Get us the damn ball!!!
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Week 15: #6 Florida Gators 34, LSU Tigers 17 - 12/12/2020
- Thread starter Escambia94
- Start date
- Status
LSU meets the Gators to break down on defense.
Marco Wilson just gave LSU a first down and possibly the game.
The Gators were about to force a punt.
THEY WILL PASS HERE:
Pick the ball. No! Stupid penalty AFTER we stopped them!
They get an automatic first!
We had a chance to get the ball back!
We are gonna lose this game by mistake AGAIN! Gators, you blew it.
Pick the ball. No! Stupid penalty AFTER we stopped them!
They get an automatic first!
We had a chance to get the ball back!
We are gonna lose this game by mistake AGAIN! Gators, you blew it.
Well—we MIGHT get to overtime.
I just feel like only a turnover will save us now. Can we at least STOP them here??? They throw it now, only a pick saves us!
I just feel like only a turnover will save us now. Can we at least STOP them here??? They throw it now, only a pick saves us!
We shouldn’t have called time out for them there...Here’s the game:
Good. We lose—thanks to a thrown cleat.
No chance, really—but if we can just get it to mid-field and take a shot ourselves.
Trask gets TWO THROWS here.
Good. We lose—thanks to a thrown cleat.
No chance, really—but if we can just get it to mid-field and take a shot ourselves.
Trask gets TWO THROWS here.
Can we TIE THIS UP?
No words, except that I am embarrassed to be a Florida Gator thanks to Marco Wilson. Those three turnovers and a shoe cost the Gators the outright SEC East crown, which is now shared with Georgia. The Gators have earned the McElwain Trophy and will now get massacred by Alabama next week. What a shitty way to end the regular season.
In his range. Nope. He missed.
Sorry, guys.
And it was in his range, too. I thought maybe he’d pull it out, give us a chance.
This one HURT. But we gave it away.
Don’t know if I’ll even WATCH next week. I AM ACHING ALL OVER.
Everything from here just rubs our faces in it. We’ll talk again—but I may not be around much til NEXT season.
I STILL say...Well, it doesn’t matter; I’m sick of my own belly-aching—and I SURE AS HELL don’t wanna here what all the ESPN pundits have to say about it. Lotsa blame to go around. I am not angry at our team—they rose above so much this season to get THIS far. I know they are hurting themselves at LEAST as much as us right now.
So WE’LL let it lie now too—at least WE HAVE that luxury. I don’t HAVE to dwell on it, being so far away.
Do y’all think Emory Jones truly has the tools to lead this Gator offense next year? Between what we’ll have left and what we’ll have coming IN, can we be TRULY CONTENDERS in 2021??!
I already had serious doubts about the SEC Championship next week already. I just didn’t (STILL DON’T) see us beating Bama and making it into the FFB playoffs THIS year after all anyway. We were always capable of laying an error-soaked egg like we did today; but I don’t see that as likewise possible by Saban’s team—so even if we WERE to “rise up and play above ourselves” like LSU did today, I wouldn’t count on Bama making so many undisciplined, unforced errors as we were guilty of today.
GROAN! That thrown-clear penalty just leaped back to mind! We were about to get the ball back with PLENTY of time for Trask to drive us for the win!
After everything, we still had a CHANCE! And STILL got one more.
No. Gotta let it go. I SAW our guys doing all that jive stuff at the LSU bench as we made a few plays with time running down—and it was just that kind of dumbass crap that led an experienced defender to throw a shoe he found in his hand up the field. “They’re just kids”. But you either make emotion and adrenaline your friend—or it will surely be your enemy. I learned that in battle.
I don’t even know what I’m saying, where I’m going with all this stuff coming out of me now. I apologize to you all: but Thankyou for (hopefully) NOT judging me too harshly.
On second thought, I WILL at least try and “suck it up”, make appearances at our next/LAST coupla games—if only to show solidarity and spend a little more time with you as this season winds down—next week in Atlanta AND wherever, whomever we play in January. Though neither game will be the prestigious affairs nor closely followed events they might otherwise have been.
But I DO value having you fellows to share it with—so “SEE” YOU THEN!
For now, Good Night!
