And that's a wrap! The Gators lose to the Gators, 0-0.
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Official Game Day Thread: Orange vs Blue (Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, Gainesville, FL) @ 1:00 PM
- Thread starter Escambia94
- Start date
E94's report (some data are limited due to poor coverage on television):
- Quarterbacks: D. Jeff Driskel did NOT show any improvement. I am sick and tired of people saying that he is progressing as a leader. He cannot throw a forward pass without rolling out. He looks much better in the spread offense than he does in the pro-style offense, which tells me that the Gators should keep mixing in spread offense with the Boise offense. Tyler Murphy had the best forward pass of the day from the pocket. If my memory is correct, it was the only complete forward pass from the pocket. Unofficially, Driskel was 9 of 20 for 70 yards, with another 20-ish yards rushing, not that the stats matter in an open practice game.
- Stars: none.
- Tailbacks: A+. Kelvin Taylor is going to be a stud. He ran for 59 yards and 1 TD on 11 carries, and make some very clean cuts and pretty smart reads. Sure, he needs to work on catching out of the backfield, but given his three weeks of practice he has shown me that he will meet or surpass everyone's expectations as a 5-star recruit and son of a Gator Great. Even the walk-on, Mark Herndon, had a good day running, cutting, and scoring.
- Stars: Kelvin Taylor, Mark Herndon. Raheim Ledbetter got good marks from the sports writers as fullback.
- Tight end: F. These TEs have a large void to fill with Jordan Reed going to the NFL. Nobody stepped up as a blocking TE or a receiving TE. I think they will be good blockers for the running game, but that is it.
- Stars: none.
- Need to step up: Kent Taylor: He seems too small to be a blocking TE, and does not catch well enough to be a catching TE.
- Receivers: D+. As expected, with a depleted receiver corps, they did not create separation, did not get past the secondary, and did not create cushions for the QB to pass into--except for the scout team WR that caught Murphy's pass down the middle. Yes, the middle! That part of the field where Driskel cannot complete a pass. That part of the field where the receivers have been scared to venture into. Yes, that is the part of the field that the Gators have been taking away from themselves! Even in practice! Guys, run across the middle from time to time.
- Stars: Demarcus Robinson, Quinton Dunbar, Ryan McNeely. Robinson is going to make an immediate impact once he is healed, but the QB needs to get the ball to him on time and on target. Dunbar looked good in drills, but I did not see him translate that to the 11-on-11 drills. The scout team receiver McNeely looked very good and was the only one who dared come across the middle of the field for an opening.
- Offensive line: Incomplete. Come back in the fall against Toledo healthy and bulked up.
- Stars: according to the beat writers that were there Max Garcia and DJ Humphries looked good. In my opinion, Humphries needs to add 10-20 pounds of muscle and miscellaneous mass by opening day. Jonatthan Harrison looks okay at center, but I could not tell if it was him doing the bad snaps early in the drills.
- Need to step up: Nebraska transfer Tyler Moore needs to work on footwork or slide from tackle to guard. Quinteze Williams just moved from defensive line to offensive line, so he gets a pass today. In the summer, Quinteze may be the difference maker or the vulnerable spot on the line.
- Defensive line: B. Looking good in practice. Cannot wait to get all the players healthy.
- Stars: Dominique Easley and Dante Fowler
- Linebacker: B+. Looking good, but needs depth. Cannot wait to get all the players healthy. Today's back-ups looked good in practice, but it will be hard to say that they will also look good against top-notch SEC talent.
- Stars: Antonio Morrison, Neiron Ball, Bryan Cox, Daniel McMilian, Alex McCalister, Michael Taylor (back-up)
- Secondary: A-. Looks good, with lots of potential for a breakout No Fly Zone. Hard hitting. Lots of depth.
- Stars: Louchiez Purifoy, Brian Poole, Valdez Showers, Jaylen Watkins, Marcus Roberson
- Kicker: D. We are in a world of hurt with the kickers. Neither kicker was very impressive outside of 25 yards.
- Needs work: Austin Hardin and Brad Phillips. I recommend walking over to the soccer team and recruiting a new kicker.
- Punter: Incomplete. The backup punter can hit 50-yarders, but we really need Kyle Christy to return healthy.
- Punt/kick returns: Incomplete. The "Fly Zone" drill gave us an idea that the return game is strong, but it will be hard to assess how well they do with the new rules.
- Needs work: Andre Debose has a bad habit of catching the ball too far away from his face. Look for this to be a future turnover for the opponent this season.
