Short, but (NOT so) Sweet

[DRU2012]

It is difficult to overstate how putrid our defense really is.
Having tried to do so REPEATEDLY, especially throughout today’s game against TAMU, I’m not even gonna keep trying.
Unless you somehow harbor hopes of a drastic and lasting surge of across-the-board improvement over the remainder of our schedule, one that commences at once and carries us to Atlanta for December’s SEC Championship, you can pretty well FORGET about a full-on return to Gator Glory anytime soon.
That defense isn’t “a work in progress” but rather “a sinking ship” ...see me as “one of the rats” because I am so quick to recognize this and “desert” them, well, my only defense is that I see no point in deceiving ourselves:
There is an enormous amount of rebuilding and reCOACHING to be done yet. Strangely enough, I THOUGHT that in Grantham we already HAD the right man in place to do just that—AND that the process was already well-underway!
Apparently not.
What do you suppose will need to be done? Do we already at least have the Coaches to accomplish it? Or in addition to pending recruiting upgrades, are major changes required on our staff? Grantham got too much of the credit for the improved “pressure D” I think last coupla seasons; I fear we must be careful about not blaming him alone too much now. The main point is to examine what we might DO about it all now! I suspect this is more a recruiting challenge than anything else: At the very least, we need to find out for sure what our Defensive coordinator and co. can re-establish if given outstanding “raw-material” to work with once more. I doubt Mullens’ offense will be a “trouble spot” from here, in any event.
Oh, but that WOEFUL defense! You watch the handful of elite teams (SEC and “SEC-STYLE”, like Clemsen) play now and they are similarly strong, dominant on BOTH sides of the ball!
Is anything LESS THAN THAT ACCEPTABLE TO US??!

 

[DRU2012]

NOTE:
Hours later, and the reaction among Gator Nation at large has been fairly predictable...
They are calling for Grantham’s head!
That’s right: The first knee jerk reaction is a widespread call for him to be fired.
Mind you, I DO understand it—even cautioned that, inevitable as it may be about to be, it was NOT necessarily an effective answer—that he may not deserve the whole blame any more than our seemingly “growing defensive effectiveness” LAST coupla seasons were to his CREDIT.
It seemed far more apparent that Mullens’ effective network far and wide enabling his long reach and ability to judge and develop under-utilized talent was able to effectively find and supply outstanding additional talent, essentially “after-the-fact”—and on that boost in depth and capability Grantham DID seem able to get laudable results.
I don’t know; I’m often among the FIRST to judge failure to fulfill well-paid, over-hyped expectations harshly at this level—especially when they DO appear to so spectacularly fail us. But I’m NOT so sure that firing Grantham now is the answer...at least not yet. Do we have a clear bead on his prospective replacement?
Among the “damn shames” of the current situation is that had we shown even the SLIGHTEST ordered growth on defense today I believe we “woulda/coulda/SHOULDA” WON going away—and going by results elsewhere (above all for eg by the Bama vs Ol’ Miss game) the commentary/“beauty contest” that this season in particular once more, MORE and more is reduced to would have had us crowding the top even MORE closely after today—a COMPLETELY moot point now, however.
As things stand, we need to turn AWAY from the self-delusional rationalizations concerning our supposed prospective drive to Playoff participation, and instead look at this otherwise COMPLETELY DISFUNCTIONAL season as a transitional one that points the way towards all the issues we must FAST address in order to truly aspire to that level by NEXT year and beyond.
We were/ARE further away than we thought, and if we REALLY wanna get there we need to be addressing these things NOW...
It turns out these were ALWAYS pending obstacles, and our failure to recognize them were as big a problem as the missing pieces themselves.
Now we KNOW. We must face it—and GO TO WORK. Respond fully and effectively, and we may well soon find ourselves exactly where we long to be after all. But we’ll meanwhile have to be planning our future offense while rebuilding what is currently a moribund defense.
In the meantime, we’ll just have to be content with turning Kyle Trask and Co loose to try and simply outscore the rest of our SEC schedule for now (and meanwhile try not to whine TOO loudly about “what we might have done” with either “ANY defense” OR the schedule we were ORIGINALLY assigned pre-Covid!).
As implied before more than once, this is—and somewhat inevitably, once Covid struck—always was going to be a scrambling, excuse-ridden kind of season for a LOT of teams—ALL of ‘em, in fact, except the finalists and maybe a couple of unexpected “over-achievers”...
We must somehow let it “roll off our backs”, write it off and get all we can out of it: Whatever time and opportunity it affords us from here.
We are currently EXACTLY the frustrating, can’t-stop-ANYONE team you all saw out there today.

