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LSU v. FLORIDA: TRASH TALK TUESDAY

October 7, 2008 in Fans, Gators, Main Content, SEC, SEC Fans, UGA | No comments

  SNL awoke today to find the grass greener, the sky “bluer,” and air fresher.  Why?  Because we are one day closer to the Florida v. LSU.  As if this simple truth was insufficient, LSU DE, Ricky Jean-Francois, provided a nice jolt (for a Tuesday) when he was quoted in the Daily Reveille as stating that he wouldn’t mind hurting Florida’s quixotix QB, Tebow.  Here’s the article:  

The LSU defensive line’s opening shot at the 2007 Heisman winner could resemble “a car wreck without a seat belt,” LSU junior defensive tackle Ricky Jean-Francois told The Orlando Sentinel.SNL, for one, thinks this quote is great news and thanks the dallying Frenchmen who decided to insert himself (figuratively perverts) into the bloodline that ultimately spawned Jean-Francois. 

“If we get a good shot on [Tebow], we’re going to try our best to take him out of the game,” Jean-Francois said. “With his size and his heart, it’s hard to get a clean shot.”

Tebow can rely on Florida’s trainers to help him if the Tigers do injure him, Jean-Francois added.

“If he does get hurt, there’s a trained medical staff at Florida, so you can go to the training room on Sunday,” Jean-Francois said.

The 6-foot-3-inch, 289-pound defensive tackle said his sentiment was not out of the ordinary.

“I think every lineman wants to get a good hit on a Heisman Trophy winner,” he said.

 

Moving on…

LSU plays Florida, ‘Bama and Georgia over the next three weeks-brutal. 

LSU’s RB, Chuck “The Truck” Scott has rushed for over 100 yards in each game this season.  He’s a beast and LSU’s offensive line, which includes 6′7 389 lb. guard, Herman Johnson, should be problematic.  This is a game in which Spikes must show up big time as Florida will need double-digit tackles from the Mike position to have any success on defense.  SNL expects to see alot of man-coverage on 1st-down and remains guardedly optimistic that Haden, who is improving weekly, will be able to lock down one side of the field.  In obvious passing situations we can expect a fairly heavy dose of the zone blitz given the fron-4’s inability to wreak havoc on their own.  More about this later… 

For now, suffice it to say that the importance of this game will continue to grow as the week wears on and Gator backers can expect the E-SPIN heads and the national pundits to pile on the LSU bandwagon as kickoff nears.  Never doubt, however, that the talent, coaching, and chemistry necessary to slay the Tigers of the LSU variety is present on this Gator team and that which need be done, will be done.

-So Sayeth the Shepherd

Tags: Gators, LSU, Miles, SEC, Urban

EARLY LOOK: FLORIDA v. LSU

October 6, 2008 in Gators, Main Content, SEC, SEC Fans, Saban, UGA, Vols | No comments

  Despite SNL’s ministrations in yesterday’s post, the Gator backers of the “Chicken Little” variety have all but forfeited this weekend’s contest with LSU.  The chat boards and call-in shows, propped up by the slothful of wit and feeble of heart, are rife with predictions of “a 20-point loss,” and hopes that “we [gators] don’t get embarassed.”  SNL, like a lighthouse on the sea of cowardice that currently floats the Gator fleet, is here to tell you that you are a bona fide  idiot if you don’t believe Florida can win this game.

Forget for a moment that Vegas has installed the Gators as 5-point favorites and turn to the empirical.  LSU is 4-0, with 3 nondescript home shellackings of cupcakes (yes, that includes you Miss St.), and one respectable victory on the plains of Auburn.  Because the Auburn victory is the most relevant in terms of talent and venue, this is where we look to prepare our case-in-chief.

Gators know that playing on The Plains at night is tough, this being the only venue that yielded a Gator-loss in 2006.  In a physical game LSU was able to prevail at Auburn 26-21.  In doing so, LSU racked up 398 total yards (220 passing and 178 rushing) and allowed 320 (250 passing and 70 rushing).  Those who witnessed this game can attest to the fact that the score was somewhat misleading as the defenses were largely stellar. 

SNL has oft-chronicled the futility of using transcendental comparisons to determine how good a particular team is, but this method comprises one of the few (ostensibly) objective means of comparison available and therefore, it is not just LSU’s victory on The Plains that must be considered, but what we’ve learned about both clubs in the weeks since.

Auburn has defeated UT by 2 at home (compare with UF’s 24-point road victory), and lost to Vandy by 1.  In those games, Auburn has averaged around 210 offensive (pun intended) yards.  The obvious inference is that LSU’s premiere victory came against one of the worst offensive clubs in CFB.

