Florida Gators Head Coach Dan Mullen met with local media on Monday to recap the No. 3 Gators win over Ole Miss, how the Kyle to Kyle connection has been forged and what the defense needs to do to improve. He also spent time talking about his relationship with Steve Spurrier. As a valued subscriber to GatorBait Magazine, we are offering this transcript in full. Opening statement: “Obviously excited to get going and play in the Swamp this Saturday. You know it’s going to be great to be home and back to being in the home environment - playing in the Swamp, there is no environment like it. I can’t wait to see it. I think one thing. Even though there is a limited capacity at stadiums right now, fans can make a huge difference. So we need the Gator fans maximize, we can’t pack the swamp, but maximize what we can do at the Swamp on Saturdays. I know there are still tickets available for the game, which is something that is a little bit of different, unique. I think there are a lot of people I’ve talked to out there, 'oh coach, it’s just a shame, we would love to go to game this year, but we can’t get tickets this year’ or what the situation is. So there are still tickets available. All the Gator nation out there, if you want to come to the game, please contact … get in touch to the ticket office. There are still tickets available for Saturday’s game. And just like I said last week, it is such a huge deal to be in the Swamp on a Saturday in, I guess it will be in October now. To be in the Swamp in October feels normal, and I know life hasn’t always felt normal the past six months. Come join us in the Swamp this Saturday, it should be great the first home game.” Worried about defensive guys losing a bit of their confidence? “I think there is a lot of teachable moments from Saturday. I think there is a lot you can see in what happened in that game and why we had some of our breakdowns. I don’t want to take anything away from Ole Miss, obviously we were down some players in game one playing against an extremely up tempo offense, and they do a really good job of getting their playmakers the ball - you know what I mean. I mean they got a couple of guys that do stuff with it, and they do a good job of scheming those guys to make sure they get the ball. But I expect a much better defense. Normally at the beginning of the season, everybody is like, ‘okay the defenses are great and the offenses are going to take a little time to catch up.’ I think now that you have eliminated spring ball; when you eliminate the amount of tackling that you have done at this time; you expand this long training camp with the limitations that we had in it; I think it’s an advantage for the offense really - so this is what you are seeing. I expect us to make a really big jump from week one to week two defensively with tackling, the effort, with running to the football, with communication and making sure we are fitting everything properly. I think all of those things since we are kind of in a game mode, I expect us to be much better defensively this week.” DO YOU THINK THAT'S WHY WE SAW SO MANY CRAZY OFFENSIVE STATS IN SEC THIS WEEK? "I think it certainly has something to do with it, you know what I mean? I think there's great explosive players, but I certainly think that probably does have something to do with it. That opportunity; the guys could still throw and catch. They could go out and throw and catch on their own. They could do different things like that. We're able to have a ball at a walk-through, so you could, even though you're walking through, you can just throw it and catch it to somebody, so you get a little feel for the pass game that way with the walk-throughs that we had. What you missed was the defense fitting tackling, those things. I think it'll change as the season goes on." YOU'VE USED TIGHT ENDS FOR YEARS, DID YOU SPECIFICALLY CREATE LOT OF YOUR OFFENSE AROUND PITTS THIS OFFSEASON? "Yeah, you know, it was, I don't know if we created around it, we had it in there, but we know he's a mismatch out there on the field. So as you go pull different things and you're looking at your players, 'what do you expect to do well?' we looked at the tight end position and we know we have some really good tight ends. Not just him, but the other ones that we feel comfortable with in the offense. It's a position when you have those guys that we think are big, advantageous matchups for us, we're going to use the part of the offense that's going to highlight them more than maybe other years. That's something we certainly spent a lot of time with in the offseason, that we have enough ways that he's going to get the ball in his hands during the course of the game trying to create matchup problems for the defense." DRINK BOTTLE OF WINE FROM SPURRIER YET? "No." EVEN CALL THAT A BOTTLE? "It was a, right? I mean Kassidy's got a picture of it right there. I see it in her background drop. It is actually a bottle and it is wine. Hey, coach, I mean he didn't miss a beat. He was in here this morning, first time I saw him he had a botttle of wine for me. I called him out and he brought it." Coach spared no expense on bottle of wine? “Hey, that’s one thing about having Coach Spurier, I love having Coach Spurrier around because it’s, one, obviously to have a football person like that around the building and around all the time. I mean, I grew up a huge fan of him. Very rarely does he not walk in the room and put a smile of the face of everyone in the office.” Keeping Kyle Trask grounded? How improve on six TDs? “There’s a lot of things he can getter better at. We went through them on the film, I don’t know, you know. If he likes the attention and he likes his name being on the ticker of ESPN. If he likes that stuff then keep doing what he’s doing. If he doesn’t, go out and throw three picks, they won’t talk about him anymore. I don’t know, that’s kind of my take on it. You know what, he’s a guy who’s worked really hard to put himself in this position. He’s been on the big stage - it’s not too big for him. I think he understands and respects the position he’s in and doesn’t take it for granted, so I think that’s going to be the biggest thing. I don’t know that he’s going to look … hey, I don’t know that he’s going to have six touchdown passes every week. It’d be great if he does. But I think most important to him is he’s doing his job managing the game, making good decisions, putting us in the right plays, getting the ball out of his hands fasters and being accurate. That’s the stuff that he worries about. Just like before, I mean, he never came in and worried about being the starter, he wanted to be the starter, but he wasn’t worried about it. He was worried about improving and getting better. Now that he’s the starter I expect more of the same of him just worried about improving and getting better.” Never had a QB throw 6 TDs? “That sounds about right. That’s because Brian Johnson, once you make him the coordinator right there we start, you know, as he said if you let me call my own plays when I was playing for you I would have had six touchdowns all the time. I’d throw it every play (laughs). That helps a lot. I’m probably a little bit more run heavy and he’s a little more pass heavy, and we end up throwing the ball a little more.” What does it say, though, given the dudes you’ve had at QB? “I think it’s great. A lot of the credit goes to him and where he went with the ball, and how fast he made those decisions. And how to get it to the right player. I think he knows we have a lot of confidence in his throwing the ball. It does say a lot about him. I’ve had some pretty good quarterbacks over the years, so that’s pretty unique deal. I would bet, I don’t think I’ve had anybody throw for six. Timmy had seven, right?, but he didn’t throw for all seven, he accounted for seven in a game.” You had a lot of fives, Dak Prescott and Alex Smith, but no sixes. "Alright! If he would've thrown that ball a little quicker to Trent Whittemore, he would have had seven." How does your time as a college TE influence how you see and use the position? "Well you know, I'm biased to those guys, right? I mean, I was a quarterback and a tight end really in my football career. So you know, and you wonder why our quarterback threw six touchdowns and four of them to our tight end? I'm just biased to those guys I guess, is what it must be. No, I think in football, you look at, one of the things we've always tried to do is try to create advantageous matchups, right? And, you know, just go through the years of different guys I've had. You know, used to be a big zone-read team and then all of a sudden you have a Chris Rainey, a Jeff Demps with a Tebow, and you just run the reverse zone-read. Then those guys run outside, Tebow pounds away inside. You have a Percy Harvin, how are you getting him in space, right, to go make plays. Dak Prescott, are you building your offense around what he does well and change from one year to the next, not kind of box yourself in. To me, it's really about having enough offensive system that can highlight players. We've had years, we've had a bunch of years we've had 1,000 yard rushers. But how do you build your offense around, being able to highlight players, and then pick and choose and make sure you're putting them in position to do that and play to their strengths. That's what we've always tried to do." How did young guys on defense do and how much will those reps help moving forward? "Well, it was a lot. We had a lot of guys play defense and special teams. Obviously, it's a long season, there's a chance this could be a season like no other, you know what I mean? I don't know who's going to be available from week to week. And so, when you look at those things, when there's a possibility that happen, it's probably more than next-man-up mentality as a regular year would be. So it's great to get guys reps, get them out there, get them that experience on the field. You know, I talked to the guys. 'You never know how many reps you're going to get, and reps are valuable, but you better make sure that you're ready for when your number's called, that you've prepared the right way to be ready to go make plays during the course of the game'. So, it was great to get guys reps, get guys out on the field, because you don't know how much we're going to need them as the year goes on." See elements of this offense being explosive? “Well, we were on Saturday. We’ll see how we do this Saturday. I don’t know. I just want to see us get better from week to week. Do we have components? Yes, because we have explosive players in the offense. We have guys that are explosive players, so when you have those, when you have guys that can make big plays happen, it gives you the opportunity to have a much more explosive offense. So I think it certainly has the potential to be from week to week. But, like I said, I also think defenses … unlike normal years, where kind of the offenses pick up as the year goes on, I think it’s going to go the opposite way and defenses will start catching up quicker. So you’ll see the bigger stats earlier in the year offensively rather than late this year more than in normal years.” How much can we attribute this to a more experienced O-line? “I think it helps. There are certain things that help. One, we have a little bit of a veteran offensive line. Two, we played an SEC road game where, even though there were good people, in the crowd there was this. Usually, when you’re playing on the road in the league, it’s deafening; you can’t hear a thing. You saw that in the NFL. I think I was leaving the office last night and I saw Aaron Rodgers _ I had the TV on background _ in New Orleans using snap count to use them to jump offsides. I’m sure no one’s every used snap count in New Orleans as the visiting team before. There’s certain offensive advantages to those things that you have just because of circumstances this year. Obviously having a veteran quarterback helps, a veteran offensive line certainly helps as you have to make in-game adjustments. And then just game mechanics it’s a little bit easier this year with not having to deal with massive crowds on the road. That’s why every Gator matters this weekend to make it as loud as we possibly can for South Carolina.” How often does Spurrier just pop in? “He wasn’t waiting for us. He came in. He comes in, does his workouts, does different things. When he came down, he has his office. I saw him walking by, so I…Right before we tweeted it, we go the picture, then we tweeted it out. He’ll come by. He’ll come by, have some thoughts on different things, football thoughts for us. And I just love it. It’s always good that you have…since I’ve been here, he’s a guy that comes in and is not judgmental. I think as everybody knows, he’s not afraid to give you advice on different things, or speak his mind and give his thoughts. But he always does it to me in a very positive, constructive, helping way as a coach. I think it is great to have somebody like that around, just sticks his head in every once in a while, give his thoughts on what’s going on.” Any suggestions you’ve used? “Oh yeah. He’ll draw up some plays for us now. He’s got a bunch of plays.” Any that you’ve used? “Yeah. We called one. Usually it’s not as much during the season sometimes offseason, he’ll review stuff and say hey, we’ve run this before, or we’ve run that before. We put one of them in last year, we ran a bunch of times called Spurrier because he gave it to us, so we called it Spurrier and put it in. I can’t give you away our play calling. Obviously it was pass play, not a run play. I’m sure you guessed that.” Ventrell Miller is Defensive POY in the SEC. His performance? “I think he had a great deal of tackles. He plays so hard. He’s a great leader for the defense. I think last year was really his first time starting. This year I think he understand that he’s expected to be the leader of the defense. He does that every single day. I think it’s a great learning experience for all of our players out there. You watch him practice, and you watch how he prepares, how hard he practices, how he prepares to be in the right position, his attention to detail and everything he does at practice. And then you see that translate over to the games. That’s not just that he’s a vocal leader and going to talk up and get guys going, but he’s also going to back it up with his actions. You know what? You watch how he practices, how he performs every day on the field, it translates to seeing a guy be able to go out and have a huge game like he did on Saturday.” Is this indicative of what the offense can do? “Well, I think it’s a little bit of having veteran players that are still able to throw and catch, so you’re a little bit ahead. I certainly hope we continue to improve offensively. We didn’t come out to peak in week one. I expect the offense to get better. I just think the curve is going to be quicker for the defense as the season goes on and we start playing more football.” Guys really didn’t get penalized much. Just looking at the past of Florida and how much the Gators were penalized, last in the league, three times in the last 10 years. What emphasis do you have on not having penalties? “They kill or extend drives. We put a lot on it. Our one big thing is going into game one was a lot of the focus not as much on Ole Miss as on ourselves and handle game mechanics offensively. Can we come out there execute and handle being back on game day Saturday. Obviously, you look at the Shawn penalty was big early. But, we really didn’t have many penalties the whole game. That was something that we attribute to. We talked a lot about going into game one. We hadn’t watched their offense or defense play. They had a whole new coaching staff. A lot of our focus and attention had to be on ourselves and could we execute, could we handle that transition into game wee? Offensively, we did. With not many penalties and defensively with the exception of the. … you know the targeting, which is a tough call, guy’s running over the middle. I think Shawn tried to throw the shoulder in there. Guys are lower at catching the ball. We talk about it all the time. It’s kind of a bang-bang play. It’s tough that that happened. I don’t think there was intent there at all in any way shape or form. It’s just one of those things that try to coach and try to get out of the game, keep the game as safe as possible. Even with that one, overall I think we were pretty clean on the day penalty wise.” Something you work on in the offseason, procedural wise you work on? “Yeah. It helps having some older players. It’s something we really talked about paying attention to going into the week. We might not have as much research on this team as we have on other teams, so let’s really focus on our execution of doing