Gator Game Day (11/29/14): At Doak Cambell

[Ufgatorfan]

Why are we going for broke on every play......come on Roper. Roper sucks I don't care what people say. He calls some questionable plays. All year he doesn't seem to make the right calls. We don't deserve any success. Poor pass Harris. I'm not mad at him he had to sit on the side line behind Driskel knowing he's a much better QB all because Muschamp had a hard on for Driskel.

 

[miltongator]

Ever hear this before....Wait till next year.

 

[DRU2012]

I strongly feel that had Muschamp pulled the trigger earlier on Harris he would be a hell of a lot better and comfortable with this offense. This is why Muschamp is not a good HC. He makes poor decisions and does not put his team in a position to win. He has so often played not to lose which translates into playing not to win. He does not learn from his mistakes. I hope he looks back on this and realizes his flawes as a HC.

Exactly how I feel, what I've been trying to say for some time.
As for the "Crappy Bowl Game" we "probably should neither deserve nor be proud to play in", I made the same point week before we "qualified", but of course, in purely practical terms, with the way the rules work now, we pretty well HAVE to take that invite, wherever it is, just to exercise the "privilege" of practicing as a team another month-plus in preparation for it, and all that gives our young players in terms of experience alone (other reasons too--but we ccan discuss all this another time).

 

[miltongator]

Another record for WM. No other team has ever won after throwing 4 int's. Now they have.

 

[DRU2012]

Man, I am getting that horrible, empty frustration-feeling without even watching or following the game--just glancing at y'all's comments here from time to time. Sounds like it's gone EXACTLY how I knew it would from the moment Westbrook dropped that TD into their hands for the pick-6 way back in the 1st qrtr. Lots of FG-attempts you'd think SOME of MIGHT have been TDs, made or not, that 14-pt swing alone having made the big difference even WITHOUT figuring in the way it swung the game emotionally--which is EVERYTHING in "rivalry games", btw.
I kept this thread "open", 1st on my phone, then on my Mac once I got over here to Tess' place (OK--I was "off" for maybe 10-15 minutes or so in there--but must have been the half, 'cause seems no one posted anything during that time) for the whole game after all--without actually watching another play of it since it was still 9-7 for us with 'Nals driving end-of-1st qrtr.
I remain unconvinced we played ANY team more talented than us this season--just better-coached. That really pisses me off...That, and the way the mis-coaching made just about EVERY game, win or lose, a chore to watch--with the possibility that they'd rip our hearts open at any time hanging over every moment of every game.

 

[awebbf5]

So who will our new coach be fellas? I am throat punching the first person that says Kerwin Bell

 

[DRU2012]

OH, and one more thing--I almost said it BEFORE this game, just to be "contrarian", and I WILL say it now:
"SCREW YOU, WILL MUSCHAMP! Yeah, you're an "OK guy", probably a good husband, father, and man, and you put some things right along the way here--but as a Coach you're stubborn, thick-headed, inflexible, and YOU MADE A MESS OF EVERYTHING I LOVE ABOUT OUR TEAM AND PROGRAM. GOOD RIDDANCE!!!"

 

[Escambia94]

I do not care who the next coach is as long as it is not Muschamp.

I have no idea why this team sucked so bad, even with a change at quarterback and a tweak to the offense.

The only explanation is that the team is cursed.

 

[Escambia94]

Will Muschamp sucks as a head coach, but he is going to piss us off by winning championships with another team.

 

[DRU2012]

So who will our new coach be fellas? I am throat punching the first person that says Kerwin Bell

Not gonna endorse anyone--too early in the process, for one thing...Only guy we know for sure has outright thrown his hat in the ring is Mike Gundy at OSU ("I'm happy where I am...only job I'd even want besides this one WOULD be as Florida Coach"...guess he gets points for coming right out first and saying it)...and of course, the talk about McDaniels being interested is in turn "interesting", if only because he's a first-class pro'-level former HC/current OC who as Head Coach at Denver was the only one who believed in TT and gave him his one chance, then stuck with him in spite of all that pressure and disapproval from his boss, John Elway.
Lots more to come, though...Despite the pessimism of some, there ARE some good ones out there. Now, whether one of them is "the RIGHT guy" and whether that's the one we'll go after and GET, well, that's exactly what we'll be looking for and AT--with no guarantee it'll work out, either.

 

[miltongator]

I vote for Art Briles. I'm sure Foley will be calling me to pick my brain on the choices.

 

[DRU2012]

I do not care who the next coach is as long as it is not Muschamp.

I have no idea why this team sucked so bad, even with a change at quarterback and a tweak to the offense.

The only explanation is that the team is cursed.