LSU has since posted a 34-24 home victory over Croom’s offensively incontinent Bulldogs.  There, LSU led 17-7 at halftime, and its defense gave up 300 yards and allowed MSU’s QB’s to complete 66% of their passes.  Nothing to be ashamed of in a game of relative insignificance, but hardly the statistical domination one would expect if, as many Gators believe, there exists no foreseeable scenario by which Florida can prevail over LSU in The Swamp this Saturday.  

The fact of the matter is that the Gator offense, warts and all, is by far the best offensive unit that LSU’s defense will face this year.  In fact, the Gator offense, even with its inarguable shortcomings to date, leads the SEC in scoring and Tebow, though occasionally inaccurate, leads the league in passer rating. 

Contrary to popular belief, the distillation process that underpins this week’s game does not tilt decidedly in LSU’s favor.  Florida is at home. Pope Meyer is a master at “circling the wagons” and LSU, while very, very good, has not played anyone outside of Auburn who posed even a credible threat.  Florida, in addition to a much tougher scehdule to date, is hungry, motivated, and knows that come Sunday, all perceived transgressions can be forgiven if they can defeat the Tigers this week. 

SNL will leave you all with a slightly revised quote by Rudyard Kipling in hopes that the dreary myopia currently gripping the Gator nation can be cured before 8:00 p.m. Saturday:

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: ‘A fool lies here who tried to Conquer the East.’

—So Sayeth the Shepherd

Tags: Gators, LSU, Pope Urban, SEC

ARKANSAS: A DANGEROUS GAME FOR FLORIDA?

October 2, 2008 in Main Content, SEC, SEC Fans | No comments

 Gators, meet Joe Haden.  He’s the above-average cornerback that “jumped the route” last week in The Swamp.  The result, as we all know, was a play the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott (look it up neophytes) which in turn has led to the fine mess we Gators are in now. 

Unfortunately for Haden, the untimely decision to gamble-which admittedly, looked much worse due to the lumbering free safety’s inability provide deep help-has made Arkansas a dangerous team.  No, not dangerous in the sense that the Hawgs pose a viable threat to the Gators, but dangerous in the sense that anything short of a total beatdown of this team will be deemed a colossal failure and spawn a fresh round of thickly Southern-accented attacks on the Gators over the local airwaves. 

Hell, it’s gotten so bad on this week’s localtalk radio shows, which are  hosted primarily by prominent Ex-Gators os Spuurier lineage who comprise a de facto  junta in Gville, has devolved from a general indictment of the offense, into pointed attacks on Mullen and surprisingly, the formerly untouchable Tebow.

In addition to spawning another week of verbally incontinent assaults on the Gators by the…err….more “rural-minded” fans ( PC enough Pierce?), allowing Arkansas any success at all Saturday will provide the national media with another reason to question this team and most importantly, will serve to undermine the confidence of the players heading into next week’s ostensible showdown with LSU.

Now, for those of you who view Saturday’s in October to be nothing more than a chance to down some barley-pops and check out this year’s crop of UF co-eds, the obvious pressure on the Gators, as 24-point road favorites coming off a shocking home loss, is incomprehensible.  Well this is the same way SNL feels about you when you show up at the tailgate with your sweater draped over your shoulders and loosely knotted in front of your soup-bowl chest. You know who you are “sweater-guy,”  you were among the ever-optimistic group shouting “a win is a win” from the rooftops after Florida’s seemingly one-sided wins over UT and UM. 

For the rest of us, who recognized early on that this year’s team was not without significant flaws, what was once a constructive bye week, has become more than a “must win,” it has become a veritable Waterloo for the Gators-on both sides of the ball.  And don’t think the players and coaches don’t know it. 

In retrospect, the pressure began before the season, when the national pundits heightened the expectations of this year’s Gator offense to a nearly unattainable level.  And, with each successive game, the failure to live up to the offensive expectations engendered a fear amongst Gator-backers that the offense might not be as good as advertised. These fears continued to crescendo following UM and UT, but were drowned out by the lofty ranking, (seemingly) much improved defense, and the unsubstantiated belief that the offense was employing a “rope-a-dope” tactic before opening up the big guns later in the year.  Following the Ole Miss game, even those most willing to swill copious amounts of Gator kool-aid have opened themselves to the possibility that this team is overrated.

The distillation of the foregoing facts has given rise to a dire situation this week as the Gators go on the road to play the SEC’s worst team.  The Gators are injured.  Arkansas has been blown out in consecutive weeks against top-5 foes, Alabama and Texas, but Petrino knows how to throw the ball.  And, like it or not Gator fans, Florida’s secondary and pass rush remain questionable and the offense is without direction or identity at this point. 

So, Gators, this Saturday can be summed up as follows:  The Gators  must play a perfect game against Arkansas to have a chance next week in The Swamp and this, my friends, is what is known as “pressure.” 