everything perfectly going into the game.” Are the moves that Malik [Davis] and [Nay'Quan] Wright showed the reason you want to get them the ball in space? “Always. But I think everybody saw that. I think Malik last year, and I don’t want to say not 100 percent, but it his total performance wasn’t. That was the guy I saw, both running and catching the ball on Saturday. I think a lot of times when you look at the rushing or the running back stats, if you combine our three runnings — if we had just played one — really a pretty good day for the backs, if that was one back. But I like to roll those guys through some. Like I say, this is going to be a unique year for us and to get guys experience. Those guys play a bunch on special teams, as well. To create depth within the team it was good to get all those guys in the game. I was pleased with how Malik played, I thought Pierce ran hard, and it was great to get Nay’Quan some real game reps out and did a really nice job catching the ball out of the backfield.” The cut Davis made, and his confidence “That’s what we weren’t seeing last year, some of that explosiveness and make-you-miss and foot-in-the-ground and change-in-direction. And I think you’re seeing that now again.” Coach Spurrier told Dooley if you win a SEC championship you get two bottles of wine— “He said to me against this morning. I love it. As soon as he said it to me I was laughing. It was awesome.” Brian Johnson’s debut as coordinator “Obviously, he did a really good job, right? I was the OC here and we never had that many yards or touchdown pass, so I guess he did better than I did.” Do you remember first game as OC against Wyoming “Was it Wyoming? … I know we won. … Wyoming was pretty tough, though. It was our first game. We were learning a lot about ourselves back then; how to run the offense; how to adjust to what we’re doing; we were coming off the year at Utah, just all knew players. I remember this: You knew your team at Utah kind of inside and out and then you came here and got into games and during the course of the year we tweaked some things during the year with the offense as we got more familiar with everybody.” South Carolina’s defense and how they might try to take away Pitts “They have some length out there. They have some long corners and big safeties. They’re probably going to have some athletes that they can match up with him. They’re big men and play a lot of man coverage, so you’ll have some one-on-one matchups, so it’s about creating the best match-up we can. I think they have a very talented front. They have some veteran guys who are starters, and then really a bunch of five-star guys that they have recruited over the last few years. Very, very talented front, as well. It’ll be a big challenge. Every time, each of the last few years, this game, it’s kind of come down to the end. We have to be ready to go play for four quarters.” Why is Pitts so hard to cover, what strengths does he bring to the game? “I think, one, when you look that he is a tight end. But if you go look at that, it is about the mismatches. I mean, he’s got the size, so when DBs are on him, a lot of times, he can go over the top of DBs. He can run away from backers. He’s got tremendous athletic ability to go catch the ball, and as I think everybody saw, he’s really developed much better as a blocker this offseason. When you combine those things defensively, who do you put on him? You know what I mean. It’s like we talked, he’s kind of a unicorn, right? So unless you have a unicorn on defense to match the unicorn on offense – you’ve got to have a guy that, there’s not a lot of them out there, they’re kind of very, very rare to ever see one – do you have a 6-foot-4, 240-pound linebacker than can run with him? Or do you have a 6-3 1/2, 220 safety that’s physical as he is at the point of attack. So that’s really what makes him a mismatch. But you see it. It’s not anything that is new. You’re watching Kelce, and you’re watching Kittle, and you’re watching Gronkowski, you’re watching all these guys do this all throughout the NFL. It goes back to, whether it’s – who are some of the other guys? – I mean there’s a bunch of them that have been doing it for years in the NFL. They’re just mismatch problems, and I think one of the things coaches are doing in just trying to create those matchups. You know what, if I can put him in space and make the matchup better than putting him in tight, well then I’m going to put in space to create that little bit more room for him to work and make the matchup even better and even more in our advantage.” BOTH KYLE’S SEEMED TO BE A LOT MORE COMFORTABLE ADJUSTING, BEING ABLE TO MOVE AROUND AND SWITCH MIDFLIGHT “I think, I think, you know one thing Kyle does a good job, he's gonna put the ball where the defense isn’t. You know whether he's gonna go over the top or whether he's gonna put it on the back shoulder. Also it's just experienced; the sliding in the pocket, the scrambling, the moving. And then you look at the receivers you know when we do that, the ability for them to kind of find the windows, you know, as he's sliding to his right, 'hey I might break off my route, slide to the right with him and get in a window for him to throw it.' And I think that does, that comes from experience, not just from those two but all our guys that have played some played a bunch of football.” PRESSURE OF PUTTING TOGETHER ROSTER AT LAST MINUTE "Well, you know, what's what's tricky is it's, you know, it can be changing. You know what I mean. So you kind of have a, you have a Monday roster. You know, then you got kind of a Thursday roster that you expect to bring into the game and then you kind of have a Friday roster, you know if you got to go to the bullpen, um. And you know, you're trying to manage it throughout the week and balance to make sure however it plays out that we're ready to go play a game on Saturday. And so a lot that goes into it; you know our roster was honestly, was decided on on Friday morning. Really actually Thursday night at about 10 o'clock last week, you know we got somewhat set on the roster. But you know there, there's still changes all the way into Saturday for us that we had to make. So just a different year…unfortunately I don’t have free agency to get on the call, on the phone real quick and get somebody in here so you know we’re, we're managing with what we have and trying to balance it as best we can.” SCOUT TEAM HAVING TO LEARN THE GAME PLAN EACH WEEK IN CASE ROSTER NEEDS NUMBERS; WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE? "I think you know one of the things is that, that, you know you have guys that probably, you know are just taking reps on the offense or defense, having to go down and play scout team because your numbers are down right. So those guys that may be, you know, are limited rep guys on offense or defense are now on the scout team and they got to get those reps either in walkthrough or film session to get ready to play. So, that is a little bit different for us this year too and you know what, for us to have a successful year is going to take a lot of unselfish guys on this team. You know a lot of guys buying into doing 'hey I'm here to do whatever it takes to help the team win.' You know, and as long as we keep that attitude, we have a chance to be successful. As selfishness starts to creep in and guys are worried about themselves, it's going to be harder to manage because you know guys are like 'hey I don't want to do that. I don't want to do this. I don't, I don't want to do what it takes for the team to win,’ we’ll have a lot of problems.” WHAT ARE THE MAIN THREAS SOUTH CAROLINA POSES OFFENSIVELY? "Well I mean they got, they got some really good players. It's unique, the quarterback, you know he's come in and he's a veteran within this system even though it's just first start for them last week. He's played within the system I think. So he knows the system they're running, decision making, they do, they a couple good backs to get the ball to; they got you know they got some wide outs. They always do a good job of creating, having some wideouts and creating matchup issues with those wideouts to try to take advantage of the guys and you know try to get there. Same thing, similar thing to what we do is try, try to get their talented guys in the best advantageous one-on-one matchup they can that they can. And so even though it is, you know I mean you look at their quarterback position, I think is the big one, that they have a guy that's a veteran in the system and the guy on the bench that started for them last year so they have some experience there to come out and make plays and be comfortable within what they're doing.” Brett Heggie and the o-line "I thought he played well. I thought the offensive line, as a whole, played well. A lot of times that almost ends up being a team award. I know it goes to the individual, and I give Brett a lot of credit. He was well deserving and had a great game, having to go in and jump in at center. He was a guy who was going to play either center or guard and had to do both — he was forced to play center — and did a great job of it. Obviously, very deserving of that. You look, there weren’t a lot of mistakes up front. As the game went on, I think we made some good adjustments to what they were doing to run the ball even more efficiently than we did early in the game, and a lot of that goes on the center. But overall, I thought the offensive line played well, and he is the center of that line and the focal and the apex of that line. I’m glad he was able to get the recognition for that.” Stewart Reese’s first game as a Gator Great. I think having missed the offseason hurt Stew a little bit. I expect him to continue to get better. I saw a couple ups and downs. One thing I think he knows having played for before is that I have pretty high standards and expectations. That’s not going to shock him. So overall, he graded a champion and I thought he payed pretty well.

Florida Gators Defensive Coordinator Todd Grantham spoke with local media on Tuesday. He recapped the Florida Gators win over Ole Miss, detailed how it wasn't a win at all for the defense and what they can do to improve before facing South Carolina on Saturday. As a valued subscriber of GatorBait Magazine, we are offering this transcript in full. Kaiir Elam said the game film pissed him off. You? “At the end of the day you have to be honest, we made too many mistakes and we didn’t play to our standard. Right, wrong, for whatever reasons, it doesn’t matter. You are who you are. We didn’t play to the standard we played the last couple of years and just made too many mistakes. When you look at it it really got down to we didn’t finish. Whether it was we didn’t finish a play that created an explosive play or we didn’t finish a series, meaning you got them to 2nd-and-16 you should get off the field there. You have them in 3rd-and-19, you should win that one. And really that’s the end of the deal, we didn’t finish plays - whether it was an individual play or a series. Every series is within a game, meaning, like, let’s finish this series off. So hey, if it’s 3rd-and-short you find a way to finish, if it’s 3rd-and-long you find a way to finish. But at the end of the day let’s get off the field and give the offense the ball back. We made too many mistakes and didn’t finish and play to our standard. To be a good player, you have to always critique yourself and look at the things you did well and the things you have to improve upon. We do that every week whether we win or lose it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to own it. The biggest thing to me is moving forward, playing to our standard and understanding that we must play better. That’s been the focus this week is to play better this week coming up.” How far away are you guys from reaching your standard? “We’re supposed to play to the standard we played the last couple of years. I don’t think you ever make excuses for anything that’s out there. You look to get the job done, and that’s what we’re going to do. We just got to go execute the game plan and understand you have a role within each call and play to your role. That’s what we’re going to do.” How would you defend Kyle Pitts? “You’re talking about a guy that can be in the core and be a blocker, so he gives you the element he can cover guys up and you can run the ball. He obviously can extend himself and displace and become a wide receiver and a threat that way, and then he comes a mismatch whether it’s a corner or a linebacker. His body is going to be difficult for a cornerback to defend because of the size thing, and when you put a linebacker on him you get an athletic mismatch that way. He’s a really good player. I’m glad that he’s on our team. I’ve seen him make a lot of players over the course of the last couple of months.” How much of Saturday’s game can be explained away by lack of spring and not tackling? “I don’t look at it that way. I look at it as each play, how do you win the down? You want to win more downs than you obviously lose. We just didn’t play well enough, whether it was a fundamental error, whether it was a lack of execution, whether it was leverage on the ball, just finishing. I mean, we just didn’t do it. It is what it is. You’ve gotta own it. The biggest thing to me is how do we respond and get better. I don’t think you can ever use anything as an excuse. You gotta find ways to get the job done and that’s what we’re gonna do.” Was effort an issue at all? “I don’t think effort was an issue. I think that we had some guys that when you showed them this is the standard at which we play, and I think I said that, to me the whole thing about effort and those kinds of things is that it’s a teaching process. We had some really young players playing in the game. We had some guys playing new positions. Sometimes that can affect your mindset a little bit. I think the best way to educate guys is you show them the standard. If you watch there were plays that were the standards, the problem was that there weren’t enough of them for us to have the kind of performance we want to have. So you show them the plays that are acceptable, then you show them the plays that weren’t. The big question is why? Why can’t I finish this play? Why can’t I secure my gap? Why can’t I secure my leverage? Why can’t I stay in the deep part of the field? You know all of those things. At the end of the day, we just gotta get better and that’s been the focus this week. I think you’ve always gotta own it. You’ve gotta understand where you are to get where you want to go.” Durable South Carolina QB? “Yeah, I think when you look at him through the course of being at Colorado State and South Carolina, he’s a mature guy, he’s competitive, he’s got toughness, he does understand where to go with the football in that offense. I would think his demeanor is something they want in that huddle as they try to be a physical team and establish the run. He can make plays with his arm and understanding where to go with the ball in the pass game.” SC approach game differently after watching Ole Miss? “Nah, I think you’ve got to be ready for everything. I think anytime you don’t maybe have success at a certain thing you’ve got to correct because as you move forward you’re going to see it again. So you’ve got to handle that. Then I also think that, you know, each team has to do the things that are the strength of their team. South Carolina’s going to have their philosophy that they’ve been going with for the past few weeks and how they’re going to handle things. I think they’ll try to mesh things together, a combination of things that they came out of the game that they can do as well as things that match up with their people to give them the best chance to win the game.” See any guys sucking wind at the end of the game? “Well, we played a lot of plays at the end of the game. I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t real happy with how the game was going. With the score it was and they had the ball, the only game you can lose the game right there is to give up a big play immediately. If you give up a big play immediately and they get the onside kick, now you’ve got to stop them in a short field to make it a one-possession game. If you go back and look, I think there was 5:15 or 5:20 on the clock. In my mind, they were probably going to score or we were going to have a chance to stop them at some point. But they were going to take the clock, meaning it was going to take them … if you go back and look, it was down to a minute or 57 seconds or something like that when they got the touchdown. To be honest with you, in that fourth quarter I think they had 162 yards. You’ve got to play each game relative to the score and to win the game. As much as sometimes you may