What a bizarre game we saw Saturday at Florida Field. Normally when teams playing UF seek to cover the spread, we're referring to disrupting the Gator offense. In Tennessee's case, we're talking about the Vegas number. It's the only explanation for their curious 4th quarter behavior, with the Vols going through full huddles and running into the pile while down two scores with five minutes to play. Clearly Lane Kiffin is terrified to ask Jonathan Crompton to do anything more complex than ordering a ham sandwich (UT's first drive: runs on 2 and 12, third and 9 and third and 19 in UF's red zone), but at some point you have to make an effort to win the game. Florida's offense didn't perform at its usual level, with the combination of a couple of turnovers, Deonte Thompson's hamstring and multiple flu stricken key guys to blame for that. Between losing Carl Moore and Andre Debose before the season began and now missing Thompson, the WR spot has taken a bunch of hits already. At some point, whether Meyer is completely comfortable with it or not, they're going to have to start mixing in guys like Frankie Hammond and Omarius Hines to give teams more to think about in the pass game.
There were a couple of huge college football injuries over the weekend. Notre Dame lost Michael Floyd for the regular season with a broken collarbone. He was one of their two elite guys at the WR spot, which means Jimmy Clausen is going to have to avoid falling into the trap of looking for Golden Tate too much and forcing things. Get ready to hear freshman Shaq Evans's name a lot in the media this week. Meanwhile, Matt Grothe's career as USF quarterback is over as a result of a torn ACL. The Bulls played the worst three games to begin the year of any team in the country: Wofford, Western Kentucky and Charleston Southern. Now, just as they're about to play FSU and have things get interesting, Grothe's gone and their season is likely shot. I feel terrible for the kid - Grothe was a fun player to watch and took them to a level they're not likely to approach anytime soon.
The "crowd" in Jacksonville yesterday looked like it was for an ACC Championship game rather than an NFL team's season opener. The NFL blackout rule sure seems to be helping things, huh? As for the game itself, the Jaguars put on another subpar performance which likely made the fans who did chose to come less likely to do so again. Tampa Bay continues to look like a 4-12 football team, losing soundly in Buffalo while committing over 100 yards worth of penalties. It's up to Miami tonight against the Colts to keep all of Florida from opening 0-2.
I don't know whether the NCAA concern about the "Tim Treebow" statue outside Ballyhoo actually came from the organization or someone at UF worrying about what could conceivably happen. If the NCAA genuinely raised a concern about that while USC's football program closes in on year five of "investigating" the Reggie Bush agent fiasco, something's seriously wrong here.
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Heath,
If you watched the UT-UCLA game you would see the questionable play calling. 4 running plays from the UCLA 8 yd line. With 4th and goal he sends in Hardesty and everyone in the stadium knew he would get the carry.
Kiffin accomplished what he set out to do Saturday, do just enough to make the score respectable and show the program isn't in shambles but still show recruits they can play early in their careers.
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