Time For The Gators To Take The Next Step

By FRANZ BEARD

GatorBait Media

“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong and at the worst possible time” – Murphy’s Law

Murphy didn’t make that up with the 2022 Florida Gators in mind, although there are moments when it’s easy to think he did. This team that can have you jumping up and down, screaming so loudly that you think your heart is going to explode through your chest and stick to the wall when they do something spectacular, is the same team that can have you swearing off football forever on the very next play.

It is why that here with six games in the books, we can say without a doubt that we’ve been tossed out of the moving vehicle that is the 2022 season and out of breath, battered and bruised in the tall weeds on the side of the road.

There has been progress. Absolutely there has. But for every two steps the Gators take forward there is one step backward. Hence the 4-2 record. Two wins for every one loss.

The simple thing to say is this is a season on the brink, but on the brink of what? There are six games remaining. We’ve seen enough good to know that the Gators could win four or five of the last six. 8-4? An improvement over last year, for sure, and two wins for every loss. That’s what a lot of experts said was Florida’s ceiling for 2022. 9-3? If the Gators do more good things than bad things every time they take the field, that’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility.

How about 10-2? That would mean beating Georgia, which has shown enough fragility to make us understand clearly the Bulldogs are kind of like the Gators. Good enough to have us celebrating, inconsistent enough to have us considering throwing something heavy at the 70-inch ultrahigh def television in the living room. The difference is Georgia has found ways to overcome its issues. The Gators’ issues seem ongoing but with each new game, hope springs eternal, that maybe, just maybe, this is the day when Murphy eats his words.

Hope this week is that the Gators can find a way to put away an LSU (4-2, 2-1 SEC) team that seems intent on driving its fans as batty as the Gators are driving theirs. LSU can look formidable. See the second half of Mississippi State when everything clicked. The Tigers can stink. See Florida State in game one when LSU got whipped in Nawlins of all places.

And then there is last week in Baton Rouge, no less. Tennessee came to town and did a poleaxing on LSU the likes of which hasn’t been seen in years. It was 40-13 and it could have been much, much worse because Tennessee took its foot off the pedal in the second half. Rather than continue to destroy LSU’s secondary, the Vols simply went beast mode and ground the Tigers into pulp.

It should be noted that this was the same Tennessee team that is now ranked sixth nationally had all sorts of issues shaking the Gators in Knoxville a couple of weeks earlier. When the Gators look at the tape of that game, they see a giveaway. How else can you explain 17 chunk plays that account for 384 yards, most of which were the result of sometimes only one player on the Florida defense going brain dead? On way too many of the big plays it was one blown coverage in the secondary or one player taking the wrong angle on a pass rush or one missed block? Florida lost by five and had the ball for the last play of the game with a chance to win. Anthony Richardson threw for 453 yards and ran for another 60. Justin Shorter caught seven passes for 155 yards. Ricky Pearsall caught five for 103. The Vols won but they walked off the field knowing the win was a gift.

Giving games away because of blown assignments and critical mistakes. Seems like we’ve heard this “Ode to Billie Joe” a bunch of times already this season, doesn’t it? Yet the Gators are 4-2. Go figure.

When the Gators execute, they can be really, really good. The running game with Montrell Johnson Jr. and Trevor Etienne at times seems unstoppable. The analytics say Florida’s offensive line, led by O’Cyrus Torrence, is one of the best in the country. The Gators rank third nationally in yards per carry (6.38) and they’re tied for fifth in fewest sacks allowed (5).

Take away the chunk plays and the defense is getting it done. In the win over Missouri, the Tigers had 11 big plays (six pass, five run) that accounted for 225 of their 370 yards. The other 61 plays netted only 2.38 yards. The defense gets it done most of the time. It when they aren’t executing that the Gators run into all sorts of problems.

When they don’t execute in one or all three phases, they either lose or come darn close to losing. Just once, Billy Napier would love to see the Gators hit it on all cylinders in all three phases of the game – offense, defense and special teams. He has seen sporadic proof that this team is capable of putting it all together but six games into the season he hasn’t seen a cleanly played game from bell-to-bell.