That wasn't a "curse" I saw out there today, or any OTHER of those stretches of clumsiness and/or stupidity and/or mediocrity etc etc etc. It was poor planning, poor preparation, poor choices, poor execution, poor adaptation, poor motivation blah blah blah blah blah all-adding-up-to POOR COACHING.
The change at QB should have come MUCH earlier, had an effect that could have/WOULD have been greater and more further developed HAD it been done earlier and anyway was just one more improvement/advantage squandered by all-of-the-above and everything ELSE--and that "tweak" was a lot more minimal than we were led to believe would be forthcoming in the first place--and given everything else that was below-par there, was never gonna be enough anyway.
And I KNOW you are frustrated, down and disgusted now, E-, am right there with ya, once again, as we all have been all too often more and more over time--but when it comes to who the "NEXT Coach" will be, you SHOULD "CARE", and of course I believe you WILL, as will we all. Just as soon as we can, each of us in our own time and way, rinse the bad taste from our mouths, wash away the "dirty feeling" that has come to cling to and around us with experiences like being immersed in game-experiences like today's (which is one large reason why I withdrew from it, as much as I could, as EARLY as possible once it suddenly "turned sour and stinky" once more), and move on.

 

[DRU2012]

I vote for Art Briles. I'm sure Foley will be calling me to pick my brain on the choices.

He (Foley) could do worse. And HAS, obviously.

 

[DRU2012]

Will Muschamp sucks as a head coach, but he is going to piss us off by winning championships with another team.

Yeah, he'll certainly get other chances. Maybe needs to do what Addazio did--aim a little (a LOT) lower, class-and-talent-level-wise, expectation-level too. Big time program'll give him a DC job for sure, if he wants it...and a no-winning-tradition school could give him the "big-fish-in-small-pond" chance he may need to re-establish his credentials--maybe even finally learn a few things about TEACHING young men, leading them somewhere they had no idea they could go, and growing himself along the way. THEN he'd probably eventually get a chance to move back to the upper-echelons and "piss us off by winning Championships". Be a different kinda guy AND Coach by then, though...

 

[DRU2012]

(Notice how far I have recovered from today's "roll-in-the-crap" already, compared to those who kept watching--that's all the difference there is between us, too...I say that NOT to rub it in, but to reassure you that you will all be there soon as well--I just had a head start. If that was just one game, one time, mid-season for a team that didn't pull that sorta thing routinely, as a Coach I'd just say "BURN it!". Forget watching the film on that one: "We move ON..."
But that's been the problem with THIS team. That kind of unceasing crappiness marked by moments of complete and utter failure-across-the-BOARD has been more and more what has passed for "the defining characteristic" of our on-field, in-game performances. Except for those one or two guys we have mentioned elsewhere worth keeping around for specific and general reasons, EVERYONE ELSE on that staff should be GONE, canned, OUTTA HERE!!! Not just Roper, but Durkin, Leak, the LOT of 'em!)

 

[Escambia94]

That wasn't a "curse" I saw out there today, or any OTHER of those stretches of clumsiness and/or stupidity and/or mediocrity etc etc etc. It was poor planning, poor preparation, poor choices, poor execution, poor adaptation, poor motivation blah blah blah blah blah all-adding-up-to POOR COACHING.
The change at QB should have come MUCH earlier, had an effect that could have/WOULD have been greater and more further developed HAD it been done earlier and anyway was just one more improvement/advantage squandered by all-of-the-above and everything ELSE--and that "tweak" was a lot more minimal than we were led to believe would be forthcoming in the first place--and given everything else that was below-par there, was never gonna be enough anyway.
And I KNOW you are frustrated, down and disgusted now, E-, am right there with ya, once again, as we all have been all too often more and more over time--but when it comes to who the "NEXT Coach" will be, you SHOULD "CARE", and of course I believe you WILL, as will we all. Just as soon as we can, each of us in our own time and way, rinse the bad taste from our mouths, wash away the "dirty feeling" that has come to cling to and around us with experiences like being immersed in game-experiences like today's (which is one large reason why I withdrew from it, as much as I could, as EARLY as possible once it suddenly "turned sour and stinky" once more), and move on.

There is a curse. The Idaho game was rained out. Jake McGee was lost at TE in his first damn game. Harris had his sexual assault case affect a game where we could have used him. Two games decided by clock mishaps. Whatever voodoo Missouri did to Florida worked well. One dropped TD, and a couple field goals could have Florida atop the SEC. Let's not forget all the bad luck in 2013. Okay, let's forget it, but acknowledge that no team has ever been as unlucky as the 2013 Gators.

