I also believe there has been a woeful lack of development defensively. I hear the freshmen excuse but these guys are 11 games in and they are either the same as they’ve been game 1 or regressed. Not just the freshmen, the whole team. I’m not convinced everyone we play on D is without talent and are just extremely undisciplined
I have to think, and I know next years schedule is brutal, after all of these close games this year- next years team will win the close ones. We'll need a few portal players and the true Gator HS recruits will realize they can come to play for the good guys and win; with their contribution. The team unity is really noticeable. Hopefully, with some continued development, some new players it will all start to gell. Afterall, last nights game was an away game against a top ten team. It is hard to wipe away the disappointment and clearly see the progress, but it is there. mPerhaps being closer to the end goal and still falling short is even more painful. Go Gators
To the “at least they play hard” contingent, too often they don’t. There have been way too many instances of defenders loping after ball carriers, slowing rather than accelerating as they approach ball carriers, etc.
It is scared. He does not play that way when behind, only when approaching victory. All our opponents know it and have used it against us.
I was ticked and inebriated, but at the time I would have sent in big Dex to flatten him on following kickoff
Barring some off the field disaster he will not be fired next year. It could get downright ugly though. And if it gets bad enough then it will cost Stricklin his job. Then 2025 becomes his do or die trying year. Hotseat from 1st game on.
This was a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. I believe that the right calls were made in this case.
We have had 5 different head coaches in a 14 year span. How’s that working for us? Hopefully SS and the Bull Gators are way smarter than you are
There’s a positive and a negative you can take out of last night. The positive- We played hard and showed grit and determination against a top ten team and showed (to that recruiting class) that playing time is available. The negative IMO might be highly talented guys not seeing development ability in this coaching staff as a whole. I still feel like you have to find a way to win a game like last night to get momentum on any front rather than finding a way to lose it cause at the end of the day if you didn’t watch the game you’d say Mizzou found a way to win against a team they shouldn’t lose to. This used to be us.
This team does so many things wrong I don't know how we have won any games. After we got a first down on the 17 yard line, we have to manage the game better. The coaches and players all seem to have no awareness of what to do in that situation. From the point where Max Brown gets up after a great run and poses for the crowd instead of getting back to the ball to get ready for the next play. Then we proceed to try and bang our shifty RB up the middle 3 times after calling a timeout ourselves to stop the clock. Then he busts it outside on 3rd down after a bad handoff and goes out of bounds. Terrible play calling and terrible awareness by the QB and RB. It is like that all the time. I would be willing to bet that we have more pre-snap penalties than anyone in the conference. It is poor coaching. If my QB gets up after a great play and crosses his arms to pose for the crowd, he is going straight to the bench, because he is not focused. The guy is struggling to hand the ball off, and he thinks he has time to pose for pictures while we are trying to win the game? No sir.
I thought we would get killed. We didn't. Proud!!!! However the last series of downs we went Muschamp and played not to lose instead of playing to win. Next year our elite players are mostly on offense not defense There are a lot of ifs, 1) the current players get stronger. 2) we keep the best players (they don't go to the portal, 3)we keep most of our freshmen in coming class 4) we work the portal well, 5) we make a few assistant coaches changes. If we do all this , then we will surprise a lot of people. I have already gotten smack talk. Even got a text at 12 with one person texting MIZ and another texting ZOU.
it is very rare that a true freshman on both the OL and DL comes in and starts- we have a tom of freshmen and sophs playing a significant number of downs- we also had guys on the field who may be Jr’s but had not played significant downs - on the 4th and 17, there were several guys who just stood where they lined up instead of dropping- we also seemed more focused on what the players were doing and had no idea where the ball was as none of them reacted to the ball until it was caught
Has an opponent ever been penalized for doing the Chomp in our faces ? It’s no use stressing about. Beat them.