not like that, you’ve just got to take the clock in that situation. Because, like for example, if you go back, I think we had a second-and-16 at one time and we exposed the middle of the field and gave up a big play and they scored pretty quickly. Well, that can’t happen. So, you have to eliminate that and you may have to give up something here or there, but you’ve got to take the clock in that situation. So we ended up playing like 16 plays, so we had to rotate quite a few guys in there. I did think there were some guys that got gassed at that point. Hopefully, playing that many plays in that kind of situation will help us week two, week three moving forward to being in game shape.” What was your initial impression of Brenton Cox? “I think Brenton is a talented guy that made some plays. I think there’s more in the tank. We’ve just got to continue to develop the habits that allow him to make plays. The guy really wants to be a good player. The guy takes notes, he studies, he asks questions. As he continues to understand how we want him to play, the system and all that, he’ll get better. He’ll make plays. I thought he made some good plays, but I think there’s still more in the tank that we can get that we need to continue to develop.” History with Mike Bobo? “Yeah, Mike and I were together at Georgia. I know Mike real well. He’s a really good coach. He’s tough, he’s competitive. He’s going to get after guys, he’s going to challenge guys. We’ve got to understand we’re going to get their best shot when they come in here.” Will this be like back on the practice field, the chess match? “Yeah, we’ll be yelling at each other across the field.” What did you think when Shawn Davis went out with all the game planning that went for him being on the field? “We lost a starter, No. 1. But at the end of the day, it gave us an opportunity to play a true freshman in an SEC game for 60-plus snaps. I always say injury creates depth. At some point we’re going to need all of those guys to play. It probably gave us some growing pains, but at the end of the day, Rashad is going to be a really good player and he’s going to make a lot of plays for us around here. So, being able to get a guy like that those kind of quality reps and still win the game, then I look at it can help us moving forward.” Gervon Dexter? “As he continues to develop, we’ll get him in there.” Take the clock? What does that mean? “I remember one year that I was in Cleveland, we were up by nine and Brett Favre had the ball with, like, five minutes and 14 seconds left. I’m like, you’ve got to take the clock. I think they scored with one second left. So we were up by three scores, and there’s like 5:13 to go. The end of the day, the most important thing is you win the game. The way you lose the game is you give up an explosive play right off the bat and you force an onside kick. Now you’re down to a two-possession game, then you’ve got to play with them with time on the clock. There was a third and 1 there where actually going against Lane before in that situation, you’ve gotta be ready for a shot. There’s two and a half minutes in the game, and it’s third and 1. You give the first, keep the clock running at that point. You understand what I’m saying? Because at the end of the day, if they score on third and —if they take a shot on third and 1 and don’t get it, they’re going to run for it on fourth down. You have to understand the clock is a factor in what you do, and you’ve got to keep it moving to allow you to get it down to where they can’t win the game. Even if they go get the onside kick, I think they had it down to 17 seconds. They don’t score on this play, the game’s over. Because you can’t run a play with 7 or 8 seconds left, then get the ball back and win. My point is in that situation, as much as sometimes it can be frustrating, you’ve gotta take the clock and win the ball game and worry about next week next week.” Brandon Spikes talking up Ventrell Miller…51 can be better than me. You see that? “I think Ventrell is really a credit to the program in general. If you look at tape of when he first started playing and we were first here and you look at the kind of guy he is now, the kind of leader he is now, the way his body has changed, the physicality in which he plays, that really speaks volumes to what the program’s all about. He’s a guy that’s embraced the program. He’s embraced being a leader. We’re going to expect him to give us the kind of leadership needed to do the things we want to do this year.” IF HE CAN BE BETTER THAN BRANDON SPIKES, YOU'RE SITTING PRETTY? "That would be a good thing, so we'll continue to work on that." MATCHUP ISSUES SHI SMITH CREATES? "I mean the guy's played a lot of plays, I mean a lot of games for them. He's an explosive guy. They're going to find ways to get him the ball. Any time you've got a guy that can go get the ball when it's down the field, that creates issues and you've got to know where he is. So we're going to have to have awareness of him and make sure we don't let him beat us single-handedly." HOW BENEFICIAL HAVING CAMPBELL AND STEWART BACK ON DEPTH CHART? "Yeah, I think any time you can add guys like that that have played SEC games for us and, one, understand what we want to do, any time you can add guys like that to the roster it's going to help you moving forward." HOW HARD IS IT TO SCHEME AGAINST TONEY? "I think that it's like anything, when you can add them together that makes it a huger problem. With Toney, I think the biggest thing that I see from him is his work ethic to become a complete receiver and to be a guy that can do multiple things with his skill set. By doing that it allows him to make a lot of different style plays, a lot of different style catches. And I think the biggest thing I've seen out of him is his ability to work to be a complete receiver." ANYTHING YOU DO TO ACCOMODATE FOR TONEY'S SKILL SET? "Kadarius? Um, well I mean with his athletic ability and quickness obviously you've got to figure out how you want to match him up and do those kind of things because you have to have a skill guy on him. If you don't have a corner on him that can create an issue." Will familiarity with coaches come into play Saturday? “Yeah I think that at the end of the day it gets down to, you know, guys blocking and guys getting off blocks. Executing the call, you know, doing the things you’ve got to do, relative to what we call, you know winning your one-on-one battles and doing those kind of things, because players make plays. Obviously you’ve got to put guys in position, but I think that gets overblown. They’re going to know some things that we do, we’re going to know some things that they do, but at the end of the day you know players make plays, and we’ve got to go out and line-up and execute.” Getting Shawn Davis back, how much will that help getting him back there? “I think anytime you can add a guy like Shawn to the backend, you’ve gotten a guy that’s played two years for us in our system. He understands what we want, he’s seen a lot of football, he’s seen a lot of formations, he understands what to do. So, I think that helps your communication and makes things cleaner, because a lot of times a younger guy may know what to do, but somebody’s got to maybe tell him, or it’s got to get relayed quicker, and that kind of thing, so when you get a guy that’s got some leadership to him and can do those kinds of things, it really helps.” Hurt not having him? “Like I said, I think that anytime you’ve played two years of football in the SEC and you don’t have that, it can kind of hinder you a little bit.” Good Mike Bobo story? “I’ve got a lot of respect for Mike and what he’s done. We were against each other, and won a lot of games at Georgia together, and competed, and he’s a very competitive guy. I think highly of him and his family. I’m kind of a guy that roots for people, so I certainly rooted for him when he was a head coach. Other than this Saturday I’ll be rooting for him.” Hang out off the field? “Every now and then we did, every now and then.” Ever face his offense? “He was at Colorado State when I was here.” I mean against him on the field “Nah, I never played against him. We were actually on the both side of the ball, so how are we gonna play against each other?”

Florida Gators Offensive Coordinator Brian Johnson met with local media on Monday to recap the Gators offensive firepower over Ole Miss, preview Will Muschamp's South Carolina defense and reflect on the Kyle to Kyle connection. As a valued subscriber to GatorBait Magazine, we are offering this transcript in full. Pretty impressive debut you had there as OC “Thank you” How comfortable was Trask to you and how did you feel he executed? “Yeah he played really well overall. You know, got us into some good plays, and was accurate with the ball, was really decisive, knew where he wanted to go. Still some stuff we’ve got to continue to clean up as an entire offense, but definitely a good start to the season, for sure.” Specifics you can share where you think Trask can improve? “Yeah I mean, you know, really the biggest thing is, just making sure to just continue to take care of the football. We had two potential opportunities for the ball to be on the ground One, we threw an interception, and then we got a strip-sack in the pocket and lost the ball but we ended up recovering it, so, you know, just things of that nature. Making sure we’re really aware in the pocket of where bodies are, and making sure we’re sliding with great ball security. And then finishing drives, you know we had a couple opportunities down in the red zone, particularly some red zone third downs where we weren’t able to convert and had to settle for field goals. Luckily we have Evan McPherson, who’s the best kicker in America, who can make us right, but you know it’d be nice to finish those drives off.” Pitts dominated, but how deep do you feel his play-making ability is of this team, lot of options? “Yeah we have some really good skill players, you know, and the quarterback does a great job of distributing the ball and understanding that coverage dictates who gets it, so, in our offense it’s, you know, got a lot of guys that can hurt you everytime that they touch the ball, so you know it was good to see us spread the ball around like that, and then, obviously guys like Kyle Pitts kind of takes it over, and even when they put two on him sometimes he’s still really hard to cover, so it’s a great job of just understanding your match-ups, knowing your personnel and just getting it to our playmakers and letting them do the rest.” Importance and putting Emory back post-pick? “It was really important. We wanted to make sure that we got him in and let him play. Obviously, the first play design didn’t go as we’d planned. But he did a nice job, it didn’t faze him, he didn’t freak out at all. He just came out and continued to play - and he made some plays when he was out there. I was really proud of him for continuing to play one play at a time and not getting too high and not getting too low and just going out there and executing and making some plays.” See young receivers going forward? “Yeah, for sure, especially in 2020 there’s just so much uncertainty with COVID-19 and what’s going on. You got to have guys ready to go, so our substitution pattern in terms of how we want to get guys ready and make sure the first time they get in the game isn’t the most important play of the game, or the first time that they’ve ever played. So, we like to get those guys in there so they can get their feet wet and build some confidence.” When know Kyle Pitts had this kind of potential? “I mean, it was in training camp his freshman year. It was just a matter of him kind of growing into the position. He played more, he was actually Van’s backup our first year in ‘18. We played him a little bit more outside just because he had so much talent - a huge catch radius, he’s fast, he can get in and out of breaks. And then he kind of grew into what we saw in terms of him being an elite tight end. It was fairly early on. He was a guy that as young player, as a freshman, he played behind Van and really had a chance to learn from him. We put him in the game, he made some plays. He continued to develop and grow, and now he’s in a position where he’s one of the best players in America.” Growing into position, nuances at TE? “Absolutely. I think just in our offense, we ask our tight end to do so much in terms of them having to understand the run, understand the pass game, understand protections. It’s a lot on their plate in terms of what they have to learn in order to go and operate at a really high level. He’s done that. He was a guy with just so much talent we had to get him on the field. He did no good sitting next to us on the sideline. We found a way to get him in there and help kind of accelerate his development.” When is the decision made on when Emory Jones will play? "Yeah, I mean we always have a plan for him, to get him in the game. Like I said, he's such a dynamic player and we like to get him out there. But, it doesn't second guess it at all. I mean, it was one of those plays where the three-technique got in, he got hit as he threw it, and it was probably more important to get him back out there immediately and let him continue to play. So that wasn't an issue for us, didn't second-guess getting him out there at all." So the decision was made to put him in before the game? "Oh sure. Yeah, absolutely." Time lost this offseason, were you surprised by how good Trask's ball placement was? "No, I mean Kyle's always been a worker. He's had a fantastic training camp. Those guys have kinda picked up where they left off in terms of their timing and stuff. So, they have such a great understanding of where guys need to be and how they fit into the play, each and every opportunity. So, he's done a good job, it was good to come out, we talked about leading up to the game about getting off to a fast start, and playing clean and executing at a high level, and he was able to do that." How do you make sure Trask stays focused with all the hype? "That's something that we talk about all the time, is, I think quarterback is obviously a very demanding position. You've got to be able to handle success the same way you handle adversity, and I think having that even-keel attitude that he does, and we talk a lot about that in the sideline. We were kinda rolling and just talking about staying with a laser-sharp focus and not taking your foot off the gas, and just continuing to be aggressive, and really, really diligent and detailed in what you're seeing and how you're playing. It's something that's really important, not only when you're facing adversity but when you have success as well." Now that you've gotten a week under your belt with a new role and a new title, what changed, what didn’t? “In terms of, like, our gameday operation? It’s been fairly similar. You know I’ve always been really, really, heavily involved in calling plays throughout the course f my entire time here and even back at Mississippi State. I think we have some great coaches and we put together a really, really solid plan that our players went out and executed. In terms of our game planning and gameday operation, it was kind of business as usual with calling the game.” Spurrier around, you have a play named Spurrier, don’t worry he didn’t tell us what it is. “If it’s named Spurrier you know it’s not a run play.” That’s what he said. What is it like having Spurrier around? “It’s great. He’s obviously a legend and someone, you know you talk about guys that forget or probably have forgotten more football than you know, Steve Spurrier comes to mind. He’s accomplished a lot. Anytime you can pick his brain, get any knowledge, I think you’ve got to jump at that opportunity. We welcome him with open arms. I love it when he comes in there and draws up some plays for us. We put them in and they work. He is one of a kind, for sure. There’s nobody like him. Does he let you know when his plays worked in  a game? “Oh, absolutely. He will come in, not only in college football, but he’ll come in and talk about the pro games from that Sunday night and stuff that people are doing in the NFL as well. So just, it’s always great to talk ball with him.” Do you have a Spurrier impression, he’s got a distinct voice. “He does have a very distinct voice. I don’t know if I quite have it down. I do know Coach Mullen does a pretty good Coach Spurrier voice. I’m probably not as good as him.” WHAT GOES INTO A QUARTERBACK BEING GOOD AT BALL PLACEMENT, BACK-SHOULDER THROWS? NATURALLY HAVE IT? DEVELOP IT? "Yeah, I mean it's something that we work on. But it also is a feel and a timing thing of understanding leverage and body placement and then just understanding the radius of your target. So