We were worried about QB and the defense...

Utah had 50 yards in the 2nd half

 

Waiting for dumb mistakes to get cleaned up since last year.

Substantial roster turnover. And the mistakes are still happening.

It’s not the players.

 

I was concerned about the offensive line and sadly I was right to be.

 

Mertz ended up being who I thought he was: accurate, good at reading the defense generally, limited in playmaking ability and not elusive. He could lead us to wins, but much of the rest of the offense, including coaching, is not good enough to win more than a few games. We are young on defense and will take some lumps but will likely be much improved from last year, despite the lack of pressure on Barnes. But make no mistake, unless Rising and Kuithe get back quickly, Utah's whole games are going to look like their second half nightmare on offense. Second half was a boring battle of two bad teams.

 

What we need are three OL coaches, not two.

 

Disappointing to say the least

 

I posted this elsewhere:
Ok so first of all - tip the cap to Utah their front 7 played out of their mind. Uf coaches did what they promised though. They didn’t run into stacked boxes they took what Utah gave them and passed into favorable match ups. The biggest problem in the game upon review were critical mistakes at the worst possible moment. 4 penalties on third down and 2 penalties on 4th down, 4 of which ended up causing changes in possession. Special teams was also the difference. Utah routinely punted Florida deep giving Florida bad field position all day. Utah also hit a 50 yard fg. Meanwhile Uf misses a chip shot to make it 7-6, then commits one of the dumbest penalties ever to lose possession and then Utah scored again immediately to go up 14-3. That was a 10 point swing. Then they shank a punt a Utah gets another 3. So Uf was -16 points because of special teams which was really the difference in the game. The defense was much better. Gave up only 3.5 ypc and only allowed Utah 3-13 on third down. So defense played better and the offense tried to take what Utah defense was giving them. We even saw a lot of quick passes which we called for all of last year. Unfortunately, it was special teams and really badly timed mental mistakes which ultimately cost the game. Im optimistic that the team has room to grow from that.

 

I don't think BN is a bad coach or play caller, when you run the style of offense that he does (similar to UGAG and Bama), you need 5 stars across the offensive Line (and Dline would help too). With a style like Mullen, you can get by with less OL talent.

 

I'm wondering if the non-existence of a dedicated ST coach can be considered anything other than incompetence. If there was a coach on the sideline whose job was ST, do you think there would have been two guys out there wearing the same number on the punt return team? He would have to be blind, drunk, or taking a bribe.

 

I thought the D was respectable. After that bomb to start the game I’m sure everyone thought “here we go again”. But the D kept us in the game for the most part.

Mertz I was less impressed with. The OL is clearly not good, but several sacks were from Mertz holding the ball or being unaware. Also, we didn’t get our first (and only!?) 3rd conversion until the 4th Q? That’s some ugly stuff, and you can’t just dismiss it as dumb mistakes or penalties. Only bad offense has those issues. That being said, I wouldn’t go so far as to say QB play lost us the game. But I also doubt the plan was to sling it around 40+ times like the 2020 offense.

 

I think Mertz just pump faked again.

 

I thought Graham played pretty well, honestly. A couple of his throws were absolute dimes - I was not expecting that.
However, the pump fake thing has to go away. Fast. Herbie mentioned that several times last night - it doesn't work if the receiver is still running the route; you're not fooling anyone.

 

My thoughts.
Defense played well. Going to be much better than last years D. Forced 6 punts and take away the 1st play of game held Utah to less than 200 yards total offense.
Offense has to get better and I think it will. Lot of new parts. Glad we have a game before Tennessee to gain more experience. We are playing a lot of young guys.
We shot ourselves in the foot with mistakes so many times it became hard to watch. This too HAS to get better. This has to be frustrating to CBN.
I don’t understand why our special teams are so unspecial. CBN puts a lot of emphasis on detail and we make a lot of mistakes on kickoffs and punt returns. Missed field goals happen but Damn!
I like our chances this year. Still

 

The screen on 4th and 14 was inexplicably bad

Running down the clock to 5 seconds with time winding down

Illegal formations killed the offense

onward

 

We lost because we have a mediocre OC and below-average play-caller. We have an offensive scheme a high school DC knows how to defend,

 

The undisciplined football just reminded me so much of the Muschamp years. You can see we have a few good ball players that will just need time. Total rebuild year if there ever was one. I like our WR corps, Shemar James, some of the d linemen. Devin Moore looks good still. But all the players in the world don't mean squat if they don't play with discipline and intelligence.

 

What was last year if this is the total rebuild year?

I’m sorry, but no.

 

This is pure speculation as I have no insight to practices, but maybe having two O-line coaches is causing some confusion if they aren't getting coached up as a group? I do not know of any other teams that have two O-line coaches. What does each coach do? Is the group split up or do the coaches take turns?

 

Two OL coaches
No ST coach
An OC who doesn’t call plays and a HC who insists on calling them.

Areas of struggle last night

1. OL protection and penalties
2. Special teams play and miscues
3. Boring, predictable playcalling that took us away from running game, failed to set a tempo/rhythm, couls not pick up the pace in the 4th Q to try to score and get the ball back.


I will never claim to be the smartest guy in the room when it comes to football. But there is no way I’m the only one seeing this.