Please let's all calm down a bit

Or maybe Norvell is building a solid team and Kelly’s quick little jaunt is not so solid. I didn’t see that coming as I thought lsu was going to be the better team. The first drive by lsu told a lot about fsu. I hate it but I’d say fsu is going to be a problem.

 

I don't know how this applies (I guess it is up to the reader), but I thought it useful.

 

Should we have fired the others? We don't now EITHER way what the state of the program will look like i 2 years. With the 3Ms there were points where it looked like they would succeed. BUT There were lingering issues with each that were their ultimate undoing.

I see lingering issues with Napier. Does he grow out of them, I don't know.

 

Norvell started out year 1 & 2 with losing records, it was bad football. Fans wanted to run him out on a rail. Lost to FSC school during that time. But Fsu had no money to buy him out and get another head coach. Now they are top 5 program. I think if we’re patient with Napier he will get us back to a top 10 program each year.

 

Oh Lord, if we are worrying about crowd noise we are definitely in trouble considering some of the venues we play in and Utah's barely bigger than Vandy stadium.

 

Brother Growl, I hear you. But my instinct is that whatever is going on is deeper than the normal Gator Nation impatience and dissatisfaction with anything short of championships. This is not, for example, the same situation as in 2002 when Zook lost on the road to Ole Miss on his way to an 8-5 season. What alarms me the most is not the fans on a fan website but the sports media who have collectively arrived at a conclusion about this staff. I don’t hear them counseling patience and mocking the Gator Nation for unrealistic expectations. I hear them putting us atop the Misery Index and comparing our head coach to Willie Taggart and Chad Morris. Even Finebaum who has defended Napier and mocked Gator Nation for its expectations had nothing but “WTF?” to say about our opening performance.

Let’s just say we can unrealistically keep the noise among the fans down in order to not run off the recruits. What is our strategy to keep the recruits from reading the sports media?

 

As well as Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and LSU is going to be a problem.
Need to see something good next week or Vanderbilt and South Carolina will be a problem too.

 

Remind me again what Harbaugh's record was at UMich after those 6 seasons?

I'm not one of the fans that is ready to jump off the cliff, but if Napier's season continues to go the way game 1 did, things will get very tough next season.

 

Regardless of what happens next week, Vandy and South Carolina are going to be problems in the sense that we can no longer tick a W next to them on the schedule. As much as it pains me in the depths of my soul to say it, those are going to be competitive games that we are going to have to take seriously to win.

 

We clearly aren’t on that level yet. Everyone is a problem for us until proven otherwise. Of course Vandy and Kentucky are a problem. We aren’t a ranked team for a reason and Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia expect to beat us. Why wouldn’t they.

 

Personally, if I was AD, I’d give an ultimatum: hire an OC and ST coach at the end of this season (or sooner by shifting something around on the staff) or you’re out.

Culture and recruiting are great, fired a DC at the appropriate time who was over his head, which was also wise—but offense and ST total mess (again) and it’s not just the Jimmies and Joes. Coach better be big enough to reflect and grade himself on preparation, play-calling, game management, etc.

 

I dropped off a stack of cocktail napkins at Steve’s last night. New offense in the works

 

I'm all for patience but time for the sake of time isn't the solution. Re-calibration when things aren't working is a must. Norvell lost to our skeleton coaching staff after Mullen was fired and then became a master of portal kombat. His approach has not been rigid.

We will learn a lot about Napier this season and off-season. Let's hope he isn't as stubborn as those before him.

 

I’ve made this point in other threads, but generally speaking, in any profession, if upper management has to reach down and correct situations that subordinates ought to be able to identify and correct for themselves, then it is not going to work out.

Let Napier run the team his way and own 100% of the consequences.

 

No, it was the heat! HaHaHa!

 

Last year was Gainesville with that play

 

Next time you find yourself getting too worked up, just close your eyes and think of TAMU. 5 years deep with Jimbo Fisher with nothing to show for it but a progressively worse season record and perhaps the worst employment contract ever created.

Then open your eyes and remember your not a TAMU fan. Everything will seem so much better.

 

Utah was gassed by the 4th quarter last year but did not give up.

People have a tendency to forget how lucky we were in that game.

We only won by 3 points on our own field. Utah could have very well won that game - heat and humidity included!

If not for the weather advantage we would not have won IMHO.

 

We won on an interception in tge endzone. They were abusing our defense.