Is this season a surprise to you at 6-0?

[robdog]

I have to admin, I am one of those people who did NOT see the Gators starting like this. But as they say, ugly wins are STILL wins and the Gators ARE 6-0 and moving way up the BCS rankings...

Anyone else besides me surprised by the current results of the Gator's season?

 

[Leakfan12]

I am though it reminds me a little of the 2006 team though I think the 2006 team was better. OK that can be debated.

 

[NaffGutts]

i'm always optimistic, sometimes in reckless fashion, but that's what makes me a die hard fan.


I also think there are still some surprises waiting in the season for us

 

[Escambia94]

I am surprised, but I remain cautiously optimistic. One game at a time. I am not concerned about the BCS poll. They are already bowl eligible, and are at least playing for the Outback Bowl (SEC #3/4). Keep improving and that bowl game gets better. For now, I am shooting for Outback. If the Gators take care of business, then it can improve to Capital One Bowl (SEC #2) or Sugar Bowl (SEC #1). I won't even think about BCS Championship. This week we look forward to the Steve Spurrier Bowl.

 

[Leakfan12]

Escambia94 Agreed. I think USCar probably reeling from that lost and they're going to another hostile environment However I think the OBC will have his boys play because I'm sure he wants this game for a number of reasons. Also I sure Muschamp wants this game as well plus they're still a top ten team. Florida needs to their offense to wake up and cut down on the Penalties. I don't want them to give the OBC anything.

 

[NaffGutts]

Here are some facts to keep you from doubting us...

Gametime is @ 3:30, if LSU players were crying about humidity, South Carolina will be worse off

Vandy, Kentucky, LSU...
What do these teams have in common? They are South Carolinas road game, which only further confirms how horrible they are away. They secured a 4th quarter TD vs Vandy to barely scrape by 17/13. They trailed Kentucky at the half. And we all know what happened at Tiger Stadium.

Conner Shaw is still suffering from his shoulder injury, now I'll never wish for anyone to get hurt, but just stating it as a factor considering how brutal our Defense has been.
Viable example would be him trying to run, and Elam comes in for the stop. Lol

Lattimore is still not 100%, or atleast the Lattimore we knew 3 years ago. Whether it's a mental block or something physical, the 1st quarter will set the pace for him.

Our 'injury' list was reduced as most expected, 5 starters will be returning, most importantly, Jenkins, easley and our O line.

I'm confident in this game, more so than our LSU one. We have too many weapons on Offense and a Defense that is ALWAYS hungry. Also not to be foegotten is our Special Teams and the return of Debose as we seen him come back to life vs Vandy.

Go Gators

 

[Escambia94]

This year is an interesting one to watch Gator football. The first quarter tells us nothing about how the Gators will play in the third and fourth quarters. It is almost as if the team has two or three identities, and the opponent must survive all of those identities. You can have the first phase, but the Gators will win or tie the second phase, then dominate the third phase. Knowing that still does not reduce the tension and worry, but it makes for a more interesting game.

 

[DRU2012]

Look, this season is a veritable DEMONSTRATION of how and why all-of-the-following are true for a young team in the SEC--in all of Football, really:
(1) Coaches MUST somehow have the players on their team all narrowly focused on "The Next Team" they face in "The Next Game" they play--PERIOD. "One Game At A Time": That is the mantra.
(2) Run the ball and stop the run: It will pay off in the 4th quarter. Dominate the line-of-scrimmage and you ultimately dominate your opponent--and win the game.
(3) Defense wins Championships.
There are other approaches, obviously, other options and means-of-attack that a successful team will likely have to incorporate and become familiar with not only for its own use but in order to defend against it, and as a team gains experience and grows in depth and versatility the above "3 Basic Rules" can seem to fade in importance--but you lose sight of them at your peril.
All of which brings us to the question-at-hand:
Of COURSE I am surprised at our success this season--not just our record but how far we've come in every way, and the fact that we are now on the brink of it NOT being any kind of "surprise" anymore: This team is showing all of us that it belongs where it now is, and has a chance to go further than even any of US thought they'd be ready for this soon. However, I also now see that we SHOULDN'T have been so surprised, and had I realized how thoroughly this team had pursued, and to what degree achieved, acceptance and efficient performance in those simple "3 Basic Rules" above, my own expectations for this Gator team might have been more secretly optimistic than they actually were.
(Btw--At THIS point, I only hope that the coaches have done as good a job both preparing and concealing the continued development in variation and versatility they'll need, especially on offense, from here on throughout the rest of this season--starting with the NEXT game, of course--as they did with this team coming INTO the season, and are able to continue springing this "surprise" on all of college football, "one game at a time"!)

