To avoid trendy upset, Gators’ coaches must trust young football team to execute
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GAINESVILLE — The last time Kentucky beat Florida in football, the Chernobyl reactor had just exploded in the Soviet Union, a gallon of gas cost 89 cents and Top Gun and Platoon dominated at the box office. The year was 1986. Listening to the national media this week, however, you’d hardly know that it’s been that long since the Wildcats defeated the Gators in a game of football.
Instead, most the national media are picking the Wildcats to upset No. 20 Florida at Kroger Field Saturday night in Lexington. Even the local Kentucky media, as cautious in expressing optimism about their football program as they are rash to express it over John Calipari’s annually young and brilliant basketball teams, think this year is different. This time, the 3-0 ‘Cats are well-equipped to end the streak, they wrote earlier this week.
There’s reason, of course, for the media being bullish on Kentucky, for reasons beyond the fact they’re at home and Kroger Field will be whipped into a frenzy by nightfall.
Just as you can’t learn to swim with only your toes in the water, Florida’s coaches hamstring the program’s development when they trust the kids enough to put them on the field but not enough to make winning plays.
Kentucky is a powerful team running the football, with a veteran offensive line and a talented sophomore tailback in Benny Snell Jr., who ran for over 1,000 yards last season despite only technically starting one game en-route to Freshman All-American honors. The Gators have struggled to stop the run against Michigan and Tennessee.
Kentucky has a veteran quarterback in Stephen Johnson who limits mistakes, and who isn’t afraid to use his legs when he’s in trouble. Florida has benefitted this year from younger quarterbacks who have made mistakes.
Kentucky plays sound run defense, limiting opponents to 2.2 yards a rush, which ranks third nationally. Florida has struggled mightily to run the football, averaging only 89.5 a contest through two games and even that number is inflated, thanks to one long 74-yard gallop by freshman Malik Davis, which, naturally, ended in a fumble and turnover.
Kentucky’s weaknesses — perimeter playmakers and pass defense — aren’t really things that are demonstrably problematic against the Gators, who will play a freshman quarterback in his first true road game and who start multiple underclassmen in the secondary.
In other words, picking Kentucky to win the football game and end the streak is far from ridiculous. It’s maybe a good bet.
In fact, if Florida is going to extend the nation’s longest program-vs.-program winning streak from 30 to 31 Saturday night in Lexington, the Gators will need to play like a mad underdog.
They’ll have to use the experts picking Kentucky as “juice” and motivation and go out and play angry. They’ll need to acknowledge that while this game may be “Kentucky’s Super Bowl,” as Freddie Swain put it this week, it’s a massive football game for them too. Can they build on the Tennessee victory and seize control in the SEC East?
Florida can’t be tight either, and that includes the coaches.
To win, Jim McElwain and his staff need to loosen the collar on a young football team and trust them to execute.
One of Florida’s largest problems in the McElwain era has been a fear of whoever is at the quarterback position making crippling mistakes that puts a tenacious defense in bad spots.
These problems become compounded when you decide to start a freshman quarterback and before the season begins, you lose his two most productive offensive playmaking security blankets in wide receiver Antonio Callaway and Jordan Scarlett. Then, say, after an early fumble or a failed 1st-and-10 play against a strong Michigan defense, you end up off-schedule against a strong defense and the urge to be conservative magnifies again.
The cycle is self-fulfilling; fear of mistakes is crippling.
And yet, to use a McElwain colloquialism, there’s a certain irony to the Florida coaching staff’s fear of making mistakes, too. The same coaches who are willing to start or give significant snaps to Feleipe Franks, Brett Heggie, T.J. McCoy, Josh Hammond, Tyrie Cleveland, Lamical Perine, Malik Davis, Kadarius Toney and Jawaan Taylor seem terrified of those same players making mistakes.
It’s obvious the future of the program resides in these players.
Why not trust them to touch the ball multiple times and make plays? Why not stick by them when they fail — as young players occasionally do — to execute perfectly? Just as you can’t learn to swim with only your toes in the water, Florida’s coaches hamstring the program’s development when they trust the kids enough to put them on the field but not enough to make winning plays.
A young Gators team should be excited about the opportunity to beat a good team in a brutal environment Saturday night. They should play with a chip on their shoulder and an edge. It’s unlikely to be a thing of beauty, but what about Florida football this decade has been?
The formula for a Florida victory remains similar to what it has been for the past several years. Stop the run. Run the ball. Limit turnovers. Play strong defense. Be sound in the kicking game.
But none of that requires McElwain and the staff to coach scared.
In fact, some of the finest moments in the McElwain era — the win at LSU, the opening drive of last year’s SEC Championship — have been rooted in a fearless and aggressive coaching staff putting faith in the players.
To give the Gators a chance, McElwain and the staff must be fearless again Saturday night.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