And it’s STILL GREAT TO BE A FLORIDA GATOR!
(It just HURTS some right now too.)
Sorry, guys.
And it was in his range, too. I thought maybe he’d pull it out, give us a chance.
This one HURT. But we gave it away.
Don’t know if I’ll even WATCH next week. I AM ACHING ALL OVER.
Everything from here just rubs our faces in it. We’ll talk again—but I may not be around much til NEXT season.
I STILL say...Well, it doesn’t matter; I’m sick of my own belly-aching—and I SURE AS HELL don’t wanna here what all the ESPN pundits have to say about it. Lotsa blame to go around. I am not angry at our team—they rose above so much this season to get THIS far. I know they are hurting themselves at LEAST as much as us right now.
So WE’LL let it lie now too—at least WE HAVE that luxury. I don’t HAVE to dwell on it, being so far away.
Do y’all think Emory Jones truly has the tools to lead this Gator offense next year? Between what we’ll have left and what we’ll have coming IN, can we be TRULY CONTENDERS in 2021??!
I already had serious doubts about the SEC Championship next week already. I just didn’t (STILL DON’T) see us beating Bama and making it into the FFB playoffs THIS year after all anyway. We were always capable of laying an error-soaked egg like we did today; but I don’t see that as likewise possible by Saban’s team—so even if we WERE to “rise up and play above ourselves” like LSU did today, I wouldn’t count on Bama making so many undisciplined, unforced errors as we were guilty of today.
GROAN! That thrown-clear penalty just leaped back to mind! We were about to get the ball back with PLENTY of time for Trask to drive us for the win!
After everything, we still had a CHANCE! And STILL got one more.
No. Gotta let it go. I SAW our guys doing all that jive stuff at the LSU bench as we made a few plays with time running down—and it was just that kind of dumbass crap that led an experienced defender to throw a shoe he found in his hand up the field. “They’re just kids”. But you either make emotion and adrenaline your friend—or it will surely be your enemy. I learned that in battle.
I don’t even know what I’m saying, where I’m going with all this stuff coming out of me now. I apologize to you all: but Thankyou for (hopefully) NOT judging me too harshly.
On second thought, I WILL at least try and “suck it up”, make appearances at our next/LAST coupla games—if only to show solidarity and spend a little more time with you as this season winds down—next week in Atlanta AND wherever, whomever we play in January. Though neither game will be the prestigious affairs nor closely followed events they might otherwise have been.
But I DO value having you fellows to share it with—so “SEE” YOU THEN!
For now, Good Night!
And it’s STILL GREAT TO BE A FLORIDA GATOR!
(It just HURTS some right now too.)
My “last thoughts” now appear on “page 7” of the Gameday thread—The very last entry on that thread, as it presently stands)...
Might try and link all that with THIS—but at the moment (post game) I am too disappointed—NOT just with losing, but HOW we managed it. This team isn’t as good as Alabama—but we had the skills to finally go undefeated...and then, well, WHO KNOWS WHAT MIGHTA HAPPENED??!
But we repeatedly shot ourSELVES tonight. Again and again and again.
Sorry. Will stop there.
But ask that you both find and READ my “closing thoughts” regarding this game in particular and the SEASON IN GENERAL. Thanks—and talk to ya soon!
Might try and link all that with THIS—but at the moment (post game) I am too disappointed—NOT just with losing, but HOW we managed it. This team isn’t as good as Alabama—but we had the skills to finally go undefeated...and then, well, WHO KNOWS WHAT MIGHTA HAPPENED??!
But we repeatedly shot ourSELVES tonight. Again and again and again.
Sorry. Will stop there.
But ask that you both find and READ my “closing thoughts” regarding this game in particular and the SEASON IN GENERAL. Thanks—and talk to ya soon!
[TWEET]https://twitter.com/secnetwork/status/1337954588893343744?s=21
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Yeah—that was really bush league.
But there was a lot of BLAME to go around...That WAS “egregious”, no doubt about it—but before and after that there were REPEATED opportunities for us to save ourselves after all; most of the REST were simply “performance related”, as opposed to “behavior” or “judgementally” so: players failing to actually DO things they’d repeatedly accomplished successfully with distinction before. We’d been flirting with this kind of game all season—but had managed to recover and overcome such mistakes in all but the one and only game we’d actually LOST —when another young and talented 3rd stringer fumbled late and gave a talented opponent the opportunity to beat us on ANOTHER “late kick”.