when you're throwing to a guy like Kyle Pitts he has a huge catch radius, so you can just get the ball close. And really it's just as simple as throwing it where the defender isn't. It's kind of a combination of art and science, I guess." PIERCE PASS PRO ON 71-YARD TD, HOW HAVE BACKS IMPROVED THERE? "Well that's the one thing coach Knox always say, 'In order to play you've got to protect the ball and protect the quarterback.' That was a great block by Dameon and a great job of just executing the gameplan by the entire offense of just seeing the look, making the check and executing the play for a touchdown. It was well done by everybody on the entire unit." FROM LAST YEAR TO OLE MISS GAME, WHAT ASPECT OF TRASK'S GAME DID HE MOST IMPROVE? "Um, I think just managing the entire game and managing the offense. He's always been a very cerebral player, very prepared, understanding what we're trying to accomplish. But now, I think when you become a fifth-year senior, it's about not only taking care of yourself but making sure you're putting everybody else in the position to succeed and taking a bigger role in the entire offense, and in some cases the team, in providing that spark and whatever the team needs at that specific time. He's done a great job of developing, maturing, being a leader and playing really well." What kind of role will Kadarius Toney have in the future? "Well, I mean, Kadarius (Toney) is an every-down player. He was very involved in the gameplan. I think he had five catches, five carries, so we got around 10 touches or so. Those (touches), for the most part, a lot of them were just within the flow of the normal offense, he had some designed get-it-to plays, just get it into his hands, but he made several plays just within the normal flow of the offense. Really proud of Kadarius, how hard he works, his understanding level of the game of football, he's a very, very intelligent player that understands coverage, understands how he fits and he's an amazing athlete that's really fun to watch play football." Talk about what he did to improve over the summer? "I think the biggest thing is - obviously he was healthy -, I think he was well on his way to kind of doing that last year and missed the majority of the middle of the season. So, him being healthy, he's always been a very, very smart football player. I think he's just continued to develop and put himself in a position to where he has a complete understanding of not only where he fits in the offense, but how he impacts everybody else in the offense. So, he's done a great job, can't say enough good things about him." On a good coach Spurrier story he has "You know, the one that always comes to mind is, we ran - it was kind of like a deep-post-stop play, and it was a team playing a lot of cover 3. He came in there and he told us about the way that he communicated with the quarterback pre-snap, and he had a simple signal how he got the quarterback's attention and kind of told him where to go with the football before the play. I was like, that was the simplest thing to do and it made so much sense and I'm like 'how come nobody's ever brought that up?' and it was just a simple signal to get to the quarterback, say 'hey, this guy's open, get ready to throw it to him.' That's something that I've kind of taken with me from, that I've taken from him and I'm definitely gonna keep that one in the book, for sure." How did you size up Kyle Trask? “I knew who he was, because when I came from Houston, my quarterback in Houston was D’Eriq King. So, D’Eriq had always talked about him, and so I knew who Kyle was when I came here. And I just remember our first spring practice, we watched him spin, and he throws a beautiful ball. He’s a big, you know, impressive looking guy when you see him — I mean, I don’t think people realize how big he is until you get up on him — and he was a worker. He was always engaged, he did a fantastic job that first winter workout session. You know, he was just somebody who did everything the right way, did everything you asked him to with great energy and great effort. He’s a pleasure to coach.” Were there some guys out there you wanted to get in, but because it was a two-three possession game, weren’t comfortable with it? “Nah, I mean, I would like to try to get Anthony (Richardson) in there. But, you know, hopefully we’ll get a chance to do that at some point. But you know, I think we played pretty much everybody that was there.” Have you ever faced Will Muschamp? “Yeah, for sure, the last two years here. He was the DC at Auburn, we played him there in ’15. And then he’s the head coach at South Carolina, and we played him at Mississippi State in ’16. So I think this would be our fifth time going against him.” Do you get a familiarity after playing him that many times? “Well, I mean, yes and no, because there are certain, obviously, personnel changes, circumstance changes. So yeah, I think having a natural baseline of some familiarity of what they like is a good thing. But you know, you always got to remember that each game is independent and they study and change things up as well. So, we gotta be ready to go execute our plan at a high level. “

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning: Two days after throwing six touchdown passes in Florida’s 51-35 season-opening win over Ole Miss, four to tight end Kyle Pitts, the other Kyle was back to his old no-frills form before the media. He picked up right where he left off last year. Kyle Trask never seems too excited about what he did on the playing field and while he never ducks a question, he never goes overboard with an answer. There never has been nor will there ever be any bulletin board material spewing from his mouth. Boring he isn’t but neither is he exciting. In the huddle or on the sideline maybe but not when he’s talking to the media. The way he lit up the Ole Miss defense was exciting. It’s been a long, long time since Gator fans saw one of their quarterbacks play at the level Trask played against the Rebels. They stood a better chance of stopping a stray lightning bolt than one of the darts Trask threw to 11 different receivers on a day when he tied a career-high with 30 completions for a career-high 416 yard and the aforementioned six touchdown passes. But there he was Monday politely answering questions when you know he would rather be in the film room absorbing every possible nuance about the South Carolina Gamecocks (0-1), who he will be facing Saturday (12 noon, ESPN) in the Gators’ home opener in The Swamp. The answers weren’t robotic but they didn’t exude passion and excitement either. Maybe the most exciting thing he said was when someone asked if it’s possible for an opposing defense to take Pitts out of a game. “I’ve yet to see it,” Trask answered. “If they do that means they’re going to be putting a lot of guys over him and just open up a lot of people all across the field.” Pitts is the best tight end in all of college football, but Kyle Trask knows it’s a numbers game and the more people assigned to Pitts the fewer people there will be to defend his many other fast, capable receivers. Maybe we didn’t hear excitement in Trask’s voice just then, but his eyes were a dead giveaway. Thinking about his receivers in one-on-one opportunities all over the field is exciting. Talking to the media? He’d rather be watching film. THOUGHTS ABOUT TACKLE FOOTBALL IN THE SEC #2 ALABAMA (1-0): Further evidence that there is no looming quarterback controversy, at least in Nick Saban’s mind. Mac Jones (18-24 passing, 249 yards, 2 TDPs vs. Missouri) is the top gun. Saban said Monday, “I think he only made maybe one bad read in the game, or one misread, I would say and the rest of the time he was pretty much on point.” Saturday’s game: vs. #13 Texas A&M (1-0) ARKANSAS (0-1): Arkansas HBC Sam Pittman says quarterback Feleipe Franks had to spend too much time making sure teammates were all on the same page in the Razorbacks’ loss to Georgia. “The quarterback was getting everybody lined up instead of looking at the defense seeing how we can attack that,” Pittman said. “So that has to be a big thing for us this week. We have to calm the quarterback down so he can make plays. The only way we can do that is if everyone else knows what their assignment is." Saturday’s game: at #16 Mississippi State (1-0) #7 AUBURN (1-0): After giving up 120 rushing yards in the first half of their win over Kentucky, Auburn’s defense adjusted and held the Wildcats to 25 net yards on the ground in the second half. Auburn forced three turnovers (two fumbles and an interception) and despite a completely rebuilt secondary, held UK to 6.3 yards per pass attempt. Saturday’s game: at #4 Georgia (1-0) #4 GEORGIA (1-0): Southern Cal transfer quarterback JT Daniels has been cleared medically and will be available Saturday when the Poodles play host to Auburn. Daniels is coming off an ACL tear and has never been known for his fleet feet. He will be working behind an offensive line that struggled against an Arkansas defense that was undersized and outmanned. Georgia’s line opened holes for a whopping 2.88 yards per carry in the running game, allowed three sacks and had close to 10 breakdowns. Saturday’s game: vs. #7 Auburn (1-0) KENTUCKY (0-1): Auburn transfer quarterback Joey Gatewood needs a waiver from Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey to play this year. Kentucky HBC Mark Stoops thinks Sankey should grant the waiver since the NCAA is going to do a complete overhaul of its transfer rules very soon. On Monday, Stoops said, “In six months, you’re going to have an opportunity to transfer and go anywhere you want, one-time transfer.” Saturday’s game: vs. Ole Miss (0-1) #20 LSU (0-1): The Tigers made an almost uncountable number of mistakes on both sides of the ball in the loss to Mississippi State, but the only finger Coach O was pointing Monday was at himself. “We spent all day yesterday analyzing the film and the truth is we gotta coach better, gotta start with me, gotta prepare our team better, gotta coach our coaches better,” Coach O said. “We gotta execute better, and we gotta make better in-game adjustments during the game, during halftime. Could have had a better plan on both sides of the football first game ... And I take all responsibility, but we're going to get it fixed and get it going.” Saturday’s game: at Vanderbilt (0-1) #16 MISSISSIPPI STATE (1-0): The Pirate has questions about cardboard cutouts of fans in the stands. “I don’t know, if it’s cool and people enjoy it, great, but that is a little surreal, the fake people in the stands,” Mike Leach said Monday. “And I don’t even know how they decide the seating. Do the fake people have a lottery of where they sit? Because I know this, some of those fake people have way better seats than the other ones. I want to be one of those fake people on the 50-yard line, about row 12. But you know, some of them are still up in the rafters, you know? So I mean in this world, in this day and age, in these funny times, even a fake person can get screwed, you know?” Saturday’s game: vs. Arkansas (0-1) MISSOURI (0-1): This is how bad it was for Missouri’s secondary, which had to try containing Alabama QB Mac Jones and stud wideouts Devonta Smith and Jaylen Waddle. DB coach Charlie Harbison missed the game because of Covid-19, corner Chris Shearin opted out for the season before the game and the other starting corner, Jarvis Ware, went down with a knee injury on the second defensive series. Saturday’s game: at Tennessee (1-0) OLE MISS (0-1): Lane Kiffin said he intended to use both Matt Corral and John Rhys Plumlee at quarterback against Florida but circumstances dictated that Corral (395 passing yards, three touchdowns) got most of the snaps. “With Matt playing so well and we were behind, we kind of went solely with Matt,” Kiffin said. “I think had Matt not been playing so well and us being behind, you would have seen more of John." Saturday’s game: at Kentucky (0-1) SOUTH CAROLINA (0-1): Special teams play not only cost South Carolina a chance to knock off Tennessee in the season opener but had a big part in the Gamecocks losing the field position battle. A Tennessee punt bounced off the leg of South Carolina freshman Cam Smith with 1:28 to go in the game. The Vols recovered and ran out the clock. Freshman punter Kai Kroeger averaged a very poor 35.17 yards on six punts. Saturday’s game: at #3 FLORIDA (1-0) #21 TENNESSEE (1-0): At his Monday press conference, HBC Jeremy Pruitt pointed out how the Vols have to improve on third down, particularly on short yardage (third-and-2, third-and-3) situations. The Vols were a dismal 1-11 on third down in their win over South Carolina. Saturday’s game: vs. Missouri (0-1) #13 TEXAS A&M (1-0): Although the Aggies were going up against a true freshman quarterback who didn’t have a spring training and a Vanderbilt offensive line with only one returning starter they only got to the Vandy QB twice. If they can’t do better than that Saturday in Tuscaloosa, they’ll give up 40 or more points to Alabama. Saturday’s game: at #2 Alabama (1-0) VANDERBILT (0-1): True freshman QB Ken Seals, who averaged 5.2 yards per pass attempt and threw two interceptions in Vandy’s loss to Texas A&M said, “This isn’t the same Vanderbilt that people have played in the past.” Oh really? Vanderbilt lit it up for 12 (count ‘em) points against the Aggies. Doesn’t seem like much has changed. Saturday’s game: vs. #20 LSU (0-1) COLLEGE FOOTBALL STUFF Clay Travis of Outkick the Coverage isn’t all that impressed with Georgia. Travis writes: “You know Kirby Smart’s defense is going to be elite and there’s always talent, but Georgia hosts Auburn, Tennessee, and then goes to Alabama before going to Kentucky and playing Florida, all before they even get to the tail end of their schedule … Based on what I saw yesterday I just don’t see the Bulldogs coming out of that stretch without at least two losses.” Phil Ervin of the Saturday Tradition website asks the question can the Big Ten repair its image? Ervin writes “But for all their missteps, this ship isn’t sinking.” The Big Ten isn’t going to sink, but it has been sent to the corner where it will suck its thumb and wear a dunce cap for years to come. When the Big Ten made the decision to opt out for the fall, it was veiled as an “athlete safety” issue. Athlete safety had nothing to do with it, otherwise they wouldn’t be playing nine straight weeks with no open dates and no makeup dates. This was a power grab all the way and the Big Ten totally overestimated its power. Warren and the Big Ten presidents are hoping that by playing everyone will forget how they screwed things up. All the wishful thinking in the world won’t make people forget, not this year, not anytime soon. ESPN reports that as of Monday Notre Dame had 25 players in isolation due to Covid-19 and another 14 in quarantine. Last week’s game with Wake Forest Gump was postponed. The Irish are off this week then will host Florida State on October 10. Mike Norvell, who missed the Miami game due to a positive Covid-19 test, will be coaching Saturday when Florida State plays D1AA Jacksonville State. This might be the one game the Seminoles have a chance to win this season. Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated lists seven quarterbacks on his all-too-early Heisman Trophy watch list. None of them are named Kyle Trask. Forde does have Florida tight end Kyle Pitts on the overall list of 13 players. PITHY ON A TUESDAY: The Pirate Speaks. At his Monday press conference Mike Leach questioned Gus Malzahn wearing a dress shirt and a tie on the Auburn sideline against Kentucky. Leach said, “What was the deal with Malzahn dressing like Pat Dye? I saw it on TV but never got to hear the punchline.” … Shortly after Florida hired Dan Mullen, the Tennessee Vols were also in the market for a head ball coach. Then athletic director John Currie met with Washington State coach Mike Leach. An agreement was reached but former UT head coach Fattus Maximus Fulmer got wind of the agreement and led a palace coup that got Currie fired. Next thing we know, Fulmer was the AD and Jeremy Pruitt got hired as the new head coach. Pruitt has a 7-game winning streak going and a 14-12 career record at UT. Not a single one of those wins is what could be deemed a signature victory. Leach, meanwhile, got a signature victory over LSU in his debut game as Mississippi State’s HBC. I have my doubts that Jeremy Pruitt will have a long and distinguished career at UT. I don’t doubt for a second the pirate flag will be flying a long time over Starkvegas … The halftime score of both the Georgia-Arkansas and Vanderbilt-Texas A&M games was 7-5. The odds of two SEC games with a 7-5 halftime score on the same day is one in 823,423,634,235,590,234,249. So you say there’s a chance!

