Thoughts of the Day: July 21, 2021

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:

IT WON’T TAKE LONG TO FIGURE OUT IF THE DEFENSE WILL BE BETTER

The University of Florida’s 2019 defense ranked ninth nationally, allowing just 304.8 yards per game and 4.9 yards per snap. Those 2019 Gators gave up 15.5 points per game, which ranked seventh nationally, and 102.77 yards on the ground (3.19 per carry), which was eighth best. Florida’s pass defense allowed 202.1 yards and 6.7 per attempt, 32nd nationally.

A year later, the Gators were 83rd nationally, allowing a school record worst 428 yards per game and a whopping 6.06 yards per snap. The Gators were 74th in scoring defense (30.8 per game), 71st against the run (170.5 yards; 4.56 per carry) and 100th (257.5 yards; 7.8 per attempt) against the pass.

We could spend the next two days assigning blame for why top 20 talent performed like a bottom 20 defense most of 2020. The only thing that matters now is that it’s a new year and last year’s standby excuses of no spring practice, bad coaches in the secondary, a lack of contact work in August and during the season due to COVID-19 concerns, and too many of what Dan Mullen calls “independent contractors” won’t cut it in 2021. If coordinator Todd Grantham’s defense isn’t better this year, the Gators aren’t going to contend for the SEC East title and Grantham can expect to be looking for gainful employment elsewhere.

It shouldn’t take long to figure out if the defense will be better. After what should be blowout wins in games one and two (Florida Atlantic and USF), the Gators will play three straight SEC games – Alabama and Tennessee at home, Kentucky on the road – that should tell us if the Gators are contenders or pretenders. Both Bama and Kentucky have huge offensive lines, talented running backs and the ability to pound teams into submission between the tackles. Tennessee’s new coach tries to get a snap off in 15 seconds or less which tends to wear out pass rushers and prevent anything but basic coverage in the secondary.

A 4-1 or 5-0 record through those first five games should be a rather good indicator that the Gators will be contenders. Anything less does not bode well. There is reason to be optimistic. For one thing, it would be next to impossible for the Gators to be as bad defensively as they were last year, but secondly the “independent contractors” Mullen spoke about at SEC Media Days should be gone. If they haven’t been replaced, it’s another sign that things will be rotten.

Prediction: The front seven will be substantially better with Zachary Carter teaming up with transfer tackles Daquan Newkirk and Antonio Shelton on the line and Diwun Black becoming a force for a linebacker crew that includes Ventrell Miller, Mohamoud Diabate and edge rusher Brenton Cox Jr. I’m of the opinion that better coaching will result in much improved play in the secondary. If Carter, Cox, Newkirk and Shelton can consistently deliver pressure without Grantham resorting to all-out blitz schemes, the Gators will have a top 30 – or better – defense. Do that and UF will contend.

TALKING IT UP AT SEC MEDIA DAYS

Coach O on what he learned when LSU went from national champs in 2019 to 5-5 in 2020: “Do it the way I want. That’s it. If it’s not done the way I want, I’m going to fix it. If I see something broke, I’m fixing it. LSU’s standard of performance, the way we have done things, this reminds me a lot of the 2018 season. There’s a lot of unknowns. There’s a lot of noise out there. You’ve got to block out the noise, a lot of predictions on this and this. That stuff doesn’t matter. It’s about our football team. It’s about me gelling this football team together, us playing together. I think leadership, not letting any outside influences affect us, the way we play, the way we perform.”

LSU corner Derek Stingley Jr. on bouncing back from a 5-5 season: “I don’t think of it as a challenge. If anything, I would say it’s motivation, and it gives everyone on the team a chip on their shoulder because we want to be one of the top teams, like we usually are every year. That’s what we’re coming back for this year.”

Kirby Smart on dealing with high expectations: “Success comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. Say that again. Success comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. That’s Henry David Thoreau. For me, that’s it. I’m too busy working. I’m too busy trying to do the next thing. I’m too busy traying to take the next step to give our team a competitive advantage to really worry about expectations. That’s you guys’ question today, that’s usually what people want to know about, but for me, I’m too busy working to worry about that.”

Georgia QB JT Daniels on his greatest strength: “My strength and what I do best is being able to read the defense and determine the best place for the ball to go that’s going to help us move the chains and score points.

Georgia DT Jordan Davis on declining to make money off NIL: “I haven’t touched it. I’m confused by it, honestly. It’s a lot. But yeah, I haven’t really done anything. My main focus is just playing because you can’t get an NIL deal if you’re not good at football. So the main focus is just playing football.”

