I worry about the first game of the year whether we’ll have things put together well enough to win a game we’re expected to win. The Gators have the toughest schedule in college football this season, and their coach is sitting on a hot seat. Oddsmakers have Florida winning just half their games this year.
Reading a Gator message board, one poster felt confident the Gators would win because Mario would blow it as the game day coach. Maybe I am still suffering from the enormity of the Georgia Tech loss last year, but what a downer it would be to start the season with a loss to Gators. I am looking for insights of expert observers such as Skeeter, Elite80, and other football cognoscenti. How do we match up with them?
1 Like
Bikki, florida is not coached by bill walsh. One thing with uf is their offensive and defensive lines are not great. They also lack depth. Their best wr is similar to Restrepo. I don’t believe Restrepo is a number one and neither is Eugene Wilson. Both very good college receivers. UF is a team with a ton of holes. I like Miami. They have a qb and florida qb is a game manager.
Restrepo gives you all he’s got. I always liked the kid.
No doubt but the reality is he is not a number one.
Restrepo reminds me a lot of Berrios (who has done surprisingly well in the NFL.)
No idea how good Miami will be this year. Not a disaster if Miami loses to UF in Gainesville but it would be great if they could win.
The very flukey GT loss is more on Dawson and the ball carrier than Mario IMHO but the HC answers for everything. I believe Dawson learned his lesson and the QB will kneel when appropriate from now on.
Berrios is a good comparison. Both players are driven to overachieve. I recall when we obtained Berrios’s commitment. There was consider criticism of his size, whether or not his prep stardom would carry forward into the college game. Not only did it carry forward to the college game, but also to professional football.
Restrepo is not a No. 1, but neither was Howard Twilley, and we know how that turned out.
On Mario and Dawson first and foremost…Any idiot should have known not to to run a play there…
But also the officials…(Ya ya I know, shouldn’t have got there) BUT…There’s no way that’s a fumble, zero way
And don’t forget our all-American safety Kinchens in full WTF mode
No doubt about Mario being a great recruiter and just a great human being, an exemplar, possessing qualities that players’ parents find endearing. But Mario does have a game day stigma that the Georgia Tech game validated.
Losing to GT was sickening, and I’ve had a hard time dealing with it. I suppose the inglorious memory spurred me to start this thread. I would rue losing to Florida to start the season.
I am really sold on Guidry as defensive coordinator, but not so impressed with Dawson. Whoever made the fatal decision against GT, certainly made one of the worst decisions in our program’s history. I agree as head coach Mario has to take responsibility for the ghastly loss.
Here’s my criticism of Dawson. In the two short years, I was an assistant coach with the great Carl Madison, arguably the greatest prep coach in Florida history, I learned one thing that I think is missing from our program. Deception. Carl was a maniac teaching players to hide the ball. When other teams played a Carl Madison team, there were numerous plays of defenders tackling guys without the ball. Carl used to say that it is a helluva lot harder to block them than fool them. Small wonder that Carl won state championships in Florida and two other states.
Miami just doesn’t fool people. Rarely does the camera man lose sight of the ball during a Miami game. It used to happen in every Carl Madison game. Now that we have Cam Ward, we need to hone his ball handling skills and add greater deception to our offense. With Ward’s skill coupled with two bullish RBs, we should be driving defenses crazy.