No more excuses, the Gators just aren’t very good

How will Dan Mullen handle this loss? Hopefully like a builder of championships.

By CARLTON REESE

The circumstances Saturday spelled out a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Florida Gators. Shall we count the ways?

· An 11 a.m. local kickoff time in Baton Rouge, notorious for a daunting atmosphere in the evening after the liquor has wreaked a day’s worth of havoc on the brain cells of 100,000 screaming cajuns but not so much in the morning.

· Thousands of empty seats peppered throughout Tiger Stadium.

· An LSU team with no offense, three losses and six defensive starters out with injury.

· Ed Orgeron still the man at the helm of LSU’s sinking ship.

And what did the Gators do with this historic gift? We all saw with our own eyes, and the doubts among the fan base will now give way to clamoring, as it should.

Down 21-6 in the second quarter, Gator fans metaphorically headed for the exits Saturday. They had seen enough. Then the tease came and we should have all known better. We’ve attended this movie before: a pretty sorry LSU team that is a decided underdog against a Florida team with much to play for and little to prove takes down the Gators.

The top-ranked Florida Gators in 1997 made Herb Tyler look like Joe Montana. The 2017 LSU Tigers that had already been humiliated by Mississippi State and the fighting men of Troy, came to Gainesville against a ranked Gators team and pulled the first brick from underneath the Jim McElwain house. The 2020 Gators made a sub-.500 LSU team look like its national championship team of the year before, and this year the Gators defense made Tyrion Davis-Price look like Herschel Walker. The aroma of this defeat started wafting in the corridors mid-week as it seemed eerily similar to past debacles against what should have been outmanned LSU Tiger teams.

When you give up nearly 300 yards to a single back, you are weak. There is no other way to put it: you are the kid at the beach getting sand kicked in his face; you are the freshman hanging from the rafters by his underwear; you are among the floozies in Charlie Sheen’s harem; you are John Cusack tossed into the trunk of the popular kids’ car. Quixotic attempts to justify what happened Saturday in Baton Rouge shall not be tolerated.

For all the blather of Florida’s vaunted rushing game, Saturday’s defeat proved it all a hoax.

The Gators had amassed amazing rushing numbers in a manner completely different from how LSU managed them on Saturday. LSU gained its yards the old-fashioned way, by pounding it up the middle and pushing defenders out of the way through sheer will and brute force. Florida does it more through sleight of hand: quarterback draws, RPOs, options and misdirection. In other words, the Tigers run it via man football; the Gators run it via Swan Lake football.

Now, Florida gets two weeks to prepare for the Georgia Bulldogs. Meanwhile, Georgia gets seven weeks to prepare for the SEC Championship game.

And what of coach Dan Mullen? He is an offensive mastermind, a supposed play-calling genius, but so was Hal Mumme and so is Mike Leach, but neither are builders of championships.

So we must ask the same of Mullen: He was great as an underling to a championship-builder, but can he actually be one himself? Perhaps it’s unfair to come to any conclusion just yet in the negative, but the case against Mullen is mounting each week.

There will be those who will blame the loss on four interceptions. In reality, all those interceptions did was diminish Ty Davis-Price’s yardage totals due to short fields. This was a pounding, plain and simple.

Even the score was ugly, no matter which team won. Ever seen Nick Saban’s reaction when his team wins a game in the realm of 49-42? He practically sets half his staff ablaze.

What will Mullen do after a loss, then? I wouldn’t expect anything drastic, but perhaps we should.

Think about it this way: A Florida State team that was once 0-4 with a loss to Jacksonville State, now probably feels pretty confident that it can win in Gainesville. If that doesn’t make every Gator fan shudder in disgust, nothing will.