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin on former boss Nick Saban and the success he’s had at Alabama in an era when all schools have an 85-scholarship limit: “My dad tells me the stories of coming in and having 75 freshmen in his class coming in. So to do what he’s [Saban] doing nowadays and every year, you guys say something that upsets him and gives him rat poison and makes him mad, and then we have to deal with that. So I don’t know what the story line is this year. It will be something that you did about losing too many staff guys or the quarterback or whatever, but he just finds a way, and it stars with recruiting. He just does a phenomenal job of recruiting. So when you’ve got the best players and you’ve got to go against them, that’s enough challenge, let alone before you ever get into how great he is as a coach.”

Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral on not getting yanked at Arkansas when he threw six interceptions: “Coach Kiffin and [quarterbacks coach Jeff] Lebby, they kept me in that game for a reason. They didn’t yank me. They made sure that I was the guy. They made sure that I knew that I was the guy, and I think that I was – that spoke volumes to me. That spoke volumes to the team. That gave me the confidence in myself that I could bounce back from it. Kiffin brought me into the room after that game, and he told me that there’s a reason he didn’t pull me. He said he believed in me. He said, ‘I believe what you can do. I believe in your ability. You’re our guy moving forward. Like there’s no issue with me. We’re going to get it fixed.’ So just having that relationship with him helped a lot.”

Kentucky coach Mark Stoops on how UK football has changed in his nine years on the job: “I said when we got to Kentucky that we were going to develop, we were going to compete and I wanted to take this program to national prominence, and people laughed at me. We’re not there yet, but we’re on our way. I’m going to continue to work. I feel good about where we’re at. I think we have a very good team, and we have some things in place, and we’re constantly learning, constantly growing, and we’re getting better.”

Kentucky left tackle Darian Kinnard on his mama: “I know about ya’lls mama. I know ya’ll love your mama but I think I might love mine more than ya’ll. That’s all I’m going to say.”

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer on making South Carolina competitive again: “In the last ten years, or my last year at South Carolina, we played for the SEC Championship. We beat Alabama when they were No. 1 in the country at Williams-Brice Stadium. We beat Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and our in-state rival all in the same season. Within the last ten years we’ve been in the midst of consecutive 11-win seasons. Within the last ten years we were in the midst of beating our in-state rival five years ago. We’re not talking about something that was 40 years ago. It was done recently here in South Carolina. We’re not far from getting back there and doing it again.”

Tennessee coach Josh Heupel on his up tempo offense: “You look at what we’ve been able to do in our track record as a staff at the previous two stops at UCF and at Missouri, top five in basically every offensive category the last three years. The two years previous to that while wee were at Missouri, led the league in total offense. This is a quarterback-friendly offense that’s going to allow us to play and apply pressure to defenses every single Saturday that we step on the field. Obviously, we understand that in this league the line of scrimmage is extremely important, too, but I think the tempo on the offensive side of the ball gives us the ability to create an advantage in that aspect.

Tennessee wide receiver Velus Jones Jr. on the Josh Heupel offense: “I’m so excited with my ability to catch the ball, to get yards after the catch and deep ball threat. It’s just like it’s a dream come true playing in this offense, especially speaking for my receiver corps and also my tight ends. Like, we’re really excited about this offense.”

Tennessee defensive back Alontae Taylor on why he came back for his senior year: “As far as why I did stay, I’m the third in my family to go to college, and I told my mom that I would get my degree before I left. I tried to get that in three years last year, but it didn’t really work that way. That was one reason. And the second reason was this is my state. I’m from the state of Tennessee, and the University of Tennessee means a lot to me. Wearing orange and white is a privilege and it’s bigger than me, and wearing that Power T on my chest is bigger than me.”

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Bryce Young has never started a college football game. He played in nine games as a true freshman in 2020, all in mop-up duty for Alabama’s unbeaten national champions, completing 13-22 passes for 156 yards and a TD. He ran nine times for -23 yards. Not exactly the kind of numbers that you think would generate huge endorsement deals, but here we are six weeks from the start of the 2021 season and Young already has nearly $1 million according to what Nick Saban told the Texas High School Coaches Association convention. “And it’s like the guy hasn’t even played yet, but that’s because of our brand,” Saban said. Perhaps everything Young will earn has been cleared by Alabama’s compliance people and is completely on the up and up, but what happens at a school that lacks Alabama’s resources to verify the source of endorsement deals? When it comes to name, image and likeness there is no single set of rules that everyone has to play by. That opens the door for some unscrupulous individual or group to get their hooks into an athlete for the purpose of altering the outcome of a game. In case you don’t think that can happen, do some research on the Northwestern point shaving scandal of 1994 that involved both football and basketball or the one at Kentucky in the 1950s that forced UK to cancel its 1952-53 basketball season or any one of a dozen other scandals that involved college sports and gamblers. Don’t think for a nanosecond that it couldn’t happen again.