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning: What comes to mind immediately about Florida’s 51-35 win over Ole Miss in the season opener in Oxford this past Saturday are the famous words of the late, great (before he and his mind had a parting of the ways) Al Davis who coined the phrase “Just win, Baby!” Sometimes you have games like the one the Gators played Saturday when 90% of what you run offensively seems unstoppable and 90% of what you run defensively can’t stop anyone. Because one side of the ball plays so poorly, the fact it was a win is obscured. Against Ole Miss Dan Mullen’s high tech offense put up 51 points, 642 yards (8.68 per play), 196 rushing yards (6.76 per carry) and 446 passing yards (9.9 per attempt). You win a lot of games when your offense can do that even on a day when the defense is taking an extended coffee break, which is what it seemed they were doing for rather lengthy portions of the game. We can talk offense all day long in glowing terms because Kyle Trask (30-42, 416 yards, 6 TDPs) looked like the best quarterback in the nation the way he dissected the Ole Miss defense. He and Kyle Pitts (8-170, 4 TD catches) were on radar lock but Trask found 10 other receivers, a shot across the bow of any defensive coordinator convinced that the key to beating Florida is to take Pitts out of the equation. The Gators only ran the ball 29 times – why do ground and pound when your opponent hasn’t a clue how to stop your passing game – but it was effective enough that Florida leads the SEC in rushing. Defense? It was a bad day at the office, okay? They didn’t tackle well, blew some coverage assignments and made as many mental errors as physical. Getting better is a requirement. The talent is there. The coaches on that side of the ball have a strong track record. Sometimes you have games like that. On their way to an unbeaten season and a national championship in 2019, the LSU Tigers gave up 28 points on two occasions (to Oklahoma and Florida), 37 points to Ole Miss, 38 twice (to Texas and to a Vanderbilt team the Gators beat 56-0) and 41 to Alabama. Forget those point totals. LSU had a fine defense and the bottom line is they won. So here is your takeaway from the Ole Miss game. It was great offensively, not so great defensively and yet Florida scored more points, walked out of Oxford with a win in the season opener and advanced to the number three ranking in both the Associated Press and Coaches polls. Al Davis would have looked at the outcome, smiled and quipped, “Just win, Baby!” ASSOCIATED PRESS TOP 25 POLL (1) Clemson 2-0; (2) Alabama 1-0; (3) FLORIDA 1-0; (4) Georgia 1-0; (5) Notre Dame; (6) Ohio State 0-0; (7) Auburn 1-0; (8) Miami 3-0; (9) Texas; (10) Penn State 0-0; (11) UCF 2-0; (12) North Carolina 1-0; (13) Texas A&M 1-0; (14) Oregon 0-0; (15) Cincinnati 2-0; (16) Mississippi State 1-0; (17) Oklahoma State 2-0; (18) Oklahoma 1-1; (19) Wisconsin 0-0; (20) LSU 0-1; (21) Tennessee 1-0; (22) BYU 2-0; (23) Michigan 0-0; (24) Pittsburgh 3-0; (25) Memphis 1-0 COACHES TOP 25 POLL (1) Clemson 2-0; (2) Alabama 1-0; (3) FLORIDA 1-0; (4) Georgia 1-0; (5) Notre Dame 2-0; (6) Ohio State 0-0; (7) Auburn 1-0; (8) Miami 3-0; (9) Texas 2-0; (10) Penn State 0-0; (11) North Carolina 1-0; (12) UCF 2-0; (13) Texas A&M 1-0; (14) Mississippi State 1-0; (15) Cincinnati 2-0; (15) Oklahoma 1-1; (17) LSU 0-1; (18) Wisconsin 0-0; (19) Oklahoma State 2-0; (20) Tennessee 1-0; (21) Michigan 0-0; (22) BYU 2-0; (23) Virginia Tech 1-0; (24) Memphis 1-0; (25) Pittsburgh 3-0 AROUND THE SEC #2 ALABAMA (1-0): Bryce Young might be the future of Alabama football but the present is Mac Jones. With weapons like Najee Harris, Devonta Smith and Jaylen Waddle at his disposal, Jones and the Alabama offense aren’t going to miss a beat. The Aggies are in trouble Saturday. Next week: vs. #13 Texas A&M (1-0) ARKANSAS (1-0): Hog fans should savor that first half against Georgia because that might be as good as it gets for a long time. Arkansas is trying to play in the SEC with Conference USA talent across the board. Next week: at #14 Mississippi State (1-0) #7 AUBURN (1-0): Once the Tigers got past the opening drive against Kentucky they did a good job of stuffing the run. If they can keep Georgia’s running game in check next Saturday they will have an exceptional shot at winning. Offensively, Auburn has the upper hand because Bo Nix is a difference-maker at QB and Georgia will probably have to go with Stetson Bennett again. Next week: at #4 Georgia (1-0) #4 GEORGIA (1-0): They can spin it any way they want, but if Arkansas had any talent at all, the Hogs would have bushwhacked Georgia in Fayette Nam Saturday afternoon. There are quarterback issues, penalty issues and offensive line issues. As for the defense, they looked good largely because Arkansas is that bad. Next week: vs. #7 Auburn (1-0) KENTUCKY (0-1): The good news for Kentucky is the Ole Miss defense is coming to town. The bad news for Kentucky is the Ole Miss offense is coming to town. Kentucky better be able to win a shootout because that’s what it will take to beat Lane Kiffin. Next week: vs. Ole Miss (0-1) #17 LSU (0-1): It didn’t take long for us to see what happens when you lose 16 players (14 drafted) to the NFL plus have some key guys opt out. The question in Baton Rouge is which is worse, the O-line or the defense? The Tigers better come up with some answers in a hurry. Next week: at Vanderbilt (0-1) #14 MISSISSIPPI STATE (1-0): Hoist the pirate flag over Starkvegas. Mike Leach is the cure for the predictable offense that Joe Moorhead ran the last two years. What the Bulldogs did in Baton Rouge should serve notice to the rest of the SEC that prepping for the Air Raid in a single week is akin to prepping for a funky triple option. K.J. Costello will lead the nation in passing. Count on it. Next week: Arkansas (0-1) MISSOURI (0-1): Mizzou fans will think that because the Tigers scored 16 second half points on the Alabama backups there is reason for hope. Four of the next six games are against ranked opponents and the only winnable game among them is October 17 against Vandy. So much for hope. Next week: at #20 Tennessee (1-0) OLE MISS (0-1): Lane Kiffin is one of the better offensive minds in all of college football. He’s going to figure out ways to put points on the scoreboard. Can defensive coordinator DJ Durkin figure out a way to stop opponents from putting points on the scoreboard? Doubtful. Ole Miss is going to have to win shootouts. Next week: at Kentucky (0-1) SOUTH CAROLINA (0-1): Two takeaways from the Gamecocks’ loss to Tennessee. (1) They gave the game away on a night when there was no excuse for losing; and (2) if the Gamecocks go with Collin Hill at QB all season they’re in deepest and darkest. Three ACL tears have taken away his mobility and he is an immobile target in the pocket for speed rushers off the edge. Next week: at #3 FLORIDA (1-0) #20 TENNESSEE (1-0): The Vols are trying to spin what happened Saturday as “finding a way to win.” They didn’t find a way. They got a gift. Yes, the Vols have won seven straight games, but they aren’t that good. The O-line is not dominant and Jarrett Guarantano is still the QB. Next week: vs. Missouri (0-1) #13 TEXAS A&M (1-0): Were the Aggies so overconfident that they were looking ahead to Alabama or are they just not that good? It’s probably a little bit of both. To struggle at home against a very bad Vandy team does not bode well for the future. Next week: at #2 Alabama (1-0) VANDERBILT (0-1): Don’t let the closeness of the loss to the Aggies fool you. Vanderbilt is bad. Really bad. The only thing that can save the Commodores from an oh-fer is that game with Mizzou in week four. Next week: vs. #17 LSU (0-1) FLORIDA STATE IS WORSE THAN THEY LOOK: Here we were thinking FSU was at rock bottom when they lost to Georgia Tech. The loss to Miami was bad but it’s a long way from rock bottom because there are still games with Notre Dame, North Carolina, Pitt and Climpson. It’s going to take a minimum of two years just to get back to respectable and by then the athletic department might be on the verge of bankruptcy. The Seminoles should be able to avoid an oh-fer this week with D1AA Jax State coming to town. IN TWO WEEKS WE FIND OUT HOW GOOD MIAMI IS: The Himmicanes looked like they were having tons of fun in wiping out their country cousins from Tallahassee Saturday night. They have an open date this week before their date with reality up at Climpson on October 10. It’s one thing to beat up on the likes of Lulvil and FSU. It’s something altogether different when you have to face Climpson on the road. If they can at least make it white knuckles at Climpson, they’re for real. If not, they be 7-3 or at best 8-2. A BAD YEAR FOR THE BIG 12 JUST GOT WORSE: It’s bad enough that the league went 0-3 against the Sun Belt in the first week of the season but now the league’s bell cows Oklahoma and Texas had embarrassing efforts. Oklahoma blew a big lead to lose to K-State and Texas had to come from behind to beat a bad Texas Tech team in overtime. The common denominator for both Oklahoma and Texas is that neither one of them play a lick of defense. Now Big 12 apologists might point fingers at Florida and LSU but one thing we can count on is that defense will get better in the SEC. When it comes to defense, the Big 12 is hopeless which has everything to do with why the league hasn’t produced a national champion since Texas in 2005. WEREN’T YOU HEISMAN HOPEFULS?: Let’s see, there was Jamie Newman who opted out and so did J’mar Chase. Lindy’s had Myles Brennan as its #6 Heisman hopeful. Uh-huh. Everyone was drooling over Oklahoma freshman Spencer Rattler but then there was that second half against K-State Saturday. Sam Ehlinger of Texas threw for five TDs and led Texas on a great comeback, but it was the Texas Tech defense, which is worse than the Oklahoma defense. Chuba Hubbard of Okie State gained 101 yards on 22 carries and has 194 (4.0 per carry) in two games against bad defenses. PITHY REMARKS AND OTHER STUFF FOR A MONDAY: Former Gator Brady Singer is going to be a dominant starter in the big leagues as long as his arm stays healthy. He gave up three hits through seven innings Sunday to pick up his fourth win in the last five games, finishing his rookie year 4-5 with a 4.04 ERA … The Big Ten’s rookie commissioner Kevin Warren may have permanently harmed the Big Ten brand while ensuring that when (not if) the Power Five conferences break away, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey will be the grand poobah. Here is what Matt Hayes wrote in Saturday Down South about Warren’s arrogance: “A month after that, the Big Ten canceled the 2020 fall football season and declared it would try to play in the spring. Warren, according to multiple sources, believed the rest of the Power 5 conferences would follow suit – going so far as to leak information to media outlets that the college football season would be postponed within days, trying to turn public opinion toward that reality.” … The Atlanta Falcons blew a 26-10 lead in the fourth quarter. I have to wonder how much longer Dan Quinn will be the head coach. I think Dan is as good a defensive coordinator as you will find but another example of the Peter Principle as a head coach … If Major League Baseball can expand its playoffs to 16 teams on short notice then why can’t college football expand its playoff to six teams or eight teams? … It has been reported that an incredible percentage of professional athletes are dead broke within five years of playing their final game. Tua Tagovailoa is ensuring there will be plenty of money in the future because he’s already banked his $19.6 million signing bonus and banks all his contract money (he’s got $30-plus million in guaranteed salary coming his way). He lives off his endorsement money and says he intends to do that as long as he’s in the No Fun League.

