My feeling is this team is playing on the edge. We have a few players that are injured, a few more that are playing but not 100%, couple that with conservative play calling and what I sense as the offense playing 'tight'. That leads to a 31 point 1st quarter in Kentucky when everything goes right or to a 10 point win against UT when Tim fumbles late or a near death experience when we get into the redzone 4 times with zero points to show for the effort. In the Arky game, if we don't fumble, we win going away. Arky had to play the best game of their lives and we had to play our worst. Still it took essentially two defensive breakdowns to keep them in the game. If we make one of the 5 missed tackles on the long TD run, or if Janoris doesn't get caught playing the run (for the 2nd time), the long pass play doesn't happen. For everyone who is saying it is okay to play conservative, survive and advance, that is fine but it leaves no room for error. This team needs to learn to trust the younger receivers, play a little looser and have a margin for error when we get the best from our opponent. Having said that, I do think we will turn it around. Everyone wants to talk about how great Alabama is, but that USC game was a lot closer than the final score indicated. If SOS wasn't so damn stubborn and insisted on throwing the same fade pattern from the 4, 3 times in a row - that game might be different as well. I think we figure it out this week. Miss St was always known for tough defense, not sure they have that this year. Their offense is better, but they don't have the athletes they need to run the spread effectively against our defense. Gators 42 Miss St. 3 Ken K MNGator
_____ From: gatortalk@googlegroups.com [mailto:gatort...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of ke...@baldwinnc.com Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 8:24 AM To: gatortalk googlegroups Subject: [gatortalk] What are our opponents afraid of - when playing us? That depends a lot on the quality of the opponent. Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and less talented teams - fear everything and hope to catch us napping. But the better teams - do they fear our defense? What about after the Arkansas game? The only real offense we have played this year. Do they fear our offense? Obviously they are psyched out about Tebow. But what if we played Brantley instead of Tebow - would they fear our offense? Do they fear our special teams? Use to be - whenever Brandon James would go out to field a kickoff or a punt - everyone was on the edge of their seat. And when it came time for our opponents to punt - everyone sat on the edge of their seat - wondering if we would block it? Or do we suffer from a phenom of where we have so many talents - that no one talent stands out - so we have nothing special about us? After all we are ranked #1 and lead the SEC in many categories. I would say the latter - but "college football experts" see that in Alabama - but not us? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ GATORS: ONE VOICE ON SATURDAY - NO VOICE ON SUNDAY! 1996 National Football Champions | 2006 National Basketball Champions 2006 National Football Champions | 2007 National Basketball Champions 2008 National Football Champions | Three Heisman Trophy winners: Steve Spurrier (1966), Danny Wuerffel (1996), Tim Tebow (2007) - Visit our website at www.gatornet.us -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---