabama loses to Vanderbilt
• #4 Tennessee loses to Arkansas
• #9 Missouri loses to Texas A&M
• #10 Michigan loses to Washington
• #11 USC loses to Minnesota
• #22 Louisville loses to SMU
I’m not saying Napier did enough to save his job, but we gained some perspective on how quickly fortunes can change. And give Billy some credit. This time he and his players promised things would be different, and they were – especially on defense.
We saw some pressure, composure, playmaking and the intelligence to stay in their lanes, the elimination of stupid penalties (although eight is too many), third and fourth down stops, QB sacks and a game-clinching interception by Bryce Thornton.
Napier summed it up concisely:
“I think defensively, to hold this group to 108 yards rushing and to have really got after the quarterback a little bit, two big fourth down stops and we were really good on third down, you know, so I think defensively, (we) took some steps in the right direction. We played a good half of football on offense. Felt both quarterbacks were really sharp. We had good balance. I thought that overall we played some good situational football before the half and then we sputtered a little bit. They had the ball quite a bit in the second half and I think we had three real possessions and we struggled to move it.”
Many of my colleagues will be critical of the way Napier sat on his 24-3 halftime lead like a mother hen tending to hatchlings, to a point of allowing Malzahn back in the game. And that’s a valid point – he played not to lose.
However, when the nest has been bare for a long time, one might understand why he would be cautious.
I prefer to focus on these positives for the moment, given highlights have been sparse lately:
Once again, the QBs were super accurate, took care of the football, garnered 359 yards of offense as Mertz went 19x23 and Lagway was 4x4, including a 32-yard strike to Chimere Dike that set up a score.
So the road ahead looks rocky, but it is also a plague shared by some of the heavyweights who have lost their punching power. Would you believe at the moment the 2-0 Texas A&M Aggies look like the best team in the power-laden SEC?
Does this also mean Florida and Vandy are no longer the SEC punching bags? Napier waxed hopeful:
“Now that they've been out there and no had some success, they'll want to work harder in the future, so we, I don't know, we had a ton of young players that played for sure, but, again, I think we have 20 seniors maybe, so there's a bunch of players out there that are in their first, second, third, fourth year.”
Sounds like a hopeful man, but not yet with a plan that could spare him.
After that first half it was especially maddening to see Nappy play prevent D for an entire half. The HBC would keep running his offense and if UCF couldn’t stop it that was just too bad for them. If Nappy somehow has a halftime lead against the heavyweights on our schedule I hope he’s not dumb enough to think he can just sit on a lead for the rest of the game (see Will Muschamp). He doesn’t have the defense to do that.
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Am glad we beat FTU- the 2nd half showed us why Billy has to go
Enjoyed the article, Buddy. I'd add that looking back on the Miami and A&M games, both are much better than expected by us average fans. Miami, by the way, is still undefeated (beat Cal). Would the outcry be the same from the Gator fans if we had been undefeated, beaten Georgia the week before, and lost to Vandy, while Bama had a great first half and just relaxed in the second half against UCF? I see a team that has improved, a lot of talented young players learning the ropes and contributing. We may lose every game the rest of the season. Or, we may be a tough, competitive team nobody wants to face.
Hoping it’s a victory upon which to build, though the second half retreat into typical Sun Belt Billy offense makes this win seem more like a short-term stay of execution than a breakthrough step forward. If anything the second half was a reminder of the very low ceiling of success our conservative head coach brings week to week.