Thoughts of the Day: Can someone please tackle somebody?

July 25, 2023

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:

It seems you can’t have a conversation about Florida football 2023 without questioning how Graham Mertz is going to play like an SEC quarterback. Certainly Mertz has to play well, but the way the UF offense is designed, it’s not a necessity for him to be a dynamic playmaker for the Gators to win football games. He just has to read defenses, take care of the football and make sure the playmakers get the ball in a timely fashion.

The most important question that has to be asked is can the Gators actually tackle somebody? This isn’t something that happened overnight. Poor tackling is one of the chief reasons Dan Mullen lost his job in 2021 and why Billy Napier went 6-7 out of the first year gate last year. Go back to 2021 when Steve Spurrier was asked why Mullen and the Gators were losing games. Spurrier’s answer: “Well, we don’t tackle very well.”

Napier can relate. Florida’s poor tackling cost at least four wins in 2022. Opposing quarterbacks (see Hendon Hooker, Jayden Daniels and Jordan Travis for example) ran through UF tacklers almost like they had greased jerseys. Missed tackles were an issue in losses to Tennessee, LSU, Georgia, Vanderbilt and Florida State. Those five teams converted 36 of their 63 third downs.

Better tackling has everything to do with discipline. For example, being in the right place at the right time to turn a ball carrier back into waiting tacklers. Having both feet balanced and shoulders squared. Staying in tackling lanes. Doing away with arm tackling.

All those things add up. Can the Gators tackle better? If they can, the defense will be good.

Burning questions for the rest of the SEC

Alabama: Who’s going to play quarterback? Jalen Milroe has started and won an SEC game (three TDPs plus 83 rushing yards in a 24-20 win over Texas A&M). He is a tremendous runner (265 yards, 8.5 per carry last year) but an erratic passer (58.5 percent, 5 TDs, 3 INTs). Ty Simpson saw mop-up duty in four games but he’s a former 5-star recruit. Tyler Buchner came from Notre Dame where he was coached by new Bama OC Tommy Rees. In two seasons he has passed for six TDs and completed eight to the other team. He can run (459 yards, 6 TDs in two seasons) but so can Milroe. One of these three guys better be able to throw the football with some measure of accuracy because Alabama is loaded to the gills with receivers who can stretch the field.

Arkansas: With QB K.J. Jefferson and stud running back Rocket Sanders, the Hogs are going to put points on the scoreboard. That’s not the issue. Stopping people? Houston, we have a problem. Arkansas gave up 30-plus points and more than 464 yards per game last year and that was with a defense that got to the quarterback 42 times. The pass rushers are gone and only three starters return. The Hogs gave up 26 rushing TDs and 24 through the air last year. Arkansas is going to have to win by shootout.

Auburn: Everything that got Hugh Freeze in trouble back when he was coaching at Ole Miss is legal now. Hence NIL stands for Now It’s Legal. Hugh’s going to get the players and he knows how to win, but can he do it this year with a team that will be largely transfer dependent? Michigan State transfer Payton Thorne (6,493 passing yards, 49 TDPs) is the experienced QB who knows how to move the chains. Can the three transfers on the O-line (LT Dillion Wade from Tulsa, RT Gunner Britton from Western Kentucky, C Avery Jones from East Carolina) adapt to the SEC where the D-linemen are a bit more beastly than they were in the Group of Five? If Hugh can get the transfers to play at an SEC level on both sides of the ball, Auburn will be dangerous.

Georgia: The way Kirby Smart has stacked up the talent on both sides of the football, some might conclude that there are no questions to be asked or answered but there are actually two. (1) Can the offense click with Carson Beck the way it did with Stetson Bennett; and (2) can Kirby keep a lid on the off-the-field troubles? Beck has the arm talent but Bennett was the kind of leader that teammates would take a bullet for. It remains to be seen if Beck commands the same kind of respect. Kirby better stick a sock in the off-the-field issues before they start chipping away at the team’s ability to focus during the games.

Kentucky: The Wildcats brought in Devin Leary from North Carolina State to take over QB from the departed Will Levis and they replaced Chris Rodriguez with Vandy transfer Ray Davis, who rumbled for 1,042 yards. If we rated rushing yards the way we do dog years, this would be the equivalent of a 2,000-yard season. A strong arm QB and a stud running back are a good place to begin your offensive game planning, but there is this teensy issue about who’s going to block? A year ago Kentucky’s offensive line gave up 46 sacks (126thnationally) for -312 yards (128th). Those same linemen opened the holes for a running game that produced 116.23 yards per game (107th) and 3.26 per carry (119th). Four of those linemen are back. Does a year older make you a year better? If it doesn’t then Kentucky will be in deepest and darkest.

LSU: A year ago, Jayden Daniels dazzled a lot of folks with his ability to escape collapsing pockets. He ran for 885 yards and 11 touchdowns. That’s the good news. Now for the bad news. He was sacked 45 times (124thnationally) for 219 yards in losses (91st nationally). Despite that, LSU won the SEC West and finished with 10 wins. Go figure on how that happened. Daniels is an exceptional runner and he’s ever so dangerous when he escapes containment in the pocket, but there is every good chance that one of these days he’s going to take the big hit and won’t get up? It would help if LSU had a run game that wasn’t so quarterback dependent. They think they’ve got the right guy to alleviate some of that stress in Notre Dame transfer Logan Diggs (822 rushing yards, 4 touchdowns) but the guys up front have to do a better job. All five starters are back. Can the O-line get the job done consistently? A year ago the Tigers allowed five sacks to Tennessee, six to Alabama and four to Georgia.