One more thing I DO want to take this opportunity to say, though, as we approach another huge test: No matter what, I am REALLY starting to love this team. Tough and getting tougher, good and getting better, I'm PROUD of them. Once again, it is GREAT TO BE...

 

[Dale J. Rodriguez]

I am not suprised by the start myself. I am suprised by the Team BUY IN.

I saw this time Buy in to what Coach Boom was trying to do when I had the privledge of watching us beat OSU in the Gator Bowl, and I knew it was going to carry over into the next season; but I did not realize how much they bought in.

These guys want more than to win a national championship, they want to etch their names in stone in Gator history, they are a NEW GATOR TEAM and I love it!

 

[DRU2012]

They ARE a "New Gator Team"--and man, we NEEDED a "new" team in every way, as much in attitude as anything else...that's what so much of what's happened here since Chomp's arrival has been his efforts to remake this program, this team--make it HIS, or at least his idea of "The Florida Way"--in every way...and it has happened/is happening! All those former 5-star clowns, prima donnas and loud-mouthed losers who'd come in demanding attention they were sure they were entitled to, and between whining in the locker room and sulking on the sideline managed to publicly split the team Meyer's last year here, Muschamp dealt with by ushering a large portion of them out the door "by request of the player, by mutual agreement of both he and the staff"...I knew we were "changing", even that we were better off without a lot of 'em and would ourselves be better eventually, but this good, this soon? No way...and I STILL don't fully accept it, not in my gut, no matter how much I may WANT to...but I'm coming around. We're beginning to run out of "teams we CAN'T beat", after all--in fact, I DON'T believe it about USCe anymore, and unless I'm wrong and they really CREAM us on Saturday after all, well, I don't want to do what we're counting on our whole team not to do and get ahead of ourselves at THIS point. Superstition dictates I not say ANYTHING, so I've gotta be careful here, but here's the thing: This Gator Team is showing so much of that "Buy In" you speak of, Dale, how can we do less?

 

[Escambia94]

Stop the press. Sports Illustrated has officially jinxed the Gators by putting on the cover of SI that the only team that might beat Bama is Florida. I was hoping to just sneak up on them and take them by surprise.

 

[DRU2012]

Stop the press. Sports Illustrated has officially jinxed the Gators by putting on the cover of SI that the only team that might beat Bama is Florida. I was hoping to just sneak up on them and take them by surprise.

I saw--and was NOT happy about it in the SLIGHTEST when I did...Normally, this would be "Bad News of the Highest Order" in so many ways...but since then I've been thinking about it, and there IS one chance of "redemption" here, one major counterpoint to be considered: NOTHING has gone "normally" with or for this season's Gator team. Every aspect of their success has either been "in spite of" various obstacles, and/or the failure of "normal" paths to dominance. There's a reason that we weren't projected to be more than a mid-pack SEC-team this year, why none of our projected starters were on the preseason first- or second-team All American and/or awards lists this past summer, even BEFORE a number of them were injured. I was glad we were "flying under the radar", thought it gave us one of the few edges we had, but was "realistic" about how far we could go, no matter what. Even as the season has progressed, the way we've won has failed to garner much credit: we were picked as increasingly greater underdogs over the course of the first few games, and even now are considered an enigma--rightly so. They call it "winning ugly", a balloon that HAS to burst, but we just keep going against the grain, unexpectedly accomplishing "the right things" against all odds in what "'conventional wisdom" says is "the wrong way". We've got "holes in this" and we don't do "enough of that"...At this point maybe we should be GLAD of facing "The Sports Illustrated Cover-Curse": Maybe it's just one more "bad sign", stacked-odds-against-us at just the crucial time that we are meant to violate and sweep aside, like all the rest.

