By: Nick Marcinko -- November 12, 2023 Florida worked 37 players into their week 11 matchup against LSU, including 15 on offense and 22 on defense. Gator Country provides you with Florida’s official snap count report in their 53-35 loss to the Tigers. Florida’s snap count report vs LSU | GatorCountry.com
We obviously need more depth, that and the fact that we are one of, if not the youngest team, right now in the SEC is the biggest obstacle we have had this year. Patience and Perspective: These are the keys to letting go of your unrealistic expectations you had for this year. This season hurt, but it will be remedied next year, IMHO. And we ran into more teams on our schedule with NFL QB1s than we have had to deal with in... forever. The perfect storm against us.
Still shaking my head about preseason posts about how killer our defense would be. Losing Boone and James are killer blows. Our best player on D may be a freshman safety Castell learning on the job. Still a couple of classes away from moving up from the middle.
Or... if we can keep and add to the 2024 class, add 3 or 4 quality SEC positions of need from the portal. But the injury bug killed us and like I have been saying all along. The fact that we've faced the perfect storm of great freaking QB on our schedule. I hope someone puts together a list of the QB's we will have faced when the season is over. That list of QBs will be ridiculously talented. We are far too young and did NOT have the depth this year to overcome our youth and inexperience this year. This about this, we had more freshman play huge amounts of time in key positions... a 13th ranked recruiting class (2023) of freshman. If we can hold on to or add to our currently ranked 2024 class (still ranked 4th best) just think of how many more talented freshman will add to the depth chart... some of those 2024 recruits might even beat some of our current freshman out of their starting roles. Even still we will have plenty more depth. Then all we need is to get our players healthy and add 3 or 4 portal players. I know it sounds easier said than done, but the hardest part will be to hang on to our class and add the right portal players. It can be done... We have to realize that we cannot afford to play it cheap when it comes to portal guys and top notch high school payers... "scared money don't make money."
Looking at the defensive snap counts against LSU the defensive backfield which was constantly torched , it doesn't appear that in 61 plays, we altered it all from the normal 5 DBs. Only seven players participated, of which four were in for about 90% of the plays or more. I know Moore was unavailable for LSU, but isn't it time we give Johnson and Gates some snaps, even if it means occasionally going with 6 or 7 DBs at the expense of a lineman or linebacker? Just not seeing much variation on the defensive side of the football. Cornerback JR Jason Marshall: 60 R-JR Jalen Kimber: 55 R-JR Jaydon Hill: 55 FR Ja’Keem Jackson: 7 Safety FR Jordan Castell: 61 FR Bryce Thornton: 33 SO Miguel Mitchell: 28
15 on offense and yet Pearsall and EW3 get no touches late. Who among the other 12 (Mertz doesn’t count) is so damn important we forget about our playmakers?
I keep trying to tell myself this. Too many productive players transferred out, placing too much burden on the younger guys. All without senior leadership. Then throw in injury without depth. Next year will be put up or shut up.
I also don't understand 11 players getting snaps on the DL in 61 plays. That is getting into the 3 deep which can't possibly be as effective as the 1st and 2nd team. Maybe they were trying to keep the players fresh to chase Daniels, but in reality none of those guys are going to have any success catching Daniels when he broke contain, fresh or not.
Yep, Mullen and his coaches may have had something to do with that, I have long suspected something happened for all that telnet to leave Gainesville. And For all of Mullen's incompetence in recruiting, our brand (The Gators) will always attract some really good talent regardless of who we have and the head ball coach. And those players left us without the senior leadership that you mentioned as important. That still pisses me off to this day.
We have some kids that were in highschool last year. I don’t know that they are bad but maybe nowhere near ready. Linebacker on the other hand is just thin. We only have one freshman and the others have been around a minute and aren’t showing to much promise. We have a great group coming in but they are playing hs football as we speak. They won’t be a tremendous help next year either. All the other groups have promising talent being developed. Our safeties are three freshmen and a sophomore with more on the way. We have to hit jackpot in the portal at oline and lb or it’ll be another rough year.