 

[Leakfan12]

This sucks, losing to Jimbo AGAIN. Malik Davis should have held on the ball (they win if he doesn't fumble or at least go to overtime). However, you're not going to win too many games where your D allows over 500 yards and allow the opponents to convert 12-15 on 3rd downs. It's like the 2007 season where the Offense was good and the Defense sucked (and that was Tebow's Heisman season). Honestly, I don't know if the Gators will have a winning record unless the Defense gets better. They're going against LSU another team with a good Offense and a Horrible Defense next week and that could be a shootout. I think that all the games expect for Georgia will be toss-ups (again depending hot the D does the rest of the season).

 

[DRU2012]

This sucks, losing to Jimbo AGAIN. Malik Davis should have held on the ball (they win if he doesn't fumble or at least go to overtime). However, you're not going to win too many games where your D allows over 500 yards and allow the opponents to convert 12-15 on 3rd downs. It's like the 2007 season where the Offense was good and the Defense sucked (and that was Tebow's Heisman season). Honestly, I don't know if the Gators will have a winning record unless the Defense gets better. They're going against LSU another team with a good Offense and a Horrible Defense next week and that could be a shootout. I think that all the games expect for Georgia will be toss-ups (again depending hot the D does the rest of the season).

I too noted that connection between the way THIS team and season is shaping up and the 2007 one...
Thing is though, we weren’t THIS devoid of defense, even that year. Geez, we are depressingly bad on that side of the ball! All the “bad signs” since early in Game One have settled in—if anything worsened! And Dan Mullens trying to pin it on “attendance” (that it beat us in College Station and might somehow reverse things back in the Swamp!) is manipulative, revisionist nonsense, I’m sad to say. I appreciate his emotional appeal to our solidarity—AND (by-the-way) what was probably an effort to distract and deflect the knee jerk overreaction on the part of fans to blame ALL defensive struggles solely on Grantham—but clearly more was and is going on there: Grantham was never the ONLY factor in our growth and STRENGTH on defense the last coupla seasons, and his ouster/replacement may not be the sudden panacea or blame-ridden, finger-pointing quick fix angry, fickle fans now suddenly, predictably turn to.
I’m not sure what “the fix” is—but we damn well better hope that, aside from better health, improved conditioning, and above all the various possible upgrades in personnel (whether by the return of missing pieces, the much-discussed and Mullen-exploited “transfer portal”, AND of course a general upward trend in recruiting) WILL more likely make the difference. Grantham didn’t bail on us when he was “the hot item” after LAST season; Let’s at least support our Head Coach’s judgment and reciprocating loyalty now.

 

[Leakfan12]

SEC Shorts took shots

 

[DRU2012]

We have no real grounds for meaningful debate: At least for now, our season is reduced to “all the things we can do as also-rans in an otherwise lost year to MAYBE work ourselves BACK into ‘contenders’ by NEXT year”—or perhaps the year after.
OUCH! But we ARE that far behind where we thought we were, where we realistically need to BE.
I refuse to drink the “delusional coolaid” any longer!

 

[Leakfan12]

The sad part about all of this is that Kyle Trask is having a great season and Kyle Pitts as well. Trask could win the Heisman depending on what happens with the rest of the regular season holds. Also, he should be the 3rd best QB in the Draft at least considering that two QBs ahead of him opted out of the season.

 

[Escambia94]

What a waste of a great offense. This defense is slowing down the 2020 Gators worse than a coronavirus infection.

 

[DRU2012]

The sad part about all of this is that Kyle Trask is having a great season and Kyle Pitts as well. Trask could win the Heisman depending on what happens with the rest of the regular season holds. Also, he should be the 3rd best QB in the Draft at least considering that two QBs ahead of him opted out of the season.

What a waste of a great offense. This defense is slowing down the 2020 Gators worse than a coronavirus infection.

Yep. Put together 2018’s running game, 2019’s pass defense, and this season’s offense (ESPECIALLY Trask, Pitts et al), and what do ya got? A real elite competitor, a la Tide, Tigers and few others (and our turn to finally crush UGA in Jacksonville!)...
BUT.
It doesn’t work that way, does it?
No. Instead, our Coach gets his foot stuck in his mouth showing his human, emotional side, and our up-til-now amazingly healthy squad (and conference, mostly, too) comes down with multiple Covid-positives in the first (and devastatingly inept on defense) loss. At the very least seemingly an apt literary “Plot twist”, one can’t help but consider the possibility of “the patient’s immune-response being extra-vulnerable in its aftermath”, know what I mean? I’d have of COURSE preferred us being able to “get right back up on the horse”—“packed Swamp” or NO!
But this is a real case of “when it rains it pours”—and maybe one of “Pathetic Fallacy” (ie. “Nature in sympathy with man”) as well.
One looks to exploit such “plot features” in the course of writing screenplays for movies—one of many effective cues to draw the viewer in.
Not that as Gator fans we NEEDED further “drawing in”. The problem for US would now seem to be possibly having to WITHDRAW ourselves from our annual “involvement” so early and soon THIS time around, it seems: I’m already anticipating a BIG hole in my usual “Fall experienc”—in a time in which we already were driven to an empty feeling of too LITTLE “distraction” already!