I have a lot more to say on all of this—but for now I prefer to let it sit a while longer...
I WILL put up a kind of “Season Summary and Reflection” comment/thread later this week. There’s much to say—but I am still all over the place on that game yesterday: It is my INTENTION is to say it simply and clearly, and I’m nowhere NEAR ready to do that here yet. Don’t know bout y’all, but I am STILL hurting inside!
Congratulations to the 2020 Florida Gators, your winners of the McElwain Trophy! The McElwain Trophy is awarded to SEC East teams that back into the SEC Championship Game in an embarrassing fashion. True to 2020 form, this year's award has been augmented with a special edition LSU football cleat. Again, congratulations to the mighty Gators of Florida..the SEC Junior Division Chumps!
@Leakfan12, @Escambia94,
Just wanted to make sure y’all in particular saw this, since I DIDN’T start a new thread with it instead (as maybe I should have?)...Oh well—Here we go:
Bad. ABSOLUTELY the worst way this otherwise surprising, MOSTLY ENCOURAGING season could turn and wind down. I mean, I had already come to realize that expecting anything BUT our getting beaten in the SEC Championship Game was a fool’s errand—a set-up for frustration and disappointment; I was in the process of adapting to that idea, putting it and the whole season before and after into perspective...but NOW!
I THOUGHT I’d be writing this kind of “face reality” essay after the NEXT GAME...But here we are, earlier and in deeper shit than even I expected.
It’s still all too much for me to simply absorb and accept at this point. I know I’ll HAVE to—and soon. But for now, all I can do is turn away, let it settle.
A part of me wants to vent—wishes that would make it HURT LESS. But it changes nothing—and only intensifies the bad feelings already swirling around inside me, tying up my guts.
I invite you all to go ahead and do so yourselves, if you think that will help. It just might—give it a shot here if you like.
Believe me: I was just numb at first...
I THOUGHT I might get to feeling the anger I sensed lurking at the edges of my awareness last night after the game, stronger and stronger overnight and into today—and to SOME extent that has been the case...but at the same time, I’m coming around to a wider, “big picture”-view of it all too:
Yes, that was a shitty way to lose, full of mistakes and dumbass moves. Plenty of BLAME to go around, as I’ve noted.
A sad, weak fade out on what HAD developed into a surprisingly hopeful season.
But all that’s broken and in pieces now.
It is up to us to pick up and make what we can of what remains:
I won’t even begin to DARE to suggest how Dan Mullen, his staff and TEAM might go about doing that—but I WILL try and speak for US.
We will, at SOME point, have to leave last night’s game, the shadow it casts on how we see and remember this whole season and how it affects the future—that of the Gator TEAM AND its fans in weeks, months and YEARS TO COME.
It can and might consume us all, be seen later as a “turning point”, DOWN or UP!
WHICH, “turning point” “DOWN” or “UP”, will depend on many things—but though it is mostly in the hands of Coach, players, staff (and everyone around and behind them) bringing in and continuing to build the right group of players into a noble and deserving WINNING SIDE, let US, as fans, at least TRY and be the kind of folks who stand behind our team when they are DOWN. When hard times have come and “normal folk” get mad, turn their backs and point fingers,
WE MUST find a way to somehow recognize and SUPPORT the positive—be “part of the solution rather than part of the problem”.
I know it will be hard. I have no immediate idea of how to even go about it: Sad to say, I know how to GET ANGRY, how to POINT a FINGER, how to BLAME.
...What isn’t at ALL clear to me is how to truly HELP now.
Perhaps it is just to NOT do ANY OF THAT...To stand back, and for now, ENDURE. Just as our players must do now: We all must confront the reality we have played our own parts in creating.
How far this all sets us back is unknown, hard to figure, but in the end it is the one thing that IS still up to us, in our own hands—ours, the players’ and coaches’ attitude and actions in response from here.
