You see ? We went from the beaten to the beater in mere weeks. It’s not like we got bigger and stronger in that little time.
100% that Spurrier finally adopting the shotgun radically changed the offense's ability to negate the pass rush and made all the difference against Bama and in the FSU rematch. But part of the problem with needed to negate the pass rush was that we were down a couple of starting lineman in Tally. Zach Pillar went down against Vandy I think, and Jeff Mitchell may have been hobbled or out too. Regardless of my fuzzy memory, we were relying on backups more than we wanted and getting them back for the Sugar Bowl helped seal the deal.
You are spot on, my good brother. We were not playing at our oline's best in Tallahassee that day due to injuries and backups.
Which kind of begs the question why our most athletic OL out of high school has played almost none while someone who can hardly move is in a starting role number of snaps. I haven't heard anything about injury, and Kearney was being reported as a potential 6th man for the season.