Are you in a state of widespread panic regarding Florida’s defense – or lack of – in the Gators’ 51-35 win over Ole Miss? Well, calm down. Take a step back off the ledge and repeat several times, “Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right.” It will be all right. Count on it. Sure, for agonizing stretches Saturday the Florida defense looked like it was following social distancing protocol by remaining six feet away from whichever Ole Miss receiver had the football. Former Florida commitment Matt Corral, who decommitted from UF when Dan Mullen became the head coach, threw for 395 yards and three touchdowns on a secondary that most experts ranked among the top five in the country in their preseason analysis. It looked bad. Really, really bad. But it will be all right. Count on it. Listen to what Dan Mullen said you might have a better understanding of why there were blown coverages and too many missed tackles to count. “We've tackled twice since the Orange Bowl,” Mullen said. “Normally you've got a lot of spring ball, you're getting physicality, you're getting tackling. We only did two in our scrimmages and they were spread out over this long period of time.” Nayy coach Ken Niumatololo essentially said the same thing after the Midshipmen were steamrolled by BYU, 55-3, in their season opener. With so few practices and practice time limited to 20 hours a week per an NCAA mandate added to the Covid-19 concerns, Navy didn’t do nearly enough physical work, particularly on defense. It took the Middies half of game two against Tulane (Navy came from behind to win 27-24) before they finally started hitting and tackling the way Niumatololo expects. Florida didn’t get in the physical work and that had plenty to do with the missed tackles. There were several key players missing and that helped account for missed assignments, missed tackles and blown coverages. Starting safety Brad Stewart missed the game as did linebacker Jeremiah Moon. Stewart is a ball hawk who doesn’t miss tackles. Moon is a do-it-all type who can make tackles in the running game, rush the passer and is quick enough to cover a tight end. Early in the first quarter starting safety Shawn Davis was ejected on a targeting call. His replacement was a freshman who played quite well, but there were times when he was tentative. The pass rush was consistently good in terms of creating pressure. The Gators finished the game with four sacks but there were problems when Corral broke containment because too often there was no one home to clean things up. As a result, Corral finished the game with 50 net yards of rushing plus he was able to find receivers on the run. Mullen was not pleased to put it mildly, but there are plausible reasons for the breakdowns. “We haven't hit a quarterback since the Orange Bowl last year and you look at all the quarterback scrambles that went on today,” Mullen noted. “In practice you're not allowed to touch the quarterback.” Pass rushers in practice ease up before they get to the QB but that doesn’t explain the lack of containment once Corral broke free of the pocket. That is something that will have to change and change in a hurry. Tackling is critical. Ventrell Miller was all over the field, finishing the game with 15 tackles including a sack. Brenton Cox Jr. had eight tackles, a sack and a batted down pass that freshman Gervon Dexter intercepted. By the second half, Ole Miss was doubling Cox on every play. So, someone else is going to have to prove capable of creating havoc off the edge or opponents will know going into a game that if you take Cox out of the picture the Gators get no pressure. The tackling has to improve. The play in the secondary has to improve. There were far too many missed assignments. Instead of attacking too many players were reactive and Ole Miss has too many fast, explosive players for reactive defenses to work well. The important thing Saturday was Florida got the win, but it was a win that left so much to be desired on the defensive side of the ball. So much needs to improve this week. Defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and his staff have their work cut out. “I know Todd and the staff are going to do a great job and I know our leadership on defense probably not pleased - not the coaching, the player leadership on defense not pleased - with our total performance on the day,” Mullen said. “I think those guys need to step up and get that improved from week one to week two.” What Mullen explained does make plenty of sense. No matter how exotic the offenses get, no matter how big and fast the players are, the game still comes down to blocking and tackling. Teams that can block and tackle win far more often than they lose. This is a Florida team that has the talent on the defensive side of the football to be elite. They didn’t show it Saturday against Ole Miss but this is a case where one game shouldn’t tell the story for whole season. Is the Ole Miss production on offense a shot across the Florida defensive unit’s bow? Absolutely. This is a wakeup call that cannot be ignored but there are factors that tell you this is more likely an aberration than the norm. Missing players. Not enough tacking in practice. First game of the season and it was on the road. There are plenty of areas that need to be cleaned up and plenty enough film to point out the shortcomings. It is often said that the greatest improvement for a team during a football season is the time between the first game and the second. South Carolina comes to Gainesville this week and the Gamecocks don’t have nearly the firepower the Gators saw in Oxford nor do they have a quarterback anywhere close to the capability of Matt Corral. Still, they have some players with ability and they will come in with an emotional edge because of Will Muschamp. Don’t think for a second that the Gamecocks won’t want to do a number on the Gators. Muschamp won’t mention it to his troops that Florida is the school that fired him in 2014, but his players know. Say what you will about Muschamp, but players love him and are intensely loyal. They will want more than anything to hand Muschamp a Gator hide next Saturday. So color South Carolina dangerous. And color Florida a team that needs to come out next Saturday in Gainesville playing defense like a team with its hair on fire. Figure the offense will more than do its part. The talent is there on defense. Next week the talent needs to show up and play.

Let’s start with some gratitude. From that day in March when the SEC called it quits until the moment Evan McPherson’s talented toe lifted the football through the end zone at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford Saturday, just a tick or two past noon, college football fans had been living in purgatory. This is never good, especially when your hopes and dreams are living just right outside The Gates of Purgatory. Finally, those gates were reopened for Florida Gator fans to relish the 2020 K2K Connection. In these Worst of Times, Gator fans are quite possibly about to bear witness to The Best of Times as we've seen by the latest polls as Florida vaulted to No. 3. And then there's K2K. Trust me, I’ve seen just about all the best passing-receiving tandems in modern football history, and the Trask-to-Pitts combination has the potential to become No. 1. This covers everything from the All-American combos of Spurrier-to-Casey, Reaves-to-Alvarez, Wuerffel-to-Anthony & Hillard, Wuerffel-to-Doering and Tebow-to-whomever. And I’ve loved covering them all. I can hear all you naysayers now: “Really, Buddy, you idiot! They’ve played one game in 2020!” K2K! It was a 6-touchdown day for Kyle Trash, 4 of them to Kyle Pitts. Don’t get me into numbers. It’s the eye test for me over six decade of covering Gator football I’m leaning on. And yes, my eyesight remains 20/20 after all the years. So that’s my resume’. I saw enough last year and now I’ve seen K2K at another level -- where they are and where they are going -- with flashes of unlimited potential. On Saturday I saw the four touchdown passes, huge chunk yardage, etc. More importantly, I also saw the adjustments and adaptability that both Trask and Pitts applied in-game and the way K2K flourishes in the Dan Mullen offense. Best ever? Give us a few more games to see how people like Will Muschamp, Kirby Smart and the defensive illuminati of the SEC devise their schemes after getting more Trask-Pitts film. Let’s press pause right here and go back to the premise of Gratitude first. Right now we just need to be thankful that we’ve got football again. After midnight Saturday, that “Whoosh” you heard was a big sigh of relief from SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey when the seventh and final league game between Texas A&M and Vanderbilt had ended, the Aggies finally pulling it out 17-12. (And BTW, that guy who some picked as the best preseason QB, Kellen Mond, threw for 189 yards and one touchdown.) Speaking of Gratitude: This one’s for Greg Sankey, who had the cojones to zig whenever everybody else zagged – without whom we’d be watching major league baseball and the NBA over the weekend. Sankey’s boldness begat SEC football 2020, which begat Dan Mullen, which begat K2K. Finally the non-believers are starting to believe in the Gospel of Trask which we have been preaching for a year -- along with my visionary Bubba Ennis after he brought me around to it -- and finally they are also starting to believe in this hybrid tight end, who had eight catches for 170 yards and 4 touchdowns, helping Florida down Ole Miss 51-35. (UF notes: “Only two other players in UF school history have racked up 4 touchdowns in a game: Ike Hilliard against Tennessee in 1995 and Jack Jackson vs. New Mexico State in 1994. It was the first time a tight end had racked up 4 touchdowns in an SEC game since 1999, according to ESPN.”) I’m just going to go ahead and take credit for the “Kyle-to-Kyle Connection” tag which I conjured up last year. His dad and I, Michael Trask, have been using it for a while and over the weekend Mr. Trask had the idea of shortening it to K2K, which I heartily endorse. Fewer letters to type! It will be my go-to reference this season. And now a word about Dan Mullen: Don’t think for a moment he’s not already thinking about how SEC defenses are going to attack K2K. Trask’s six-touchdown day is circled in red. But you know what? Mullen already has a little something for them, including Toney and Grimes and Copeland and Henderson and Shorter and Whittemore and Davis – and stuff you have not yet even seen. The pieces are set on the checkerboard. Mullen is ready for chess. And, oh yeah, just in case you’re not buying in today, how would you like to be Ed Orgeron or Lincoln Riley or one of those guys who has to explain how they lost? Poised there as the No. 3 team in the nation, all Mullen has to do is explain how his team is going to get better and beat South Carolina in The Swamp Saturday to go 2-0. I couldn't imagine that without the courage of Sankey this would never have happened. Enjoy living with Gratitude. And save your grousing about Todd Grantham’s defense for another day.

It’s Sunday morning. Gators fans slept well knowing that Florida is 1-0, and Florida State is 0-2 after an embarrassing performance against Miami last night. Heart rates have dropped, normalcy has resumed and the noise surrounding Florida’s lackadaisical defensive performance against Ole Miss has quieted -- as it should. Despite beating the Rebels with a 16-point margin, the Gators were only 29 yards better than Ole Miss. After generating 642 yards of total offense, the Gators gave up 613 yards to Lane Kiffin’s Rebel offense, making for a very Big 12-esque showing in week one of the SEC. After the offense-heavy battle, Dan Mullen and Lane Kiffin were quick to share a laugh at midfield. “Lane said he thought… he hadn’t been in the SEC a couple years… he said he thought when he left it was a big defensive league,” Mullen revealed. And though the winds of the SEC might be shifting some, Florida fans should be assured that Todd Grantham and the Gators aren’t dressing a Big 12 defense. Two hundred and seventy one days had surpassed since Florida last took the field against a team not named the Gators. And unfortunately, there aren’t many lined up outside of Florida’s practice facility each day wanting to be a tackling dummy. And naturally, Gator-on-Gator crime is kept to a minimum. “We’ve tackled twice since the Orange Bowl,” Dan Mullen said during Saturday’s postgame press conference. “Normally you’ve got a lot of spring ball, you’re getting physical, you’re getting tackling… We only did two in our scrimmages.” Some might argue that tackling is like riding a bicycle. One does not simply “forget” how to tackle. But there’s a lot more that goes into than that. Getting an earhole across the ball is the easy part. But taking good angles in pursuit, watching the hips of a ball carrier and containing an agile quarterback are areas of the game in which rust is sure to accumulate. Matt Corral, though not the quarterback on Ole Miss’ roster that one would expect to be elusive in the pocket, rushed for 50 yards on 13 carries -- including the four times he moved the sticks with his legs on third down. “We haven’t hit a quarterback since the Orange Bowl last year,” Mullen explained. “You look at all the quarterback scrambles that went on today… In practice you’re not allowed to touch the quarterback. The lack of game-speed and live-ball reps in practice likely attributed to the sluggishness on Saturday. However, the moving puzzle pieces and new faces likely played a part, as well. As pointed out by GatorBait’s Kassidy Hill, seven of Florida’s defenders were either playing in new positions, were playing for the first time since 2018 or earned their first start on Saturday. Florida especially seemed to struggle at safety as it was announced that Brad Stewart wouldn’t be available for action against the Rebels, followed by Shawn Davis Jr’s early ejection. Rashaad Torrence was called upon to fill the void at safety, a daunting task for anyone against Lane Kiffin’s offense, but especially a freshman seeing the field for the first time. All considered, it’s no surprise that Kiffin and Corral immediately started to pick on Torrence as the weakest link of the Gators secondary. The Rebels’ first touchdown of the day came on a 46-yard lob pass from Corral to Dontario Drummond. A leftward crank of Corral’s neck successfully looked off Torrence. All the while, Drummond had worked his way behind Kaiir Elam (only his second start) and Donovan Stiner. Stiner, despite his nine total tackles, seemed to struggle through the course of the game. On deeper routes, the senior veteran allowed a handful of receptions that, at the very least, is worth questioning. However, it is possible that he was forced to overcompensate for the inexperience of Torrence at free safety, and would cheat over to help the freshman. Most of the defense’s struggles stemmed from the secondary, which, again, was pretty depleted considering the absences of Steward and Davis Jr. Florida’s run game attack has been victim to much less criticism, when compared to its pass game counterpart. If you take away Corral’s 50 yards on the ground, the Gators held the Rebels to just 120 rushing yards. Ole Miss bellcow Jerrion Ealy proved to be a pretty quality back. Nonetheless, the Gators were able to hold him to just 4.9 yards per carry. Florida linebacker Ventrell Miller started his campaign as the “heart of Florida’s defense” on Saturday. And he lived up to the offseason hype. After losing 15 pounds in the offseason, Miller appears much lighter on his feet. And, in return, much more successful in sideline to sideline tackling. The redshirt sophomore led the defensive stat sheet with 15 total tackles on Saturday, 13 of which were solo. “Ventrell… that’s what we expect out of him,” Mullen said postgame. “He’s one of the leaders of our defense, if not the leader of the defense out there… we need that steady performance from him week-in and week-out because he’s the guy that everybody looks to.” Meanwhile, Brenton Cox Jr. finally got his orange and blue debut, and it didn’t disappoint. The Georgia transfer quietly tallied eight total tackles on the day, 2.5 of which were for losses. Florida’s defensive lapses were just as plentiful as the changing personnel on that side of the football. The two go hand in hand -- especially in week one. And though 613 yards is a lot of offense to give up, given all the circumstances, it shouldn’t warrant knee-jerk reactions calling for the head of Todd Grantham. “You try to simulate the game in practice, but you can’t,” Mullen admits. “I think we took some things for granted defensively.” Sunday morning brings a new day, a new outlook and a new game week. It also brings 60 minutes of live football that the Gators hadn’t played prior to Saturday. Just as Gators fans slept well knowing they hung 51 points on Ole Miss, come Sunday night, they should sleep well knowing that they should snooze the panic button on the Florida defense.