It is up to us then to think in terms of mutual support, in our case to support each other, all Gators who are HURTING BAD, our Head Coach, his staff and players and whatever moves, subtle and drastic that they are moved to take now.
And maybe THAT is the one “GOOD THING” that might come of the way things played out here after all.
Even before last night’s game I had come belatedly to the idea that we just weren’t as good, as “CLOSE” as we might have been feeling with this program—this had been a “special” season mostly BECAUSE of how we DIDN’T have “the whole package”, the “COMPLETE TEAM” in place here, but rather were getting it done with a certain patchwork of the “freakishly talented” and some “previously overlooked” all coming together and coming through for short stretches at crucial times. Yesterday it finally all misfired too often at the worst times.
In the long run we just can’t get to be what we want to be, get where we want to go and STAY THERE, without backing up and rebuilding properly. Our Coach knows that. And he knows he can’t do it alone—even WITH the right pieces and depth out there ON the field.
What really HURTS SO MUCH I think is HOW CLOSE WE REALLY CAME TO GOING UNDEFEATED ANYWAY—and how multiple all-too-Human failures, mistakes and letdowns doomed us in the end. The thing is, with everything else happening, AND with that Saban built, coached and led Alabama team out there, I think most of already realized we weren’t gonna make it there this time ANYWAY.
So I’m not gonna point the finger at anyone in particular. I have a feeling some changes are forthcoming—but those are mostly in our Coach’s hands, and if he doesn’t have a pretty good idea already what needs doing, who AND what needs to be DOING it, then we are in deeper, longer term shit than simply having the one season more or less gone sour, and now a few MORE months and a hopefully still-promising recruiting season away from “reloading” and making a truer run at greatness “NEXT time”.
“Wait’ll NEXT year!” The eternal cry of hope in sports. But in this case, THIS time, WE at least are lucky enough to have some hope of seeing it fulfilled, at some point.
Just wanted to make sure y’all in particular saw this, since I DIDN’T start a new thread with it instead (as maybe I should have?)...Oh well—Here we go:
Yes—I’m smiling, at least: Funny, if a little “close to the bone”—BUT IT STILL HURTS...Mainly because it IS an all too practical reminder that maybe we haven’t come so far from the kind of team that reflected our LAST Head Coach’s basic lack of honor, commitment and attention to detail.
Bad. ABSOLUTELY the worst way this otherwise surprising, MOSTLY ENCOURAGING season could turn and wind down. I mean, I had already come to realize that expecting anything BUT our getting beaten in the SEC Championship Game was a fool’s errand—a set-up for frustration and disappointment; I was in the process of adapting to that idea, putting it and the whole season before and after into perspective...but NOW!
I THOUGHT I’d be writing this kind of “face reality” essay after the NEXT GAME...But here we are, earlier and in deeper shit than even I expected.
It’s still all too much for me to simply absorb and accept at this point. I know I’ll HAVE to—and soon. But for now, all I can do is turn away, let it settle.
A part of me wants to vent—wishes that would make it HURT LESS. But it changes nothing—and only intensifies the bad feelings already swirling around inside me, tying up my guts.
I invite you all to go ahead and do so yourselves, if you think that will help. It just might—give it a shot here if you like.
Believe me: I was just numb at first...
I THOUGHT I might get to feeling the anger I sensed lurking at the edges of my awareness last night after the game, stronger and stronger overnight and into today—and to SOME extent that has been the case...but at the same time, I’m coming around to a wider, “big picture”-view of it all too:
Yes, that was a shitty way to lose, full of mistakes and dumbass moves. Plenty of BLAME to go around, as I’ve noted.
A sad, weak fade out on what HAD developed into a surprisingly hopeful season.
But all that’s broken and in pieces now.
It is up to us to pick up and make what we can of what remains:
I won’t even begin to DARE to suggest how Dan Mullen, his staff and TEAM might go about doing that—but I WILL try and speak for US.
We will, at SOME point, have to leave last night’s game, the shadow it casts on how we see and remember this whole season and how it affects the future—that of the Gator TEAM AND its fans in weeks, months and YEARS TO COME.
It can and might consume us all, be seen later as a “turning point”, DOWN or UP!