- Overall: D. Of course the running backs and secondary will look good in this practice format--this is where all the best athletes are. This practice format tells us nothing about the talent we have going into 2013 other than the fact that we have some good walk-ons and back-ups. It also tells us that we get injured too easily and that our roster is very vulnerable to the injury bug. On offense, we cannot figure out if we are a spread offense or a pro-style offense. We may be betting all our money on a potentially lame horse named Jeff Driskel. I hate bashing a current Gator, but for crying out loud...complete a ****ing forward pass from the pocket! Or, change the offense to be a "roll the QB out and throw to the first read" offense. The Gator offense will not be a top-50 offense until they figure out how to use their existing players in the best role. The Gator defense is a little weak up the middle, and nobody healthy has stepped up at NT or MLB.
- Conclusion: Based on what little we saw today, there are few conclusions we can draw. If the Gator No Fly Zone can create turnovers and if the running game can eat up clock, the Gators can win 8 games. The receiving corps will need to pick up the slack to give the Gators a 10-win season. The tight ends will need to develop as blockers and pass catchers. One of the kickers will need to find range at 25-45 yards out.
Well, hard to approach it as a "Game Day" situation this time around...the early going was interesting, and we DID learn a few things along the way here today.
--Matt Jones will start and be the workhorse this season, especially the first 1/2 season or so--assuming he stays healthy and continues to work hard and make the steady strides to continually improve, as he has so far, he'll be a solid, standout piece in our continued strength at RB...BUT Kelvin has that "extra everything" (as opposed to that "extra something") that I haven't seen in a Gator uniform since, well, I WAS gonna say his Dad, but I'm ready to go a step further: I haven't seen that kind of striking "flashes of other-worldly talent" since EMMIT--He isn't there yet, but he shows flashes of things that seem to defy reality, the normal physics of momentum, impact, speed and trajectory. With the fullbacks, the O-line healthy, and our overall DEPTH (and multiple "changes-of-pace") at RB, we should have a dominant downhill running game that is able to control the clock and hold a lead...
--Which brings us to the passing game: Though showing many signs of potential improvement, STILL is lacking enough in the way of the once-ubiquitous "Fast Gators of various size and style" that I'd somehow HOPED we'd begin to reacquire. Guess we'll have to hope that among those we've already seen (and things like the purported splash Purifoy made when HE concentrated on offense the first 8 practices earlier this spring), plus the handful of highly-rated freshmen still due to arrive this summer, there'll be more tools and targets for our QB as the supposedly (according to Pease himself) more versatile and imaginatively wide-ranging passing attack planned for 2013 in fact does begin to come around. Now, I'm less pessimistic than E- (who's not alone in his frustration, either) regarding Jeff, more hopeful and expectant of his taking steady strides, based on what I saw today--provided the health/depth of the O-line, and the aforementioned progress in the receiver corps, actually comes to pass, as promised/"expected".
One thing we DEFINITELY saw was why Murphy is currently considered the "back-up QB", and why Mornighweg (still awkward, hesitant and completely unsure of himself) is undoubtedly the third-stringer, at least for now.
--As for the rest, well, as "play" continued in this glorified practice (really more a situation better for taking in AT the stadium, where you could switch your focus among the several drills and match-up-exercises more and more going on at the same time around the field as the afternoon wore on), on the telecast I got here in Texas we were dependent on what the broadcasters and their commentators chose to focus on and/or discuss--which became more and more fragmented as the broadcast continued, and became more and more about the coaches their "reporters" had arranged to interview than what was happening on the field...a whole lot of "blah blah blah" by the end. I don't know about y'all, but I felt like that sort of thing is all we've HAD most of the spring up-till-now--and even reduced to drills and situational match-ups, essentially not even amounting to an intersquad scrimmage, I wanted to see as much ACTUAL ACTION AND PERFORMANCE as I could on this one occasion that it was on display, the only time we'd get to SEE it for ourselves until the end-of-AUGUST, no?
So I found myself wishing they would "shut up and just show us what they were actually DOING out there!", maybe set-the-stage for us as to what we'd be watching, at most narrate the personnel and what was expected of them, and otherwise GET OUTTA THE WAY! Anyway, I recorded it, and I guess I'll give it (especially the first 45 min. to an hour or so) another, closer look tomorrow morning.
