Florida Vs. Miami Post-Game Analysis

Miami's offensive gameplan was designed to take as much pressure off of Robert Marve as a possible decision maker and QB.  Miami knew how tough it was going to be coming into the swamp with a freshman and first time starter at QB.  Miami's offensive gameplan did not give Robert Marve any chances to make critical mistakes, and thus gave the Gators no chance for any turnovers.  Marve's longest completion was 14 yards.  The strategy was to give Robert Marve easy throws, and then let him loose to scramble in the event that he did not have any options.  Thus he had a high completion percentage, an abysmal 3.8 yards per attempt or 6.9 yards per completion, and 9 rushes for 6 yards or a 0.7 average.

2. The Miami offense averaged 1.6 yards per carry, and only scored 3 points.

Miami has been a very good team running the ball on the ground, and so the credit here has to go to Florida.  As I stated, we knew that Florida was good against the run, and they were #1 against the run in the SEC last year.  Florida knew that Miami had a young QB, and a good running game.  Florida dared Miami to beat their defense through the air, and Miami refused to put that much pressure on Marve.  Thus Florida stacked it up against the run, and Miami paid for it.  Cooper was held to 2.1 yards per carry, and James was held to 2.0 yards per carry.  The best rusher was Derron Thomas who averaged 3.1 yards per carry.

3. The Florida offense struggled the entire game up until the 4th quarter.

-Miami had been planning for this game all offseason.  They played an FCS team that had a record of 5-7.  They could easily be overlooked.  Florida was the first real game of the season, and Randy Shannon and his coaching staff spent most of the offseason preparing for the Gators, and it showed.  Anything less than a brilliant gameplan would have been a disappointment with all of the time they had to prepare for this game.  They had the game film from the Auburn, Georgia, and Michigan games last year to use as preparation for the Gators.

-Miami had a solid defense.  They were good last year, and then added players like Marcus Forston, Arthur Brown, Brandon Harris, and Sean Spence.  They are very fast on defense and they were able to eliminate or limit a lot of the things that Florida wanted to do offensively with guys like Chris Rainey, Jeff Demps, and Percy Harvin.

-The Gators had addressed many of these issues from those games during the offseason, but they hinged around world class athlete Cornelius Ingram, and what he was able to do.  The ACL injury to his knee forced the Gators to scrap much of the time they spent working on the problem because without Cornelius they did not have the depth or personnel to do what they would have liked against the schemes that they saw against Miami, and other teams dating back to Auburn last year.

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