 

[Escambia94]

I was being facetious about the sign. The only signs I follow are Gilly's running over defenders.

 

[DRU2012]

I was being facetious about the sign. The only signs I follow are Gilly's running over defenders.

I'm sorry (and somewhat embarrassed) to say that I was NOT, E-, not completely, at any rate--I mean, I recognize the mostly-unreasonable obsessiveness of this ongoing effort on my part to avoid or repeat certain statements and activities for their impact on the outcome of my college football team's continued success in each upcoming game--but then again, I can't quite shake the strong underlying feeling that "you can't stop NOW--we're UNDEFEATED!"
(OK--GE Members and Guests be Forewarned: In order to avoid a possible episode of abject boredom, you may wish to avoid what follows, a scientific rationale for "superstition" based on modern "quantum theory"...For the rest, those still here, well, I do sympathize...)
You'll notice that I said "MOSTLY-unreasonable..." above: It doesn't help that over the last few years there has been emerging data from both theoretical and practical research in quantum theory and mechanics (I read EVERYTHING I can that is published in this field, believe it or not--it's sort of a hobby of mine--one which I mine in imagining aspects of a Sci-fi influenced fiction-series I am creating/am in "talks", trying to sell), data which suggests a "non-local-in-time-or-space connection between observers' (ie. us) actions and the outcome of the object-of-that-attention's focused activity" (ie. whether Gators win or lose on Saturday)...in other words, if I am interpreting this properly, there MAY be a direct connection between what we "wish for" and "what actually happens" along the various alternate possible-outcome reality time-lines ahead of us. As long as this streak continues, then, by "feeling" OR by "quantum forces" it could be argued that it is our DUTY to carry on doing and NOT doing the things we have done and NOT done throughout this season so far--if only to OFFSET all those completely mistaken and misguided souls who are performing and/or avoiding similar seemingly pointless activities on behalf of our opponents, this week the S. Carolina Gamecocks.
(As for the "Sports Illustrated Cover"-curse, well, while there are aspects of this whole ""quantum rationale" business that can get pretty confusing as far as puzzling out how which "action" or "reaction" has how much impact on which side of the input/outcome sequence our "eventual reality" will come out on--these questions arising out of what Einstein called "Thought Experiments" posing such absurdly abstract concepts like Heisenberg's "Uncertainy Principle", "Shroedinger's Box", "collapsing waveforms" when you "open the box" to see "if the cat left in there is a live or a dead one" (ie. "A/B outcome")--well, in the end the best I can make of it all, the most I can tell you, is this:
"We're not here to READ the signs, only to see it our own way and BELIEVE WHAT WE CHOOSE TO BELIEVE...the reality you get is the one you expect, to a certain degree anyway, so in the case of an "A/B outcome" (ie. "win or lose") like this one, it becomes not just my preference but my DUTY to find way(s) to effect a Gator victory--whether there is "TRULY" a connection or not. So: "Everything may be lining up just right: GO GATORS!!!")

 

[Escambia94]

I take whatever coverage the Gators get. The media does not like covering the Gators without tying it to a cult personality, such as Urban Meyer or Timmy Tebow. This Gators team is a TEAM, almost devoid of any "celebrity" athletes. This is what college football is supposed to be. The only cult of personality should be the head coach, and I think the media are scared to death of Coach Muschamp exploding in their faces if they give any coverage of the Gators. This means that all we get is that little blip in the corner of the front page. We can call it a jinx or bad luck, but it is coverage. I am just happy that the coverage we are getting is not from arrests. That may have been the worst part about the past few years.