--Matt Jones will start and be the workhorse this season, especially the first 1/2 season or so--assuming he stays healthy and continues to work hard and make the steady strides to continually improve, as he has so far, he'll be a solid, standout piece in our continued strength at RB...BUT Kelvin has that "extra everything" (as opposed to that "extra something") that I haven't seen in a Gator uniform since, well, I WAS gonna say his Dad, but I'm ready to go a step further: I haven't seen that kind of striking "flashes of other-worldly talent" since EMMIT--He isn't there yet, but he shows flashes of things that seem to defy reality, the normal physics of momentum, impact, speed and trajectory. With the fullbacks, the O-line healthy, and our overall DEPTH (and multiple "changes-of-pace") at RB, we should have a dominant downhill running game that is able to control the clock and hold a lead...
--Which brings us to the passing game: Though showing many signs of potential improvement, STILL is lacking enough in the way of the once-ubiquitous "Fast Gators of various size and style" that I'd somehow HOPED we'd begin to reacquire. Guess we'll have to hope that among those we've already seen (and things like the purported splash Purifoy made when HE concentrated on offense the first 8 practices earlier this spring), plus the handful of highly-rated freshmen still due to arrive this summer, there'll be more tools and targets for our QB as the supposedly (according to Pease himself) more versatile and imaginatively wide-ranging passing attack planned for 2013 in fact does begin to come around. Now, I'm less pessimistic than E- (who's not alone in his frustration, either) regarding Jeff, more hopeful and expectant of his taking steady strides, based on what I saw today--provided the health/depth of the O-line, and the aforementioned progress in the receiver corps, actually comes to pass, as promised/"expected".
One thing we DEFINITELY saw was why Murphy is currently considered the "back-up QB", and why Mornighweg (still awkward, hesitant and completely unsure of himself) is undoubtedly the third-stringer, at least for now.
--As for the rest, well, as "play" continued in this glorified practice (really more a situation better for taking in AT the stadium, where you could switch your focus among the several drills and match-up-exercises more and more going on at the same time around the field as the afternoon wore on), on the telecast I got here in Texas we were dependent on what the broadcasters and their commentators chose to focus on and/or discuss--which became more and more fragmented as the broadcast continued, and became more and more about the coaches their "reporters" had arranged to interview than what was happening on the field...a whole lot of "blah blah blah" by the end. I don't know about y'all, but I felt like that sort of thing is all we've HAD most of the spring up-till-now--and even reduced to drills and situational match-ups, essentially not even amounting to an intersquad scrimmage, I wanted to see as much ACTUAL ACTION AND PERFORMANCE as I could on this one occasion that it was on display, the only time we'd get to SEE it for ourselves until the end-of-AUGUST, no?
So I found myself wishing they would "shut up and just show us what they were actually DOING out there!", maybe set-the-stage for us as to what we'd be watching, at most narrate the personnel and what was expected of them, and otherwise GET OUTTA THE WAY! Anyway, I recorded it, and I guess I'll give it (especially the first 45 min. to an hour or so) another, closer look tomorrow morning.
I compared what little I saw online to what GatorZone was Tweeting and what the fans were chatting about during the video. The commentators were terrible, but it was probably due to bad format. I get it, the game was sponsored by Sunniland. The game was free to spectators. How about telling us who just ran a good drill? Who just swatted down that Driskel pass?
I saw Gator Country's top ten list of performers, so I decided to go back and put my top performers in above. Here they are again, not broken out by favorites, but by position:
- QB: none
- RB:
- Kelvin Taylor
- Matt Jones
- Matt Herndon (walk-on)
- FB:
- Raheim Ledbetter
- TE: none
- WR:
- Demarcus Robinson
- Quinton Dunbar
- Michael McNeely (scout team)
- OL:
- Jonatthan Harrison
- Kyle Koehne
- Max Garcia
- DJ Humphries
- DT:
- Dominique Easley
- Dante Fowler
- LB:
- Antonio Morrison
- Neiron Ball
- Bryan Cox
- Daniel McMilian
- Alex McCalister
- Michael Taylor (back-up)
- DB:
- Louchiez Purifoy
- Brian Poole
- Valdez Showers
- Jaylen Watkins
- Marcus Roberson
Exactly...Good idea about following Gatorzone at the same time--wish I'd thought of it (other things on my mind, I guess; "Leave it at that, DRU...").
Dale J. Rodriguez
Gator Fan
I actually missed this game due to my ex-wife being 1 hour and a half late for dropping off my son. *Sigh*
You did not miss much. Fox Sports and Sunshine together put together a very bad production. I have a theory that Will Muschamp did that on purpose, because he wanted to show the Gator fans what the Gators were doing without giving away our game plans to Toledo, Miami, etc.