WHICH, “turning point” “DOWN” or “UP”, will depend on many things—but though it is mostly in the hands of Coach, players, staff (and everyone around and behind them) bringing in and continuing to build the right group of players into a noble and deserving WINNING SIDE, let US, as fans, at least TRY and be the kind of folks who stand behind our team when they are DOWN. When hard times have come and “normal folk” get mad, turn their backs and point fingers,
WE MUST find a way to somehow recognize and SUPPORT the positive—be “part of the solution rather than part of the problem”.
I know it will be hard. I have no immediate idea of how to even go about it: Sad to say, I know how to GET ANGRY, how to POINT a FINGER, how to BLAME.
...What isn’t at ALL clear to me is how to truly HELP now.
Perhaps it is just to NOT do ANY OF THAT...To stand back, and for now, ENDURE. Just as our players must do now: We all must confront the reality we have played our own parts in creating.
How far this all sets us back is unknown, hard to figure, but in the end it is the one thing that IS still up to us, in our own hands—ours, the players’ and coaches’ attitude and actions in response from here.
It is up to us then to think in terms of mutual support, in our case to support each other, all Gators who are HURTING BAD, our Head Coach, his staff and players and whatever moves, subtle and drastic that they are moved to take now.
And maybe THAT is the one “GOOD THING” that might come of the way things played out here after all.
Even before last night’s game I had come belatedly to the idea that we just weren’t as good, as “CLOSE” as we might have been feeling with this program—this had been a “special” season mostly BECAUSE of how we DIDN’T have “the whole package”, the “COMPLETE TEAM” in place here, but rather were getting it done with a certain patchwork of the “freakishly talented” and some “previously overlooked” all coming together and coming through for short stretches at crucial times. Yesterday it finally all misfired too often at the worst times.
In the long run we just can’t get to be what we want to be, get where we want to go and STAY THERE, without backing up and rebuilding properly. Our Coach knows that. And he knows he can’t do it alone—even WITH the right pieces and depth out there ON the field.
What really HURTS SO MUCH I think is HOW CLOSE WE REALLY CAME TO GOING UNDEFEATED ANYWAY—and how multiple all-too-Human failures, mistakes and letdowns doomed us in the end. The thing is, with everything else happening, AND with that Saban built, coached and led Alabama team out there, I think most of already realized we weren’t gonna make it there this time ANYWAY.
So I’m not gonna point the finger at anyone in particular. I have a feeling some changes are forthcoming—but those are mostly in our Coach’s hands, and if he doesn’t have a pretty good idea already what needs doing, who AND what needs to be DOING it, then we are in deeper, longer term shit than simply having the one season more or less gone sour, and now a few MORE months and a hopefully still-promising recruiting season away from “reloading” and making a truer run at greatness “NEXT time”.
“Wait’ll NEXT year!” The eternal cry of hope in sports. But in this case, THIS time, WE at least are lucky enough to have some hope of seeing it fulfilled, at some point.
I still think Marco Wilson should never come back in 2021 but yes there were other factors like the Gators in most of their games and of course their defense. Trask's two interceptions (and the fumble), their goal-line stand, The O-line struggling, I could go on and on. This is the team they should have beaten with their top 3 DBs OUT and they had a quarterback starting for the first time (though he did see action prior to this game).
Oh GODS yes—“SHOULD HAVE BEATEN”!!! In SPADES! That’s what made it so frustratingly damn incomprehensible, even seeing it play OUT right in front of us! I still cannot quite absorb it. At a certain point it seems irresistible forces seemed to intervene—right up to including THEIR kicker MAKING the longest kick of HIS young career, and our talented and reliable guy then MISSING A “medium malleable one”—after Kyle near-miraculously got us in position to try it with THREE SECONDS LEFT AFTER ALL...(See me holding my head in groaning disbelief once again now! No—I can’t and WON’T keep going through THAT “personal replay”! Fade to black.
Yes—“Wait’ll NEXT year!” is all we got now...)
