Thoughts of the Day: September 6, 2021

Photo Credit: Chris Spears

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:

NOW FOR THE HARD PART, CORRECTING THE MISTAKES If the intent was pure vanilla Saturday night at The Swamp, then Florida’s 35-14 win over Florida Atlantic was a roaring success. The Gators got the win without Dan Mullen having to dig into his bag of tricks on the offensive side of the ball. Over on defense where the Gators were so poor last year, coordinator Todd Grantham had a shutout going until late in the game when he was liberally substituting one new face after another. All 14 points and more than half of FAU’s yards came in the final 10 minutes when the game was already decided.

The lack of sophistication on offense, particularly in the passing game where Emory Jones and Anthony Richardson combined to average fewer than 4.5 yards per attempt, gave away no secrets to the bevy of analysts that Nick Saban assigned to break down the Florida film. Over on defense, Grantham played it straight up, rarely blitzing and spending a good portion of the game playing soft zone in the secondary.

The Gators did what they needed to do to win the game and even playing it close to the vest they still won by three touchdowns. That’s it.

Now comes the hard part. Despite the simplicity, there were mistakes made such as nine penalties for 91 yards including four personal fouls and a pass interference; two interceptions including one at the goal line that erased a scoring opportunity; allowing 7.9 yards per pass attempt and 13.7 yards per completion; a delay of game that turned third-and-goal at the FAU two into third-and-goal at the seven after which there was an interception; and a bad decision on a fourth-and-goal at the four that resulted in a turnover on downs instead of a TD.

There were other mistakes for sure, but those were the most glaring errors. In his post game remarks, Mullen sounded a lot like his mentor Urban Meyer, who was at the game, guest of Steve Spurrier. Mullen, like Meyer, is a perfectionist who frets the details both before a game and after game when he’s trying to figure out anything and everything that might have gone wrong.

“We had a lot of penalties in the game, missed assignments, making sure … We played a lot of guys, had a bunch of guys out,” Mullen said. “You had four interior D-lineman out with injuries. Hopefully we get some of those guys back this week just to increase the depth on that side of the ball. Everything. I don't know if it keeps me up at night. I mean everything. I’m up all the time anyway thinking of how we're going to get better. How we're gonna practice better, how we improve our scout-team looks, how we're more detailed and exact, how we make sure we cut down on mistakes, and we have better attention to detail, eliminate all the penalties. You know I'm kind of a perfectionist and so what I want to see, I think, is we got to get a lot better and we got to in every aspect of it, you know. Not just better Saturday night. We have to get better right now. We got to get better starting Monday. We come back in, every part of our preparation can be more detailed and more exact so we play much cleaner.”

The Gators should play cleaner against South Florida next Saturday. Not to make excuses for what happened at The Swamp against Florida Atlantic, but it was the first time since last January and the Cotton Bowl that the Gators have been able to go against real opponents. By the time the season arrives after a spring practice and August of going against each other every single day, players are typically eager and ready to take out their aggression on someone other than a teammate with whom they have to share a locker room. That seemed to be the case Saturday night, particularly with the defensive penalties.

Improvement isn’t guaranteed but from all indications, this is a close knit team that does feel the need to atone for that three-game skid at the end of last year. Expect the Gators to clean up a bunch of mistakes from FAU when they face South Florida in Tampa, but you can also expect another game in which most everything is played close to the vest. It shouldn’t be as vanilla as what we saw against FAU, but Alabama isn’t going to see anything other than the basics to prepare for.

You can count on that.

OVER, UNDER, AROUND AND THROUGH THE SEC

Alabama (1-0): At Alabama players come and go but the results stay the same. Bryce Young was brilliant (4 TDPs) in his starting debut, looking every bit the next great Alabama quarterback. The yardage totals were Alabama 501, Miami 266. The only downside was linebacker Christian Allen injuring a foot that will sideline him perhaps the entire season.

Next week: vs. Mercer

Arkansas (1-0): New Arkansas QB KJ Jefferson looked pretty average throwing it, but he ran for 89 yards and two touchdowns so Hog fans have hope. The two top tacklers on defense, Grant Morgan and Bumper Pool, were both ejected for targeting.

Next week: vs. Texas

Auburn (1-0): If Bo Nix can go 20-22 for 275 yards and three TDs against a decent team, then Auburn has something to talk about. This was Akron. The defense did hold the Zips to -3 rushing.

Next week: vs. Alabama State

Georgia (1-0): Georgia’s offense was tentative and JT Daniels didn’t exactly bring back memories of Dan Marino, but the defense was dominant with seven sacks and it got the only touchdown of the game on a pick six. Georgia has four games to figure out the offense before its only tough gauntlet of the year at Auburn, vs. Kentucky and against Florida in Jacksonville.

Next week: vs. UAB

Kentucky (1-0): Okay, so it was Lousy Monroe, but still a quarterback throwing for 367 yards and four touchdowns is uncharted territory for Kentucky. Will Levis did the pitching and Josh Ali (5-126, 1 TD) and Wan’Dale Robinson (5-125, 2 TD) did the catching. Chris Rodriguez ran for 125 and a TD.

