Spring Practice Starts 3/07

Damn right. I'm enjoying the 24 unbeaten season and playoff victories for our National Championship playing in my head!

 

Yeah, Kentucky last year, with their new OC brought in highy touted QB transfer Leavy, who proceeded to have one of his worst seasons, now they bring in a former 5* backup , who's play is still basically unknown and they lost their OC. USC lost a bunch if talent including starting QB, A&M is in rebuild mode (with most of our former defensive players) and with new coach and staff, Miss st. New coach and staff, and lost a lot of what talent they had, Miami, lost to a lot of talent as well at WR, RB, and some defense. Jury still out on what Cam Ward can do for them.

Truthfully probably only Texas, UGA, and Ole miss have noticeably improved and the common denominator is they return a starting QB. That of Which, IMO is the key reason (along which having a more experienced team than last yr) that we will be greatly improved, because we have one of the most experienced starting QB in college coming back after his best season yet last year. Mertz will be starting next season with 43 P5 starts. His 32 starts heading into last season was 4th in all of NCAA, this year he is even higher.

 

I think you are forgetting that they KY got a very high quality LB from GA in Dumas-Johnson, a high quality CB from Bama, a starting OT from TN, a quality RB from Bucknuts, a great WR from a lower level, a potentially good receiver from aTm. They did really well in the portal.

Missouri got their quality QB back up while retaining their great one from last year, got McClellan from us, high quality LB from GA, their starting LT for the next 3 years from OU, high quality CB from Clemson, while not losing much in the portal.

TN got a nice TE from ND, a quality db from MTS, a high quality prospect at WR from Tulane, their starting LT for the next 3 years, and only lost one I think much of in Tyler Baron. They put more pieces in place for their young, more talented QB.

UCF getting KJ Jefferson is enough to make them much more competitive this year.

LSU got a lot of talent at db in the portal to shore up their porous secondary. I don't expect Kelly to ever have a really bad offense. They just needed to improve their D.

Overall, I think we just have to get better to tread water with this year's results. We need to get a ton better to be at 8 to 9 wins.

 

KJ Jeff can just run on the Gator D like he did the 4th quarter last year while at Arkansas.

 

Mizzou and TN are also losing most of their defenses from last year.

LSU is losing their Heisman winner and their WRs.

UCF is UCF.

 

Yeah, but if our kicker hits the chip shot FG, all would have been forgiven.

 

Will be great if our scheme gets guys open 20+ yards, Mertz has time to find them, and is accurate. Starts matter. But protection, scheme accuracy do as well. The lateral passes are largely just junk.

 

That’s all oline. They got open last year but Mertz had no time hence all the short passes. That’s not scheme, that’s lack of blocking.

 

Nah Mr 700 won’t be running the defense this season so we should be good to go against them

 

All good stuff, but we don't play USC in 2024... figures they'd take that highly probable win (would have been a home game) from us.

But out of the 3 hardest teams we play in 2024 at least we have Ole Miss at home. Now if we can just beat the teams we normally beat, and take one of those 3 hard games, I'd call that a great year.

 

We don't play Missouri, and as I mentioned above, we don't play USC. But I agree with your assessment... 8 or 9 wins
will be tough, but I think our 7 home game schedule helps us out immensely with the rest of that ridiculous 2024 football schedule we have.

 

^^by normally beat who are we referring to? Kentucky and Missouri records versus UF do not indicate we dominate them. Other than Vandy and South Carolina, would not see any games UF is clearly better than in the SEC. We beat TN regularly when they have posted better overall records. We have played poorly away from the Swamp, even losing to Vandy 2 years back. This could be a year where we best UM, UCF and FSU, if healthy. All have new QBs and lost of talent losses. Could come down to whose portal transfers were better

 

We normally beat Kentucky and Tennessee. We have Kentucky at home and we had better find a way to stop their running game.

 

You’re spot on. All those teams got much better in the portal.

 

Yep and pressure Tennessee new qb and we have great shot at winning.

 

If we are talking about same field goal id say 44 not a chippy. I would say, getting the 5 yard penalty before that changed things. From 39 that FG is good.

 

You're right. I am still thinking of divisions, though the SEC can really make our matchups worse every year without guaranteed weaker teams in our division. I hope our home field can be an advantage this year.

 

At times, the blocking was horrendous, if not usually suspect. We had two OL coaches, one of whom it would be difficult to make a case is good as a teacher, recruiter or OC. We have two OL coaches again. We should expect the OL to improve because it's paramount. If it does not, it would seem we have to move on, then recruit better players. But if that were the scenario, we would again be looking at two seasons to see acceptable OL play. That would be awful- more excuses then finally making moves to get better staff at the position. That aside, I cannot see how to actually measure how much time Mertz had on some plays where we had receivers open downfield, Mertz had time, and was somewhat accurate getting the ball downfield. Yes, our OL was a weakness overall, but there had to be a number of plays all season he did have time and it would be nice to know how often Mertz made the pass so we could extrapolate some expectation of how much our pass game will improve if the OL handles their assignment.

 

Do Gators return to practice today?

 

Watch the games again and it’s not hard to see that the line was terrible. It was pretty good the year before with the same coaches. I don’t believe it’s coaching and our recruiting for line has been subpar. Recruiting comes down to cash and my guess is that the money has been prioritized elsewhere and I think that’s a huge mistake. An offense is as good as it’s offensive line and ours hasn’t been the most gifted talent wise.