Mississippi State: When Mike Leach died, Mississippi State’s embrace of the Air Raid offense croaked as well. Zach Arnett, who was Leach’s defensive coordinator last year, is the new HBC and he wants a more conventional offense but how do you go from a team that throws the ball 50-60 times a game to one with a 50-50 run/pass ratio without some serious speed bumps? How will quarterback Will Rogers adapt to a huddle up offense after a quick tempo, make the call at the line scheme? The last time the Bulldogs failed to go bowling was 2009. That streak of 13 straight bowl years has a real chance to go belly up unless the transition from Air Raid to conventional goes smoothly.

Missouri: Eight starters return on the defensive side of the football including middle linebacker Ty’Ron Hopper, who blossomed into a star after transferring from Florida last year. Mizzou should be good enough defensively to keep the games close. Over on the offensive side of the ball, they need a go-to guy in the worst way. Ever since the spring they’ve been touting former 5-star wide receiver Luther Burden as the next big thing. He’s got the size and the speed to be a stud, but can he be that consistent playmaker?

Ole Miss: Lane Kiffin scares the bejabbers out of every defensive coordinator in the Southeastern Conference. Scoring points has never been a problem. Keeping opponents out of the end zone has always been problematic. To that end, his new defensive coordinator is Pete Golding, formerly of Alabama. His five Bama defenses were always good, just not great and that was with better personnel than he’ll be coaching at Ole Miss. But, at Ole Miss he won’t have Nick Saban looking over his shoulder and he won’t be asked to pitch shutouts. Can Pete Golding get the Rebels one or two more possessions every game?

South Carolina: Third and two was almost automatic for South Carolina opponents last year. The Gamecocks were almost incapable of stopping opponents from lining up and blowing them off the football. The Gamecocks gave up 199 yards per game on the ground last year (117th nationally) when they finished 114th in third down conversions. Seven of 13 opponents ran for at least 200 yards. In four of the five losses opponents ran for at least 265 with Florida pounding away for 374. The Gamecocks believe they’re capable of winning 9-10 games this season but to do that they better figure out run defense. Can Shane Beamer find a front seven that can get some stops at the line of scrimmage?

Tennessee: The first finger will point to quarterback Joe Milton and say that’s the question that has to be answered. It’s true Milton was a bust as a starter at Michigan and then at Tennessee before Hendon Hooker took over in 2021, but supposedly he’s waited his turn, matured and is ready to show off a rocket arm, fleet feet and unprecedented playmaking ability. The big question, however, is can the Vols stop anyone from picking up big chunks of yardage through the air? They gave up 289.5 passing yards per game (127thnationally) last year, which was actually worse than 2021, Josh Heupel’s first year as HBC. The Vols think they have the offense to win a championship this year, but they better be able to stop the pass.

Texas A&M: From the day Jimbo Fisher announced he hired Bobby Petrino to coordinate the offense and call the plays, everyone has been expecting a nasty divorce. That they made it through spring practice without at least a legal separation is considered a minor miracle. Both Jimbo and Petrino are set in their ways, both rather headstrong and neither one a stranger to controversy. There is enough talent on hand that the Aggies could be one of the better offensive teams in the country. Can Jimbo and Petrino get along or at least tolerate each other enough to let the talent do what it’s capable of doing?

Vanderbilt: Okay, it’s Vanderbilt and everyone thought Clark Lea did a brilliant coaching job last year when the Commodores won five games included back-to-back wins over Kentucky and Florida. That was then. This is now. The question of all questions is that now expectations have been raised – five wins at Vandy raises expectations through the roof – what can Clark Lea do for an encore? Can the Commodores win six or more in 2023 and go bowling for the first time since 2018? To at least equal last year’s win totals, the front seven will have to do a better job, particularly in stopping the run. Opponents ran for 170.67 yards per game (96thnationally) and 5.16 per carry (121st).

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: In Athens, Adam Anderson, a former Georgia player who at one time was thought to be a first round NFL pick, was sentenced to a year in jail after the judge accepted a guilty plea for sexually assaulting two women including one the Thursday before the 2021 Florida-Georgia game. For that one, he was charged with rape but the rape charge and second sexual assault were reduced to misdemeanor sexual battery. The judge sentenced Anderson to two 12-month sentences to be run concurrently.

This comes on the heels of Georgia’s protest of an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that pointed out more than 300 traffic violations including a wreck that killed a player and a staffer and 11 sexual assaults on women by UGa football players. The AJC article was written by Alan Judd, who won many writing awards in 25 years with the newspaper. The AJC said it investigated Judd’s reporting and agreed with Georgia’s claims that the article was chock full of inaccuracies. Judd was fired.

The soft sentence of Anderson should make you question if the AJC really did an investigation or if it was simply bowing to pressure by big money UGa boosters? It should also tell you that the most powerful man in the entire state is the football coach at the University of Georgia.