Next week: vs. Missouri

LSU (0-1): Was it the distraction from Hurricane Ida or is LSU heading for a repeat of last year? The Tigers couldn’t run (49 yards) and they couldn’t play a lick of defense (UCLA passed for 260, ran for 223). Losing 38-27 to UCLA does not bode well for the rest of the season.

Next week: vs. McNeese State

Mississippi State (1-0): The Bulldogs committed four turnovers, 12 penalties and trailed by 20 in the fourth quarter, yet they came back to beat Louisiana Tech 35-34, securing the win when the Tech kicker shanked a 46-yard field goal in the closing seconds.

Next week: vs. North Carolina State (1-0)

Missouri (1-0): Despite 203 rushing yards from Tyler Badie and zero turnovers from QB Conor Bazelac, HBC Eli Drinkwitz can’t be too happy. His defense gave up 475 yards (301 passing, 174 rushing) to Central Michigan. The mighty Chips from the MAC were in Mizzou without their head coach Jim McElwain, who had his appendix removed.

Next week: at Kentucky (1-0)

Ole Miss (0-0): Ole Miss will take on Louisville tonight in Atlanta minus HBC Lane Kiffin, who tested positive for COVID-19.

Next week: vs. Austin Peay

South Carolina (1-0): Zeb Noland, who was a graduate assistant two weeks ago, threw four touchdown passes and senior ZaQuandre White, who had 59 rushing yards in his career, ran for 128 in South Carolina’s 46-0 win over D1AA Eastern Illinois. The defense held the Panthers to 109 total yards.

Next week: at East Carolina (0-1)

Tennessee (1-0): The Vols ran for 326 yards against the Our Lady of Perpetual Motion Convent from Bowling Green. They better figure out how to throw the ball better (12-24, 145 yards) before Saturday against Pitt.

Next week: vs. Pitt (1-0)

Texas A&M (1-0): The good news for Jimbo Fisher is that the Aggies ran for 305 yards on Kent State. The bad news is that starting QB Haynes King threw three picks and backup Zach Calzada’s only throw of the night was completed to the Golden Flashes.

Next week: at Colorado

Vanderbilt (0-1): Perhaps we should call next Saturday’s game at Colorado State the REPUS (that’s super spelled backward) Bowl. Like Vandy, which was hosed by D1AA East Tennessee State, 23-3, the Fighting Addazios of Colorado State went down in flames to a D1AA team. Gloom, despair and agony for the loser next Saturday in Fort Collins.

Next week: at Colorado State

ELSEWHERE IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL

WELCOME BACK MCKENZIE MILTON: You don’t have to be a Florida State fan to love that McKenzie Milton not only saw the field but got the Seminoles into overtime before they lost to 9th-ranked Notre Dame, 41-38. It’s an absolute miracle that he’s even walking much less playing football after that devastating injury he suffered against USF in 2018.

THE BIG TEN (PLUS FOUR): Despite four touchdown passes from redshirt freshman C.J. Stroud, Ohio State (1-0) wasn’t very impressive, especially on defense. If not for the injury that knocked running back Mohamed Ibrahim (163 rushing yards, 2 TDs) out of the game, the Buckeyes might have gone down for the count against Minnesota. Their 45-31 win suggests the defense we saw in the national championship game loss to Alabama hasn’t improved a lick.

THE ACC (ALWAYS CLIMPSON CONFERENCE): Is it basketball season yet? All three ranked teams – No. 3 Clemson, No. 10 North Carolina and No. 14 Miami – lost. Duke lost to Charlotte and Georgia Tech lost to Northern Illinois … The best part about the weekend for the ACC was watching Lane Stadium rock out to “Enter Sandman” as Virginia Tech took the field.

THE BIG 12 (MINUS TWO): Color me unimpressed with Oklahoma (1-0) and Spencer Rattler. The Sooners are fortunate to come away with a 40-35 win over Tulane. Rattler threw a couple of interceptions. Don’t you know that every fan of the eight Big 12 orphans was praying for Tulane.

THE PAC-12 (AKA THE LACK 12): Six Pac-12 teams lost to non-conference opponents, the most embarrassing of which was 20th-ranked Washington taking it on the chin to D1AA Montana. It’s that kind of weekend that should have commish George Kliavkoff begging for the College Football Playoff to expand to 12 teams because the way they’re playing football in the Lack 12 an expanded playoff might be the only way they’ll get a team in anytime soon.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Sports Illustrated is reporting that UCF, Houston, Cincinnati and BYU will apply for membership in the Big 12 this week and the four could be approved to join the league as early as Friday. It would be 2023 or 2024 before UCF, Houston and Cincinnati could leave the American Athletic Conference but independent BYU could join as early as next year.

There is a deal to be made here if Big 12 commish Bob Bowlsby is willing to bring the ESPN and the SEC to the negotiating table. If he plays his cards right, he could give Texas and Oklahoma an early release so they could join the SEC for the 2024 season, exact a nice exit fee from them (maybe a combined $80 million) that would help defray the cost (minimum $10 million exit fee each) for the three American Athletic Conference teams and get a media rights deal from ESPN. The current Big 12 media deal with ESPN and Fox expires after the 2025 season. ESPN would probably be willing to do a deal with the Big 12 in order to get Texas in the SEC for the 2024-25 seasons.