Florida Gators Have a Good Problem on Offense

Have you taken a good look at the Florida-Hawai'i box score from Saturday?  Go ahead, examine it again.

Eight different players had a reception, but just two had multiple catches (Murphy and Casey, each with two).  Ten different players ran the ball as a part of the normal offense, but just four had five or more carries, and two of those were quarterbacks.

Did I mention the top receiver and top tight end didn’t even play?

Dan Mullen’s spread offense is going to have to figure out a way to spread the ball around a lot this fall, because there are a lot of players who deserve a chance at getting it.  Mullen definitely gave it the old college try last Saturday, as a lot of different guys see the field early and often.

It probably took many Gator fans that didn’t buy a program until the third quarter to figure out who No. 16 even was (it was Carl Moore).

Percy Harvin, Louis Murphy, Carl Moore, Deonte Thompson, and Riley Cooper are the top five receivers, and they will all need to be fed the ball.  Harvin will get it on carries out of the backfield too.

Kestahn Moore, Emmanuel Moody, Chris Rainey, Brandon James, and Jeffrey Demps will also be taking handoffs, tosses, and pitches, as well as occasionally catching passes.  Tate Casey showed he can still catch and block, and Aaron Hernandez is a guy the coaches really like.

That is 12 guys to spread the ball around to.  Cameron Newton appears to be the new short yardage back, so bump that up to 13.  If Mon Williams can get healthy, there’s a small chance he could fight his way into the rotation.  Then you’ve got the backup receivers like David Nelson and Frankie Hammond, Jr.

Did I miss anyone?

Oh, right.  That Tebow guy.  He’s going to be tossing the ball around and getting a few carries too, I suppose.

Thanks to interception returns, a punt return, and some big gains on offense, the Gators only ran 55 plays against Hawai’i.  They turned them into 409 yards for 7.38 yards per play, all logged by 15 different guys.

That’s not bad for the limited number of plays, but let’s be honest—not many guys will be happy with getting five or fewer touches a game.

I would expect Florida to have a lot more plays per game from here on out.  The defense will be able to get more stops than last season, and it won’t be scoring twice a game all year.  It also won’t be shutting everyone out, so opportunities will arise in kickoff returns.  Great as he is, James won’t return a punt for a touchdown every game either. There will be more footballs to go around.

Everyone is happy this week at least because they got an easy win, and no one was expecting to get featured much anyway.  This could be a concern for other teams, and it probably would have been last season.  After all, Jarred Fayson decided to transfer last November because he was upset about not getting the ball more.

This year, however, we’ve heard nothing but good things out of the coaches in regards to chemistry.  The guys seem to know that together they get a lot more done.

If nothing else, it leaves no excuses if the offense stagnates into the Tebow-Harvin show like it did at times last season.  There are far too many capable guys for injuries to force that to happen again.

Every season under Meyer, the number of playmakers available to the offense has increased.  This season, the riches are almost embarrassing.  Barring injuries, of course, it should be incredibly fun to watch.