OXFORD, MS.—As Dan Mullen and Lane Kiffin fist-bumped at mid-field (because, COVID), the first year Ole Miss coach turned and pointed towards the score board. It showed the final score as the Florida Gators (1-0) defeated the Ole Miss Rebels (0-1) by two touchdowns, 51-35. It also held the stats for the game, showing both teams with over 600 yards of offense. “Lane said he thought, he hadn’t been in the SEC a couple years, he said he thought when he left it was a big defensive league,” laughed Mullen after the win. "Both teams racked up 600 yards, [Lane’s] like, ‘what’s happened since I’ve been gone?’” What happened was Florida returned nearly all of their offensive playmakers, save the four wide receivers who went on to the NFL. But in their place they kept Tre Grimes (3 receptions, 64 yards, 1 touchdown), Kadarius Toney (five receptions, 59 yards, 1 touchdown) and Kyle Pitts (eight receptions, 170 yards, four touchdowns). It was a new day in the SEC. It was even slightly reminiscent of the Big-12 as the two teams put up not only the 1200 plus yards of offense, but 446 (UF) and 443 (OM) in the air respectively alone. There was smoke rising from the field as the Gators and the Rebs raced up and down the field from opening kick. Ole Miss took the ball first and went 52 yards downfield before turning the ball over on downs. But during the drive, Matt Corral (22/31—395—3—1) went looking deep for Dontario Drummond. Kaiir Elam broke up the pass only to see Shawn Davis fly in and lay a hit on Drummond. The safety was flagged for targeting and ejected from the game. Not having Davis—along with Brad Stewart who was back home in Gainesville—proved to be a difference maker as the game would continue. The Gators first offensive of the 2020 season was a handoff to Dameon Pierce. The junior running back took it nine yards with a head full of steam. A chain moving throws to Jacob Copeland and the Gators were near midfield. On 3rd and 8 from their own 48, Trask was flushed from the pocket. He scrambled out, double clutched to buy time and waited for Kyle Pitts to push off his defender as he came across the middle of the field. The junior tight end stuck his hand out for the pass and Trask delivered. The 18-yard gain really got the wheels moving on a machine that was unstoppable on the cloud-covered day in Oxford. After getting to the 1-yard line, Trask dropped back off a play action and found Pitts who had wheeled into the endzone. Florida went up 7-0 and they would never trail. Ole Miss would answer however on the next drive, thanks largely to two plays over the middle; one for 28-yards that beat linebacker Amari Burney and the touchdown for 46-yards that scooted Drummond above Elam. With Davis and Stewart out, the center field became susceptible and Corral—the former Florida commit—found advantageous matchup’s there all day. On one long pass in particular, corner Marco Wilson turned and threw his hands in shock tot he rest of his teammates, wondering how no one managed to pick up the receiver running free down the middle of the field. “I think a lot of that, we've got to get a lot better at, to be honest with you,” said Mullen. “We haven't hit a quarterback since the Orange Bowl last year. And you look at all the quarterback scrambles that went on today. In practice you're not allowed to touch the quarterback. The tackling, we've only tackled twice since the Orange Bowl last year so that's going to get better. “And obviously give them credit…Lane does a really good job offensively of creating matchups out there on the field, so you give them credit for that, as well. We've just got to get cleaner and better for next week.” There were seven defenders who were either playing in new positions for the first time, were playing for the first time since 2018 or were starting for the first time. Given the personnel, the strange offseason and the fact that Lane Kiffin will always put up yards*, it’s way too early to hit the panic mode on the defense. *The last time a Florida defense gave up 600+ yards was to Alabama in 2014. The offensive coordinator for the Crimson Tide that day? Lane Kiffin. In the meantime, the Gators have an offense that looks capable of hanging with anyone and everyone. Following the touchdown to tie the score at 7-all, the Gators got the ball at their own 18-yard line (in a series of events that gave spectators whiplash and included trading interceptions and Gervon Dexter picking off Matt Corral). A handoff to Kadarius Toney saw the senior juke and cut and start his mesmerizing dance against defenders. Once he’d slipped through the scrum while staying on his feet, he turned on his burners to go 50-yards before corner Keidron Smith—who should try out for the Olympic track team—chased him down. The next play, Trask patiently stood in the pocket, let senior receiver Tre Grimes push off his receiver at the pylon, and hit him high for the 14-7 score. After punting for the one and only time of the day, Florida got the ball back again mid-way through the second quarter with the score tied at 14. A nine play drive moved 78-yards, thanks to two plays to Toney over the middle and into the redzone. It fittingly was capped with Toney coming across the back of the endzone, where Trask found him on a play call and execution that sung. But halftime was bookended by Kyle Pitts. The tight end hauled in a back shoulder fade that rolled him into the endzone. On the second play of the second half, Trask (aided by a great block by Dameon Pierce) hit Pitts over the middle. The junior TE laid a stiff arm that is illegal in most states and raced 71-yards for the touchdown to make it 35-14. A couple of Evan McPherson’s long kicks that were a walk in the park and one more touchdown to Kyle Pitts on the last offensive drive of the game, and the Gators were able to walk out of this shoot-out with a 51-35 win. Pitts was double covered on that last touchdown. No one cared. “I saw he was technically double covered but felt he had a great position to make a play on the ball. I just threw it up to him and let him do what he does best,” explained Trask. Mullen, when asked if there was any 50/50 situation in which he didn’t trust Kyle Pitts said, “nope.” Mullen’s crew set several records in the process. Kyle Trask threw four touchdowns in the first half, the most by a UF quarterback in a half since Will Grier threw for four, ironically, against Ole Miss in 2015. Trask threw for six touchdowns total, the most by a UF quarterback against an FBS opponent since Chris Leak threw for six against South Carolina in 2004. The school record is seven touchdowns, set by Terry Dean and Doug Johnson. Trask also set a new career record with 416 yards. It's the most since Tim Tebow threw for 482 against Cincinnati in the 2010 Sugar Bowl and the most against a SEC opponent since Rex Grossman threw for 464 yards in 2001 at LSU. Pitts became the third FBS tight end since the start of 1996 with 150-plus receiving yards and four receiving touchdowns in a game. His 170 receiving yards are the highest single-game total by a Gator since Demarcus Robinson’s 216 yards against Kentucky (Sept. 13, 2014). Evan McPherson's 55-yard field goal is tied for 3rd longest in school history. And this was the most yards for the Gators against a SEC opponent in Florida history. While Kiffin stood staring in amazement at the scoreboard, Mullen was hoping his neighbor was doing the same. “I would expect, when I get home, my neighbor Coach Spurrier right around the corner right there, I should have a really nice bottle of wine sitting on my desk if I broke one of his records offensively. That’s at least deserving of a nice bottle of wine.” It’s definitely deserving of some national recognition and maybe even a new team motto. During the second half, one of the United States trending topics on Twitter was “Kyle To Kyle.” “I love our quarterback performance,” said Pitts following the win. “Me and Kyle, it’s just, it’s like a gel. We just work a lot together, and I feel like it shows…me and Kyle are always talking. Good friends, and ‘Kyle to Kyle’, we go around and jokingly say that.” “That’s been said around here for a while,” laughed Trask. “[Pitts] can do a lot of things. He's a matchup nightmare for defenses. He's too big for corners and too fast for linebackers, so he gives defenses a lot of trouble.” And it’s making Dan Mullen look like the best play caller in the game. “One thing that I know is, you’ve got great players you look really smart as a coach sometimes, so. You’ve got great players, you give them the opportunity to go make plays and we can look smart, and, you know, that’s what we did today.” They looked smart, they looked efficient and they looked unstoppable. Even Lane Kiffin couldn’t help but shake his head. It’s a new day in. The SEC and it’s being led by the Florida Gators.

OXFORD, MS—The Florida Gators kick off their 2020 campaign this afternoon against the Ole Miss Rebels. Stick with GatorBait Magazine all day for live updates from Kassidy Hill who is in Oxford, Mississippi. SEC travel restrictions did not change during COVID-19 and the travel roster must still stay at 75 guys. The 75 that the Gators traveled are as follows: Ja'Quavion Fraziars (0) Trey Dean III (0) Brenton Cox (1) Kadarius Toney (1) Anthony Richardson (2) Xzavier Henderson (3) Marco Wilson (3) David Reese (4) Kaiir Elam (5) Emory Jones (5) Nay'Quan Wright (6) Shawn Davis (6) Khris Bogle (8) Tre Grimes (8) Gervon Dexter (9) Keon Zipperer (9) Andrew Chatfield (10) Kyle Trask (11) CJ McWilliams (12) Rick Wells (12) Donovan Stiner (13) Jacob Copeland (15) Tre'Vez Johnson (16) Zach Carter (17) Jacob Finn (18) Evan McPherson (19) Malik. Davis (20) Lorenzo Wingard (21) Rashad Torrence II (22) Jaydon Hill (23) Iverson Clement (24) Avery Helm (24) Chester Kimbrough (25) Jeremy Crenshaw (26) Dameon Pierce (27) Issac Ricks (29) Amari Burney (30) Mordecai McDaniel (32) Princely Umanmielen (33) Lacedrick Brunson (34) Patrick Moorer (37) Nick Oelrich (38) James Houston IV (41) Marco Ortiz (45) Brett DioGuardi (48) Ventrell Miller (51) Stewart Reese (51) T.J. Slaton (56) Jean Delance (56) Brett Heggie (61) Griffin McDowell (62) Riley Simonds (64) Michael Tarquin (70) Chris Howard (71) Stone Forsythe (72) Will Harrod (74) TJ Moore (75) Kingsley Eguakun (65) Michael Tarquin (70) Richard Gouraige (76) Josh Braun (78) Trent Whittemore (80) Justin Shorter (89) Kyle Pitts (84) Kemore Gamble (88) Justin Shorter (89) Marlon Dunlap (91) Jalen Lee (92) Lloyd Summerall III (99) *This list will continue to be updated as players take the field. Florida Gators not available today vs. Ole Miss: Ethan White Ethan Pouncey Jordan Pouncey Kyree Campbell Brad Stewart Jr. Fenley Graham Dante Lang Jeremiah Moon Quincy Lenton Lamar Goods Joshua Tse Lucas Alonso Kevin Johnson -Shawn Davis was ejected on the first defensive drive of the game for targeting. He then tweeted about it from the locker room. -Kyle Trask 4 touchdowns in the first half are the most by a UF quarterback in a half since Will Grier threw for 4 against Ole Miss in 2015. -Kyle Trask 6 touchdowns are the most by a UF quarterback against an FBS opponent cine Chris Leak threw for six against South Carolina in 2004. -Evan McPherson's 55-yard field goal is tied for 3rd longest in school history. -Kyle Trask set a new career record with 416 yards. It's the most since Tim Tebow threw for 482 against Cincinnati in the 2010 Sugar Bowl. -The Gators 642 yards are the most UF has ever had against a SEC opponent.

