Without a doubt the best finish to a gator game I have ever saw!!!!
Good ol rocky flop!!!!!!
Wooooooo
That WAS exciting, brilliant, wonderfully shocking even to US, after everything that had previously transpired--That we seemed to have managed to blow a game we first should have pulled away in, then seemed to have managed to regain control of, THEN were on the verge of losing in stomach-sinking fashion as clock ran down--then that exhausted but heroic defense held, made 'em settle again for 3pts... And then we WON with the classic Hail Mary by our "promising young freshman" ON THE LAST PLAY OF GAME!!!
That flag lying on the ground outside the endzone had me quickly back on edge for a moment, but this time it held, stripes picked it up and it was CELEBRATION TIME IN THE SWAMP. For the moment all was somehow well again, after all.
There've been some great moments in the Swamp, even last-play ones (at least one I remember against the same rival), but right now I'm hard-pressed to recall one more crazily coming to save us so suddenly at the very END.
It's great that it happened, of course--especially that it was our embattled young "QB of the future" who pulled it off.
But let us NOT forget what happened in the previous 59+ minutes of this one:
How our Head Coach and his OC oversaw ANOTHER crap-fest on offense, full of poor strategy, tactics, mistakes and generally questionable-at-best coaching of a Gator team with (even missing some of its best weapons) more talent than its rival, talent that once again was repeatedly misused. A late lead nonetheless thanks to just a brave, proud but (thanks to that foundering offense's same misuse) utterly exhausted defense that this Coach's same mishandling on offense then managed to fritter away.
So Mac DID find and elevate to starter the "right QB"--but what about the rest?
Does a sudden shining momentary "miracle" UNDO it all, the mistakes, poor plans and execution, the growing clarity that the problems are there and growing worse, on AND off the field?
How long do we wait now? How fast, how far does our program have to fall before we can begin to honestly and publicly acknowledge, more importantly address all this once more?
Of course I'm happy we won. I TOO laughed and cheered, all the questions and frustration momentarily gone--not "swept away", but briefly receded, temporarily "cut down to size". But unless I have been and continue to BE completely wrong, unless this turns out to be some total inspirational turnaround that launches us into a some amazing streak, rolling up win after win in growing confidence and domination on an offense suddenly poised and efficient, well, this will only delay what we've already seen for far too long.
Sorry: Will dwell on it no further. No matter WHAT it all means, what the long term consequences are, I could never root AGAINST my Gators, cannot be anything but HAPPY at a win--let alone one like this. But neither can I ignore or forget the larger picture of what's been happening, where we are or where we appeared to be heading. And unless that truly changes, the rest is just distraction, and frankly, likely a delay on the way to doing what we'll still eventually have to do.