(BUT: Again...all the more reason that I won’t HATE or CONDEMN A KID FOREVER for one stupid error for all to see (I THINK you see him throwing his arms up, hands to his helmet in realization of what he’d just done as all the yellow flags flew towards him right after he saw the cleat in his hand and then threw it upfield...if so, HIS nightmare of realization and guilt was just starting—and may eat at him forever, who knows? I did all KINDS of stupid things in my teens; let down people I cared about—but not a whole team and fan base, in front of thousands, millions!)
I’m no saint who can or will preach “warm forgiveness-for-all”...that kind of selfish lack of self-control “in the moment” is exactly what often “separates the good from the great”, as they say—WE JUST CAN’T AFFORD IT. But with everything else, well, we just move on, I think: focus on considering what we, and/or the people who are in position to affect things directly, can do to fix it and move forward. I know you already know and see that as well as I do, LF: I’m just reminding us BOTH that this is the only way that we can make sure anything POSITIVE might possibly COME of all this. Otherwise I just keep on ACHING inside—and I just don’t care to do that. If there’s a way, we MUST find a path towards calm balance, improvement and RELIEF. Voice our anger, mete out retribution where it is right and just to do so—but then, above all, move on.
RISE ABOVE. We must.)
Marco Wilson really did throw the game away. The defense stopped LSU and forced a punt with 1:24 on the clock. The Gators were perfectly capable of taking 1:24 to go down the field and erase the three turnovers. Granted, the 51-yard field goal was also in range for McPherson, but by that point the team had unraveled. Wilson lost the Gators the game by denying them the chance to erase those mistakes.
Yeah, OK. It was pretty damn bad.
I guess I have been damn well “bending over BACKWARDS” trying NOT to dwell on it, think on it too hard.
Truth is I have been trying to put it aside, NOT think about it closely since the moment immediately after it happened, as they first played the replay and it began to steadily sink in that “THIS IS GONNA KILL US! We HAD them STOPPED, plenty of time left on the clock! That young fool just KILLED OUR SEASON!”
But it hurt too MUCH.
And as I have said, I also knew it was “only the ‘FINAL NAIL’—NOT the sole reason it was about to slip away after all...”
I’m not a “mob justice” kind of guy to begin with—and I KNOW this is one of those times when I am as susceptible as anyone else to the anger that builds quickly inside whenever I see that replay or even just THINK about how things went down there on that play and immediately after. I don’t necessarily wanna run the kid outta here, but it is possible HE might want and NEED to move on and start over elsewhere.
I suppose that depends more on how the coaches and his fellow players see and react to it all from here. If THEY support him, truly don’t see it as the fans likely will (and that may DEEPEN, rather than fade, with time), then so be it: Best to let it go I suppose. I haven’t been following postgame commentary (all too painful for so many OTHER reasons, as I say!). This was a real “wack upside the head” for me! Just took the air outta the whole damn SEASON, far as I was concerned. I am not counting on or even LOOKING FOR solace in anything else that is ahead or “MIGHT happen” between now and the Spring, when we begin to look at where we’re at and what the NEXT season may bring.
I apologize for what I am about to say, but the truth is that I am NOT a huge NCAA round ball fan—Oh, I got into a kind of “pale reflection” of “Gator Pride” during those heady days a decade or so back when our powerful, top-ranked Donovan-led Basketball squad managed to bring a damn near unprecedented DOUBLE NATTY to Gainesville, but like most Gators, we can generally enjoy and appreciate a “bit of a deeper run into the Big Dance”, revel when it goes even further for a time, now and then—but we LIVE and DIE Gator FOOTBALL, right? THAT is something different, somehow.
During a time of tension and uncertainty, our fight “upwards, back into the light”, has in so many ways helped to find and maintain a certain balance. That may seem silly to some, but I cannot deny its truth, OR it’s value. Call it “a distraction”, but whatever it is, it helped—and it isn’t the first time I felt lucky to have it!
I miss it already now—and am left hoping against hope that it isn’t LOST, but merely damaged, set back for a short but BEARABLE, recoverable bit of time.
All the more reason for us all to be careful NOT to turn on each other, our Coaches and/or Team (as we see happening at programs that are in REAL trouble!).
How we and they respond, come together and redouble our efforts onward and UPWARD, will determine where we go from here.
It was and IS STILL in our OWN HANDS:
We weren’t “THERE” yet;
We still have work to do.
- Status
