A reporter called it mundane at times. The head coach called it awful at times. “It” was the Florida offense against Arkansas.
A glance at the box score and news might lead you to think that “it” wasn’t that bad. You’d see 38 points scored on over 500 yards of offense, and two members of it earned All-SEC honors for the week. What could possibly have gone wrong?
Well, “it” didn’t pass the smell test for most of the first half, and it had a more difficult time getting into a true rhythm than it did even in the loss to Ole Miss. There was some sputtering, there were a lot of hankies on the field, but ultimately the game ended in a break through.
Florida’s Game Plan
For the first time all season, I could definitely tell that Florida had a well-defined game plan. Even against Tennessee, they of the squad that’s ranked 5th in the country in total defense, the offense kind of did whatever it wanted to almost aimlessly. It poked and prodded but never settled on something.
In this game against Arkansas, the objective was clear: use the run to set up the pass. I have a feeling that was always the plan, but in previous games there was a bent on finding out whether this is a “tough” Florida team or not. It’s something that Urban Meyer has done every year except last year (for whatever reason), and best as I can tell the main test is whether or not they can run up the middle.
There was still some gratuitous running up the middle, but for the most part it was part of a coherent offensive attack. They still tried to run microback Chris Rainey up the middle on 3rd-and-1 twice, something they did once last week, and it has yet to work any of the times.
However Tim Tebow brought back the self-play action, what the voice of the Gators Mic Hubert calls the “rocker step,” where he leans forward faking a run to set up passes. For some reason, that was mysteriously missing from the other games. Its return shows a conscious effort from the offensive staff to actually use the threat of running to set up passing.
Arkansas’ Game Plan
The Razorbacks’ strategy was not as cut-and-dried as Miami’s and Ole Miss’ blitz-heavy schemes. Arkansas did do some blitzing, but it was not overly successful and more often the Razorbacks left their linebackers up in pressure. They did not send them in quickly, but they didn’t drop them in coverage much either.
One new thing they did was a delayed blitz, where someone would wait a second before blitzing. That is something that no one else has tried on the Gators yet. They only did it twice; the first time Tebow was hit as he threw, resulting in an incompletion, and the second time was a short quick pass to Jeff Demps, not leaving enough time for the linebacker to get to Tebow first.
Arkansas clearly is challenged on that side of the ball, but for the first half they did well for their standards.
First Half
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3 months ago
After watching the game three times, this is a dead-on analysis. They do need to get the speed guys out on the edge more in the running game.
3 months ago
I think Florida's problems is simple. They have an embarrassing abundance of awesome skill players. This makes you think they should be able to move the ball and score at will. The problem is the skill position talent is not supported by a superior offensive line.
I see Saturday night's game as a must win for Urban Meyer. If he loses, he will be 13-6 in the last 19 games. Those are Ron Zook numbers, folks.
3 months ago
I still think Tebow needs to run early to soften up the defense and to make those step toward the line play actions even more deadly.
from 3 months ago
He's been doing plenty of early running. He just hasn't been doing the play action thing to get defenses to bite on the run later.
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