Here comes 2020 -- and Dan Mullen's high expectations. GatorBait Photo Oh, what the hay. I’ve beaten around this bush more times than a politician looking for a way to tell voters why he was going to raise taxes. So let me just go ahead and say it: Florida is going to win the SEC East in 2020. I need to get this off my plate today. And yes, if that means beating Georgia to get to Atlanta, then put me down for a victory over the Bulldogs. (More on that later.) Since spring, when Paul Finebaum tried to provoke a prediction out of me that Dan Mullen was going to finally beat Kirby Smart and win the East, I’ve been hesitant to come clean for fear of becoming that homer we all love to hate. I take professional pride in still having at least a modicum of journalistic objectivity. Maybe because I was labeled a “sunshine pumper” by some of the Internet keyboard jockeys last year when I came out and said Mullen’s football intelligence, play-calling and acumen for talent development was going to put him in a class by himself. And that they would produce double digit wins in 2019. The Gators might only be doing NASCAR-like drafting behind Georgia right now, I reasoned, but would soon make their move. Is this that year? If I learned nothing from watching and listening to Greg Sankey if not to watch, wait and consume all the info and data before making a big decision. Now I see it clearly. Even in the uncertainty of Covid, I think Florida can check all the boxes — gawd, I hate that term, so scratch it — but the Gators have become a legitimate championship contender. Even with all the unknowns. In fact, the decisiveness of Mullen in making sudden adjustments in this high-risk, fast-moving environment gives him a slight advantage. Of course, the medical lottery cannot be won by scheming. So there’s that. As for numbers and percentages and all that, just mark this down: Nobody except Urban Meyer ever won more games in their first two seasons at Florida, and that covers some national championship, Hall of Fame coaches. So I think Mullen is on track to achieve all of his goals, and in the end establish his resume as comparable to those elite aforementioned. Can Dan Mullen make the breakthrough? He says he sees several pathways. "I expect us to go undefeated this year," Mullen said to Pat McAfee on his podcast. “I’m not guaranteeing it, because I'll be honest with you, I have two national championship rings here at Florida and we didn't go undefeated in either of those two seasons. We still won a national championship." There’s a fine line between swagger, high goals, anticipated success and inflated expectations. Mullen says he’s comfortable with his high expectations and defended his position when I asked about it. “I’ll be honest, I always set high expectations,” said Mullen. “It would be hard for me not to lead them down the wrong road. I always have extremely high expectations of myself, our team and our football program. Our coaches, our players, I have extremely high expectations of everybody. I always have. That’s just me as a coach, I want us to be the absolute best we can be every single day. “I want us to compete for championships on a yearly basis. If that causes our fans to think. … we’re better than we are, then it does. You know what, I’m not going to lower my expectation level to make it easier for our fan base to accept where we are. My expectations are probably going to be higher than our fan base’s.” Masked Man: Will Covid be an adversary? UAA Photo Ok, he said it, so fans have a right to embrace it and hold him to it. First, though, there’s Ole Miss this week, getting on and off the plane with what is hopefully a full squad, fending off these Fighting Lane Kiffins in that dreaded 11 am CST Mississippi time kickoff and getting win No. 22 under his belt. The schedule looks favorable, except for two of the first three being on the road, including a tough stopover at College Station for an engagement with Jimbo Fisher’s Aggies. If they can get to the open date with just one loss, it sets up favorable for a showdown in Jacksonville. Beating Georgia is paramount but it’s possible that the Gators can have a better record than the Bulldogs even if they lose in Jacksonville. I see Georgia losing two, maybe three games. I don’t know which ones yet, but Alabama looks like one and maybe Florida and maybe Auburn. When you’re 48 hours from your opening game and you still haven’t announced your starting quarterback, as Georgia hasn’t, you’re not exactly a poster team for confidence. We still don’t know the impact of Covid-19 or the residual brute force of playing a rugged 10-game SEC schedule, so last-man-standing is going to be a thing. Urban Meyer is on record as saying in his “Best Fridays in Football Podcast” and on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff that the league champion will have two losses. I question that, because I see Alabama maybe losing one game. Mullen is a realist, pointing out to a national media figure this week that championships are won in different ways. At the same time he's remaining optimistic and hopeful for a solid team that appears to have all the accoutrements needed: 1. Topnotch quarterback 2. Solid defense, 3. Experienced coaching staff 4. Rapidly developing wide receivers, 5. Underrated running game. 6. Improved offensive line. This for sure, however. Gator fans should be jubilant and hopeful, because they’ve finally got the right man at the helm again and better days are ahead. That “right man” could be here for a long time, if he so chooses. First off he’s popular – maybe not “one of our own” as was Steve Spurrier, but certainly a cousin. Most media people I know see some of Spurrier and Meyer in Florida’s 27th coach. At age 47 he has already won 90 games and at his current pace could win another 100 or more. With 21 Gator wins to his credit, he could possibly surpass Spurrier’s figure of 122 wins. Factor in the age of Nick Saban, soon to be 69, and Mullen’s successful career looks pretty sustainable against the likes of peers Kirby Smart, Jimbo Fisher, Gus Malzahn, Mark Stoops and Jeremy Pruitt. And here’s the acid test for Gator fans: Honestly, would you trade Mullen for anybody else on that list? Gator football is back. How far back and for how long is yet to be determined. The first paragraph of the third chapter will be written Saturday in the hometown of the famous deceased author William Faulkner. Mullen's 3rd chapter to be written this year. GatorBait Photo

A few thoughts to jump start your Friday morning: Already the naysayers in New York are thinking Lane Kiffin would be a really good fit for the Jets, who have a chance to do a reverse run of the table so they can draft either Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields next April. This is amazing since (a) Kiffin has yet to coach his first game at Ole Miss and (b) the first game is against a Florida football team that has a legitimate shot at winning its first Southeastern Conference championship since 2008. Kiffin is actually a very good football coach and if you ever got a chance to sit down and talk with him you would find him quite engaging. If he says no to NFL overtures to remain at Ole Miss, there is a very good chance he will turn the Rebels into a contender. It can be done at Ole Miss. Hugh Freeze almost pulled it off although the boosters (Freeze was somehow exonerated if you can believe that) put the Rebels in the NCAA jailhouse. But it won’t be done this year and Saturday’s season opener with the Gators in Oxford (12 noon, ESPN) isn’t going to be pretty. There are too many holes in the Ole Miss two-deep and not enough talent from top to bottom of the roster. Dan Mullen, meanwhile, has spent three recruiting classes building a roster that has the talent and depth to compete with anyone in the SEC. Kiffin has some talent on his Ole Miss roster. Florida has more. Much more. Ole Miss went 4-8 in 2019, 2-6 in SEC play with wins over an Arkansas team that hasn’t won an SEC game since 2017 and a Vanderbilt team the Gators blew out 56-0. Kiffin recruited some transfers, particularly on defense for former Florida coordinator DJ Durkin, but there isn’t nearly enough to stop a Florida offense that is going to be better than last season because (a) Kyle Trask has a year of starting experience at QB; (b) there are five experienced starters on the O-line when you add in Mississippi State grad transfer Stewart Reese; (c) there is as much talent at wide receiver as last year even with the loss of four to the NFL; (d) Kyle Pitts and (e) more depth and speed at running back. And that’s not mentioning Todd Grantham’s defense that has the depth and talent to go from the very good of 2019 to elite in 2020. Remember the names Brenton Cox Jr., Mohamoud Diabate and Khris Bogle. Between the three of them, Florida has a very good chance to register more sacks than the 49 of 2019. By season’s end, Ole Miss might be a much-improved team. By game’s end Saturday Lane Kiffin will have a better understanding of just what a train wreck Matt Luke left him. Florida is a 13.5-point favorite. THE SAYER SAYS SOOTH: Ole Miss might score a couple of first half touchdowns to give the appearance that this could be white knuckles heading into the fourth quarter, but in the second half Florida’s depth, talent and speed will take a very serious toll on the Rebels. Dan Mullen starts the season 1-0 and the Gators climb the first rung of the 2020 SEC championship ladder. Florida 45, Ole Miss 17 ELSEWHERE IN THE SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE #23 KENTUCKY AT #8 AUBURN: Kentucky wants this game badly. Kentucky needs this game badly. Nobody needs this game worse than Gus Malzahn, however. If Kentucky somehow figures out a way to win it, social media will explode and Auburn faithful will rename this season “The Gus Malzahn Farewell Tour.” If Gus and Auburn score a win, Auburn fans will be in love with their coach for at least a week. For Kentucky to win this game, the Wildcats have to run the football, grind out a bunch of first downs to keep the Auburn offense off the field, and Terry Wilson is going to have to complete just enough passes to keep the safeties from crowding the box. For Auburn to win the game, Bo Nix is going to have to complete downfield throws, the 1-2 running back combo of sophomore D.J. Williams and true freshman Tank Billingsley are going to punish the Wildcats between the tackles and Auburn’s defense is going to have to keep UK from dominating time of possession. Auburn is a 7.5-point favorite. The Sayer Says: The difference will be at quarterback where Bo Nix will show how much he’s improved since an impressive freshman year. Auburn 27, Kentucky 17 MISSISSIPPI STATE AT #6 LSU: Two things jump out at you here. First and foremost, there will only be 25,000 fans in the stands at Tiger Stadium and not the usual crowd of 100,000 feeling nasty after spending four days of heavy drinking to get ready for the season opener. Second, the game is being played at 3:30 in the afternoon (EDT). LSU at night is scary. LSU in the daylight is a far more manageable animal. Now, this isn’t to say that Mike Leach is going to score an upset over the nation’s 6th-ranked team in his SEC debut, but the crowd size and playing in the daylight can’t hurt. Coach Oeaux ran the table and won a national championship last year but that was with an offense to die for and 16 players who now wear an NFL uniform. The LSU cupboard is far from bare, but it’s not nearly as experienced as last year on either side of the ball. LSU is a 16.5-point favorite. The Sayer Says: K.J. Costello might throw for 400 yards on that inexperienced LSU secondary and Kylin Hill might run for 100 but Mississippi State is going to have all sorts of trouble stopping the Tigers. LSU will win the game but won’t cover. LSU 44, Mississippi State 35 #4 GEORGIA AT ARKANSAS: By the time this one is deep into the second quarter Feleipe Franks might be asking himself why the heck he transferred to Arkansas. There were plenty of places he could have transferred to, places that have a two-deep capable of competing at higher levels than the one the Razorbacks will compete at this year. But nooooo. Double F transferred to Arkansas and the first game opponent is Georgia, which means he will be in his feets don’t fail me now mode all afternoon. Now this will probably shock Georgia fans who are still looking for that first national championship since 1980 when Herschel was a freshman, but the Poodles aren’t going to win a national title this year. That won’t stop them from annihilating Arkansas Saturday afternoon no matter who plays quarterback. The likely starter is D’Wan Mathis, who has never taken a Division I snap but against this Arkansas defense he might look like the second coming of Russell Wilson. Georgia is favored by 27.5 points. The Sayer Says: Georgia is going to lose 2-3 games this year. One of those losses won’t be to Arkansas. Georgia 49, Arkansas 10 #2 ALABAMA AT MISSOURI: Even if Mizzou was at full strength this would be a mismatch. The Tigers will be short-handed due to opt outs and Covid-19 positive tests so it is going to be a very long afternoon. This will be the first of several long afternoons for Mizzou, which plays six ranked teams in its first seven games. Don’t expect Alabama to show any mercy. Nick Saban has to get the troops ready for the Aggies next week so he’s got to put the hammer down early and keep it there. Whether it’s Mac Jones or Bryce Young at QB, Bama will score plenty of points. It’s the defense that bears watching. It was the defense that cost Bama the 2018 national title and it kept the Tide out of the College Football Playoff last year. Alabama is a 27.5-point favorite. The Sayer Says: This game will go ugly early. Alabama 56, Missouri 7 VANDERBILT AT #10 TEXAS A&M: There is good news and bad news for Vanderbilt. The good news first. Instead of 102,000 screaming Aggies at Kyle Field there will only be 25,000 or so and the Commodore QBs will be able to hear themselves think. The bad news is it doesn’t matter how many fans are in the stands, the Aggies are going to win this in a blowout. Even though the Aggies don’t have a particularly scary defense, they will be matched up against a QB who has never taken a Division I snap protected by four newbies on the offensive line. There isn’t a wide receiver capable of stretching a defense nor is there a running back who can pound it between the tackles. The entire Vandy secondary is brand new, too. Kellen Mond is drooling. Texas A&M is favored by 31. The Sayer Says: It’s a dilemma for Jimbo Fisher. Does he rest his starters after a quarter or two or does he let them play well into the second half knowing they need all the reps they can get because they travel to Tuscaloosa next week? Texas A&M 51, Vanderbilt 3 #16 TENNESSEE AT SOUTH CAROLINA: Marshawn Lloyd was supposed to be the centerpiece of the offense bu he tore his ACL. Now new coordinator Mike Bobo now has to debut a new offense with quarterback Collin Hill, a grad transfer who followed Bobo from Colorado State. He’s had three ACL tears in four years but he’s upright, breathing and he will be the quarterback. If he can make a few throws against a Tennessee defense that has a lot of holes to fill on the back seven. If the Gamecocks get the running game going they’ll be able to score some points. The key for the Gamecocks will be to daze and confuse Vol QB Jarrett Guarantano, who is not the sharpest tool in the shed. If Guarantano can’t figure things out in a hurry, Tennessee’s stay in the top 25 will be short lived. Tennessee is a 3.5-point favorite. The Sayer Says: Will Muschamp needs to start the season with a big win in the worst way to quiet the critics. He will shut them up for at least one week. South Carolina 27, Tennessee 20 FEELING PITHY ON FRIDAY: No matter who wins the FSU-Miami game, Monday will be unbearable. If FSU loses – and they should – their fans will be whining and wondering what the hell they were thinking when they ousted Willie Taggart. If Miami wins, Himmicane fans will claim national title number six and the first one since 2001 is just around the corner. Now imagine how obnoxious these folks will be if FSU somehow wins and Miami loses … UCF plays American Athletic Conference bottom feeder East Carolina Saturday in Greenville, NC. The Knights will win this one by a blowout which will prompt QB Dillon Gabriel to declare UCF is the favorite to win the 2020 national championship … The Pac-12 will play a 7-game schedule starting in November. There will be no open dates and no room for makeup games should one be postponed. Personally, I don’t think either the Pac-12 or Big Ten champs should be considered for the College Football Playoff considering their late starts to the season … Meanwhile, the Mid-American Conference (MAC) will vote today on whether to have a season or play in the spring. Maybe. They could have voted twice in the last ten days but they postponed the vote both times. Since there are no paycheck games to be played and no television contract, I wouldn’t be surprised if they remain opted out for the season … Circle #22 Army at #14 Cincinnati. If Army can control the ball with that funky Georgia Southern inspired option, the Black Knights could score a big upset. I think either Army pulls off the upset or Cincinnati wins by blowout … It’s being rumored that Southern Miss will target Liberty coach (and USM alum) Hugh Freeze to be its next head coach. Imagine the state of Mississippi with Freeze, Mike Leach, Lane Kiffin and Deion Sanders as head coaches. The most dangerous place to be in the state will be between one of them and a microphone.