**Buzz Buzz Buzz** - How did we get here?

To equate Ray Graves with Doug Dickey reveals how little you know what you’re talking about

 

Well then if we win it’ll be because we were at home and we’d never have beaten them on the road. It’s how these guys think. No matter what happens there’s a way to hate on our team

 

The guy is proving he can build a winning program and has been a winner in successive gigs.

 

I meant to say Top 10. For prior years, I'm going by the final rankings. Not what they were ranked at the time of game. Both Utah and Tennessee finished those respective seasons with 4 losses each. Meh. They are not what Georgia, Texas and LSU are. We'll see on Ole Miss.

 

How about we actually beat LSU first? Last I checked, they're 3-0 in the SEC. Maybe we can beat one of these powerhouses in the next 3 games and Napier can get that monkey off his back. Because nobody put it there but himself. He took the job knowing the expectations and he does not have a quality win yet that would match any of the next 3 opponents. Why don't we get there first, before we begin criticizing fans when Napier knew what their expectations would be up front?

 

And how many HCs we've hired and fired during that time.

 

Lest we forget, Lane has a long history of derailing things. Just Sayin.

 

Whoever gets the UF HC gig had better be a whiz at getting talent from the portal. As soon as CBN is fired the current roster is up for grabs. Kiffen has been very good at working the portal and let's not forget that even recruits who sign with another school on national signing day can go into the portal if they want to play for Kiffin. So if we were to hire Kiffen in January he has the possibility to put together a solid roster. I do hope we manage to keep Lagwat though.

 

The scoreboard doesn’t lie.Napier probably has to win three more games. Ole Miss and fsu probably isn’t enough. If we win three more. I’d say that’s an improvement over game one this year. It’s still only 7-5 and we were terrible the first few games. It’ll get him another year unless there’s a coach willing to come that the big money wants.

 

He looks pretty derailed.atm.

 

If they beat one of the top big 10 teams, I’ll be more than impressed.

 

Go crawl in your shelter and I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out.

 

We all expect to win but we aren’t going to win it all this year. 7-5 after this start is about as much as I can hope for realistically.

 

That says more about how bad Kentucky was. We had some down years in thirty year but they were far worse. They are a better program and we have gone south .

 

All I want to see is us play hard like we have the last 3 games. If that happens, good things will happen. The next thing I want to see is complete games, like the UK game. Although we played hard the last 3 games, we had "CBN" coaching issues in 2 of them. The Tennessee first half debacle, and the whole 2nd half against UCF. To be fair, the game with UCF was never in question, but still it shouldn't have been that close. But this seems to be who CBN is.

If we had played like we have the last 3 against UM and TAMU, we would have been 1-1 against them, or worse case 2 very close loses. That really doesn't change much, I get it. It's the coaching that really concerns me (duh). We really should have beaten Tennessee. If we were 5-2 right now instead of 4-3, this season would look TOTALLY different at this point. As we know, the Tennessee game was 100% on CBN. As much as I would like to look at the UK game and think that CBN has figured it out, I just won't let myself do it. I've been stung too many times.

I've never really like giving win total ultimatums for the head coach, so I'll just say this: The only way I think CBN retains his job is if we keep playing hard in ALL 5 games... AND (This is a big one) we don't have any coaching breakdowns over the last 5 games. If that happens, we'll be at least 6-6 and probably 7-5. If we play like that though, we won't get blow out by UGA or UT either, and although it's only about W's and L's, perception will be a huge factor in the final decision. Let's look at the two issues of "playing hard" and "no coaching breakdowns" though...

Playing Hard - It's been really nice to see what we've seen the past 3 games. We've seen flashes of it here and there, but now it kind of feels expected, which is where it should be. Kudos to CBN for getting the team to play as a team. Yeah, it would have been nice to see this at the end of year 1 or sometime in year 2, but whatever... I think there is a good chance we see this same team the rest of the year. The players just look like they've "bought in" now and we've turned that corner. If not, and this was just another "flash" albeit a 3-game one, we're screwed anyway.

No Coaching Breakdowns - This is the one that I just don't see happening. Yes, the UK game went great, but like I said in the 2 games before CBN was doing what he always does. The UT game was the epitome of CBN's career, no need to say more. The game before with UCF, he had the typical CBN game (no points in the 2nd half). Yeah, we won and it really was never in question, but that crap won't cut it with the next 4(5)*** games. It's just not going to happen. I hope it does, but I just don't see how. CBN would have to really have a moment in order to change his ways that drastically so fast.

So really, if I had to guess, I would say that CBN is definitely going to be gone at the end of the season. My only concern is that we don't have a smooth transition, i.e. we drag on the process and/or we don't get our first choice. Once the hiring process starts dragging on and on and we can't find a suitable replacement, we get screwed and set-back more and more which puts us right back to square 1. I really hope it's not it doesn't turn into another debacle.

Sorry for the TLDR post...

***I included FSU in the last five games, because although they suck and we "could" take our foot off of the gas pedal and still beat them, Billy would be rightfully boo'ed for doing so! And that should be a fire-worthy offense!

 

This is The Best Thread on Swamp Gas Tilly!...I love the ever-changing theme, never-ending nature and the twists and turns it makes.

 

Is 12-1, 10-3, 6-4 really the trajectory of a “winner”?

 

Spot on Skink, Graves was by far our best coach prior to Spurrier. He had a career percentage win record that was right at .700: he won 9 games 3X in his 10 years at UF (in a era of only 10 regular season games), his teams played in 5 bowl games (in an era of far fewer bowls, in todays era his teams would have gone to a bowl in 9 of his 10 years) and UF won 4 of them, his best season was his last when the team went 9-1-1 (ironically UF beat their newly hire coach Doug Dickey and his Tennessee Vol team in the bowl game).
Graves only head coaching job was at Florida and he was only 51 when he made the move to AD. In a sort of ironic twist Graves played at Tennessee and he coached at UF, his replacement Doug Dickey played at UF and was coaching at Tennessee.
I could get into Doug Dickey’s dismal performance at UF, and his hypocrisy after he left, but that would take far too long… suffice it to say Doug Dickey was no where near the coach nor man as Ray Graves.