 

[DRU2012]

Last post here, fittingly last such post (among so MANY like it) for the SEASON here at GE...
("replay") Going back to late 1st qrtr of today's game, 9-0 Gators, lots of chances to really SEIZE the game, the 'Nals by their throats, kinda squandered in FGs but our D having grabbed ANOTHER one, this time inside their 10...1st and goal and Treon takes the shotgun snap, rolls right and has Westrbrook breaking past the defender with a clear path to the endzone, FINALLY a TD and a nice lead, throws a strike AND---off Westbrook's hands, he drops it GENTLY into the arms of the beaten-defender running the wrong, suddenly "right" way--and...
"OOHHH NOOO!! AW F*CK F*CK F*CK F*CK F*CK!!!!!"
16-0 turns into 9-7. Silent crowd turned into wild chop-chant delirium. Gator fire turns back into usual shrugging, half-assed fatalism that reflected their COACHES' attitudes.
From that point on, all team would EVER manage was gonna be the kind of "close loss" that was all that coaching staff, on some level, was ever playing for anyway. THAT'S what made EVERY game this Muschamp team played so hard to watch.

 

[DRU2012]

There is a curse. The Idaho game was rained out. Jake McGee was lost at TE in his first damn game. Harris had his sexual assault case affect a game where we could have used him. Two games decided by clock mishaps. Whatever voodoo Missouri did to Florida worked well. One dropped TD, and a couple field goals could have Florida atop the SEC. Let's not forget all the bad luck in 2013. Okay, let's forget it, but acknowledge that no team has ever been as unlucky as the 2013 Gators.

Hmmm...when you put it like that. And I certainly felt like that 2013 team was snake-bit, now that you mention it.
But as I noted in my intro here today (and was all too well borne-out by events), this is a very brittle team, emotion and team-composure-wise. We WERE still "ahead" even AFTER that self-inflicted disaster, the 14-pt turn-around. I just KNEW we'd fold then, though--at least slouch around depressively for awhile (we never DID regain the fire we had early, even on defense). And we still had our chances, even so.
Us fans can bitch and moan, keep reminding ourselves and each other throughout a game how much better we'd be off if only such-and-such hadn't have happened--but the players CAN'T. The coaches can't let it happen. But it did, THEY did, every time. The old cliche, "A team is a reflection of its Head Coach", is one of those "cliches because it's TRUE".
All those "bad luck" things DID happen, though, and it did, DOES "make you wonder". At THIS point, though, I don't think it matters: The ONLY way to "change your luck" is to change the nature of your team, seems to me--and the one sure way to do THAT is to change the Head Coach--and a wholesale change in virtually every coach on that team can't HURT in this case, either. Which is exactly what is about to happen. Will it be "enough"? Well, "reality" is one strange state, according to the latest quantum-theory and mathematics that support it..."Schrodinger's Box", "collapsing wave-forms", "S.A.A.D" ("spooky-action-at-a-distance"), and so on, all just "one slice of the multiverse", the one we happen to be inhabiting a tiny part of in a minor solar system on one arm of just one of a million billion galaxies...Hard to say exactly what "luck" or "will' or "fault" IS, let alone the part each may play in any particular event. By the latest version of the theory, among an infinite number of possible universes, there IS one where we are all there, the same team and coaches but our bad luck here broke the other way and we WON very game, are about to enter the First Football Final Four undefeated...Is JD our QB there? Or did he get hurt again or something just before the season started, forcing Treon in from the start, McGee his "go-to out-guy" ('cause HE didn't get hurt), and so on and so forth...and does that mean Muschamp is by now being hailed as "Comeback Coach of the YEAR", maybe in truth just set up to have it all collapse NEXT season, and us perhaps end up somehow being in a WORSE "hole" THEN? Or is he even our COACH anymore there? Was he EVER???? Both, none and ALL are "extent" in SOME " 'Verse", according to the math...
I don't know...but I hope you get my point (such as it is): We are where we are, things went how they went--and all we can do is TRY and identify what we CAN do, and hope things work out better NEXT time, "HERE AND NOW". Yeah, we've had a couple of years of REALLY bad "luck", injury-wise--and no way of knowing what forces BESIDES "bad luck" played their parts there, but I think we DO know enough about things that the coaches, Head Coach on down, DID have control over, to hold them responsible, clean 'em out, and hope that the next regime will do better--and maybe even have better "LUCK"--than these did. And tonight, once I've drank a few more than I have so far, I hope I remember to raise one to those "alternate quantum-state-reality Gators, undefeated and seeded Numero UNO heading for the Playoffs"!!!

 

[DRU2012]

(And btw, @Escambia94, as far as "badluck/bad karma" theories go, I'm inclined to suspect the "everything and everyone Urban Meyer touches" one: Have you noticed what's happened, CONTINUED to happen to HIS teams, especially at QB???! If there's anything to that one, means that you can shake it a few years/coupla coaches down the line once he's gone, too. Utah seems to be "recovering" nicely now...That'd bode well for us AND the "next guy" here.)

 

[Leakfan12]

More breakdowns in defense. Great job DJ.......

and he's the coach for the bowl game though not sure they should play in one.