 -So Sayeth the Shepherd

Up Next:  Thursday’s Games

Photo courtesy of AP-wire

Tags: Arkansas, LSU, SEC, Urban

FLORIDA: THE ALTERNATIVE TRUTH

September 30, 2008 in Fans, Main Content, SEC, SEC Fans | No comments

 Before last week’s game, Gainesville Sun Sports Editor and Columnist, Robbie Andreu, put pen to paper and inked the following:

The more I think about Urban Meyer’s no-risk approach on offense, the more brilliant it seems.

SNL is not in the business of impugning the intelect or foresight of those who chronicle the Gators, so this post is by no means meant to be an excoriation exercise at Andreu’s expense.  That said there were plenty of non-journalism degree holders who watched the Gators “play it close to the vest” for 3 games and weren’t nearly as convinced of Urban’s genius heading into the Ole Miss game as Andreu was.  In fact, there was vocal minority of Gator-backers who believed before last Saturday that there were clearly-defined cracks in the Gator facade.

While it is difficult to tell if the “vocal minority” has garnered the numbers necessary to become a majority, it is clear from national pundits (see SI’s Mandel), local airwaves, and state fishwraps that Urban Meyer is no longer beyond reproach. Nor should he be since he is the head coach at one of the nation’s premiere football programs and oh yeah, a multi-millionaire as a result. 

Unswayed by the logic of his collegue and presumed friend, Gainesville Sun Columinist, Pat Dooley writes in today’s paper:

I think the emphasis on having Tebow become a better pocket passer has backfired to a point. We saw it Saturday against Ole Miss when Tebow was sacked three times and that doesn’t include the pass he threw to [offensive lineman] Maurkice Pouncey under pressure or any of the others that went awry because he held the ball too long.

That’s not Timmy being Timmy.
[...]
I’d let Tebow be Tebow, let him pull it down and run when the play isn’t there. Get him out of the pocket to throw on the run more. Tell him it’s OK again to be the guy he was last season.

As blog-god Dr. Saturday points out, Tebow averaged 15 carries per game last season, which is (drumroll please), the exact number of carries Tebow had against the Rebs.  Tebow also had a banner day in the pocket, passing for 319 yards.  The real difference between 2007 Tebow and 2008 Tebow seems less about the carries, or his ability to “create” Rembrandt quality works of art when the play implodes, than it is about Florida’s ability to field an offensive line that is without injury and knows its assignments.  Two starters were injured and did not play (or played sparingly) in the second half last Saturday and not to be outdone, Florida’s D-line has quickly deteriorated from the platoon of young bucks capable of wreaking modest amounts of havoc using a heavy rotation, into an ad-hoc unit of comprised of those warm-bodied males that remain available after the most recent round of season-threatening injuries.

However the occurrences of last Saturday may have manifested themselves in the psyche of the Florida offensive machine, the most glaring problem is a holdover from last year’s campaign of mediocracy:  Defense.  Predictably, Meyer remained stoically countenanced following the Ole Miss game, and even went so far as to openly place the blame for the loss at the feet of the offense, which fumbled on consecutive plays and proferred to the Rebels 3 drives of 50 yards or less as a token of its appreciation. 

Football exists on a continuum and to be sure, the offense’s willigness to part with the ball played a key role in the Gators undoing. But this rigid interpretation of Saturday’s drama misses the mark by failing to account for the secondary’s colossal failure on 3rd and 7, which resulted in an 86-yard touchdown pass.  Even accounting for X’s, O’s, leverage and technique, it is nearly impossible to explain how Florida could be burned for an 86-yard touchdown pass on a 3rd and long.  Thus, even though Florida’s secondary has generally been improved this year, the spectre of the “big play,” which embodies the legacy of the 2007 Gator defense, seems likely to play an equally importnat role in the 2008 production.  In fact, Both of Ole Miss’ touchdown passes came on 3rd down, and another completion on 3rd and long led  to McCluster’s 40-yard jaunt to paydirt. 

In the end, it now appears that Urban’s newfound adherence to the currency minted by the Coaches of yore (ball control, field position, turnovers etc…) is unlikely to yield victories against quality opponents as long as Florida’s defense, which remains young, is vulnerable to game-altering plays against opponents backed up on their own 14-yard line.  Which is another way of saying Dooley has probably hit the mark by proposing that this offense find a way to recapture last year’s explosiveness because the recently unamske defense is likely to have some tough afternoons in the future. 

For this week anyway, Florida should be able harness its opponent into a chest-thumping return of the swagger it posessed following the UT victory.  The unpalatable reciprocal, of course, is that even a small measure of success by Arkansas QB, Dick, will likely trigger severe PTSD from Gator-backers who suffered through Saturday’s Shakespearean tragedy.  Heading into what should be Florida’s “Waterloo” the following week, this Saturday’s contest is all about instilling faith in themselves and their fans for the Gators, because they will need an abundance of both to have a chance against LSU.

-So Sayeth the Shepherd

 

 

 

 

Tags: LSU, SEC, Urban

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