“I think we’re very much a work in progress,” Napier said.

We’ve been hearing the Gators are a work in progress each of the previous six weeks. It’s fact, not an exaggeration. Napier isn’t crying wolf on us, nor is he sugar coating the problems. He doesn’t call out individual players who blow an assignment or make a glaring error. He insists that he’s got to coach better and is adamant that whatever problems there are, whatever issues need to be resolved, it’s up to a combination of better coaching and better practices to erase the glitches that create on the field deficits.

It's a learning process to say the least.

“We’re learning how to practice,” he said. “I do think we’re build for winning football. We’ve got a formula that’s won a lot of games (40 in the four years prior to arriving at UF). I think we’re getting better at that process and I’m hopeful we can win more in the future.”

It would be very nice if the future were to begin Saturday against LSU. A win would not only end a three-game losing skid to the Tigers but give the Gators the momentum of a three-game winning streak for 2022 heading into the bye week before the Georgia game. It’s certainly winnable, but of course, every game the Gators have played has been winnable, hence the frustration felt by coaches, players and fans alike.

We know the Gators could have and should have beaten Kentucky but they handed the Wildcats 23 of their 26 points on a silver platter. We also know the Gators could have beaten the Vols in Knoxville. Of course, three of the Gators four wins could have been losses, too. It’s called living on the edge, which is why we’re left to wonder which Florida team shows up Saturday evening against LSU.

If it’s the Gators who hung 33 points and 597 yards on Tennessee and they get some improvement from the defense, then LSU could be in deepest and darkest. If it’s the team that struggled to move the ball most of the Kentucky game and the first half of the Missouri game, and they can’t get the Tigers off the field, then the Gators are the ones with big problems to overcome.

If it’s the team that needed a miracle interception in the end zone to beat Utah and lightning striking twice in three plays in the form of one-hop snaps against South Florida, then we’re in for another game that will have us clutching our hearts and promising to make an appointment on Monday with a cardiologist.

The Gators are perfectly capable of beating LSU and they’re perfectly capable of self-destructing, too. The Gators desperately need to show up focused and playing with a sense of urgency that hasn’t been seen with any semblance of consistency. Instead of being the football equivalent of the little Dutch boy running out of fingers to plug holes in the dike, they need to show up and play a complete game to go into the bye week with the kind of confidence that they can hang with Georgia for 60 minutes on October 29.

They also have to know that LSU coach Brian Kelly has been sounding the urgency alarm with his team all week. The Tigers are coming off an embarrassing home loss and the week after Florida they have Ole Miss. The game after that is Alabama. If they’re 4-5 with three weeks to go in the season, the same LSU fans who have run national championship winning coaches Les Miles and Ed Orgeron out of town will be burning up social media with calls for not only Kelly, but Scott Woodward to be gone. If Kelly is winning he’s tolerable. If he’s not winning, he’s just a carpetbagger who used to coach at Notre Dame and Woodward will be the guy who gave him a 10-year, $100 million deal.

Knowing that Kelly and his staff will have the Tigers fully versed in how the season can go south in a heartbeat, this has to be a moment when Billy Napier gets his winning formula implemented and running efficiently. Win or lose there will still be issues that can’t be resolved without more coaching and good recruiting in the future, but there is no questioning the importance of winning this game.

The Gators have to treat it like their Super Bowl. No, they’re not going to win the SEC East championship unless something totally unforeseen and bizarre happens, but they can eliminate LSU from any hope of an SEC West title and go into the bye week before Georgia riding the wave of a successful three-game run.

In this two steps forward, one step backward type of season, a third straight win is a big deal. It’s a confidence builder, the kind of thing that can make the kids believe even more that this new coaching staff with their totally new approach to doing things has them trending in the right direction. This isn’t an overnight deal but a week-to-week learning process.

At some point, Murphy and the Gators are going to part company and instead of too much going wrong at the most inopportune moment, good things will be happening. This would be a very good week for that to begin.