“10 Things I Want Out Of The 2012 Florida Gators Football Season” – One Eyed Willy
5. Focus more on the rivalry games. Many times last year we heard Coach Muschamp say that “it’s just another game.” He would say this whether we were playing FAU or Alabama. Well, respectfully Coach Boom, that is complete and total B-S! Ask any Gator fan out there and they will tell you that there are three games a year that mean more than the others: Tennessee, Georgia and FSU (in no particular order). In 2009, we expected (and did) kick the crap out of all three of these teams. But my oh my how things have changes since then. Now we expect to beat the crap out of Tennessee, hope Georgia does something stupid that gives us the “W”, and pray that we keep it close enough with FSU to have a chance at the end of the game. Sorry, but that just ain’t gonna cut it! Muschamp might be a great coach, but if we continue to lose to any one of those three teams year after year, his tenure at UF will most certainly be a short one.
4. Run the ball effectively. Notice my choice of words here. I didn’t say that we had to be the best running team in the nation, but we do have to have a good enough run game to open up the passing game and to milk the clock in order to keep the defense off the field and preserve wins. And we have to do this not only against the Bowling Greens of the world, but also the LSUs and South Carolinas. The biggest problem we have with running the ball is the lack of experience in the backfield. With Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps now graduated, we will have to rely on Mike Gillislee, Mack Brown, Trey Burton and Matt Jones to carry the bulk of the running responsibilities. I think this unit is good enough to be effective, but not good enough to be great. Add this to an offensive line which was miserable at times last year and this may just be an impossible wish on my part. But nonetheless, it’s something that I believe will be necessary if we want to have the success we have been accustomed to.
3. Better play out of our linebackers. In 2009, UF was able to pick up commitments from two highly touted linebackers in Jon Bostic and Jelani Jenkins. Bostic (a personal favorite of yours truly) and Jenkins (a personal favorite of The Bull Gator) were supposed to be difference-makers from day one and lead the Gator defense for the next several years. Unfortunately this has not worked quite as planned and Bostic and Jenkins, while showing sparks of greatness here and there, have been nothing more than starters for a below-average unit. Whether it’s the players, the scheme, or the coaching really doesn’t matter. These two guys must step up for the defense to be successful in 2012.
2. Find a “go to” wide receiver. For the love of everything holy, can we please find a wide receiver that opposing defenses have to actually account for on each play, let alone possibly fear? Over the last two years, our top WR in terms of catches was Deonte Thompson with 21 catches in 2011 and 38 catches in 2010. Even worse, Thompson has two touchdowns combined over those two seasons. That just isn’t going to cut it in big-time SEC football. Someone, anyone, has to step up this year and prove that he can be trusted to catch 4-5 balls a game (Andre Debose and JaJuan Story…I’m looking at you!!!)
1. Just win! Sounds simple enough, huh? Well, based on our performance these last two seasons, wins do not seem to be very easy to come by any more for the Gators. If you take out the “cupcake” teams and the bottom dwelling SEC teams (Kentucky and Vanderbilt), the Gators are 6-11 over the last two seasons. Of these six wins, only the USF win and the Penn State win in 2010 were against teams that finished with a record above .500. Now I am not asking for the Gators to run the table and end up in the national championship game, but rather I would like to see us beat some better-than-average teams next year. For instance, teams like Texas A&M, Missouri, South Carolina, Georgia and FSU are all games that we have a chance of winning in my opinion – we may not be favored in all (or any) of these games, but they are nonetheless winnable. If the Gators can win three of these games, we will most likely have an eight-win season. And right now an eight-win season is about all I can hope for.
Come back for more of what we want from the Gators’ 2012 football season from Evandagator and The Bull Gator.
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