YES! (love Saturday O&B games) Florida will hold its annual intrasquad scrimmage, the Orange and Blue Game, on Saturday, April 12 at 1 p.m. ET, the program announced Friday. Sponsored by the Gators' Name, Image and Likeness partner, Florida Victorious, admission to the event will be free of cost.
Back to the OP. If you want to bellyache about an OC go to that thread. This thread is for the O&B game.
247 has a nice article about the whole weekend of the O&B game: https://247sports.com/college/flori...5-orange-and-blue-spring-scrimmage-244285844/
I haven't gone to one in years. It's normally hot, it's basically a practice and the beer was back at the car.
The beer is inside now, but bring your credit card. You may want to see about getting your limit raised too.
Hot- are you from Alaska? I've been two O&B games. One was cool, in the high 60s. The other was warm, I guess around the low 80s. All in all Gainsville is temperate in early April.
Usually the weather in G'ville in April is pretty nice. I guess "hot" is only relative to what might pass as Winter around here. Hot in Gainesville is late July, early Aug when it feels like being draped in a wet blanket inside a steam room.
DJ will have all spring and fall practice as the unquestioned No.1. Expecting big things from the offense. Hope the O line can do it's job.
I think the offense will continue to improve. Almost the entire OL returns. As long as the coaching staff doesn't try to roll Kam Waites or Damian George out at RT again, I think the OL will be a team strength along with RB's. We just need to have some WR's step-up. My real concern is whether the D will regress to early 2024 season form. If that happens it won't matter if the O improves or not.
Agree on the Defense. If the switch that turned on about 5 games into the season doesn't get switched off and the coaching stays consistent, I see no reason not to improve. I mean we sacked LSU QB more times in that one game than they gave up all year.
We lost a lot of 1's and 2's on D. It will be interesting to see if they can come out and continue to be as effective and disruptive as they were in late 2024 or will we see a passive D get shredded like we did in the early part of the season. I loved our defensive line effort in the LSU game, but I also temper that enthusiasm with the knowledge that LSU had one key OLinemen out and another knocked out of the game early on. I think we have some really good young D talent on the team and hoping they get coached up and look like the D we saw late in the season in 2024. I really hope that is the case, because it doesn't appear that we are looking to backfill losses from the portal much at all.
I agree about DJ. He's the main reason we're expecting big things next year. Why wouldn't the OL do it's job next year? They return 9 of their top 10 guys.
Waites looks like emergency depth as this point. I wonder if he'll even come back if he's 3rd team after spring. George is entrenched at RG. RT will be some combination of Manuel/Jones/Westphal/Lovett. From what I understand they want to groom Westphal as the #2 LT and projected 2026 starter, but will compete at RT in the spring as well. There's normal college losses on the defense two deep, not excessive. The defense also returns a lot of players. They return enough experienced players to fill out a two deep. They lost a few DTs and a couple edges transferred (talking about this in the recruiting forum), but also return a lot of talent. I think adding a quality NT type will fill the DL. For the two edge guys that transferred, they didn't want to compete with the other four that are returning. The ILB room is stacked and the DBs just need to get healthy. For the LSU game, I think five guys had sacks. Sapp was a menace all day against everyone he lined up against. LSUs entire OL had trouble with UF, not just the backups. After LSU UF did even better the next two games.
