Florida Football: Chris Couch’s special teams’ unit isn’t very special

There was a lot to love from Florida football on Saturday. The offense was humming, and the defense looked fantastic now that Brenton Cox was gone. It was almost a perfect day for the Florida Gators inside The Swamp.

Keyword almost.

Special teams for the Gators this year haven’t been very special, and they were a downright disaster against USC Jr on Saturday. It’s time to ask special teams coordinator Chris Couch “What exactly would you say you do around here?”

Florida Football: Gamechangers

One of the oddities with Billy Napier’s staff is that he doesn’t call Couch his Special Teams Coordinator, he calls him the GameChanger Coordinator. It should be noted that Couch is not listed among the allotted nine full-time assistant coaches an FBS school is allowed to have, he is considered an analyst.

So whether the blame for how abysmal special teams have been is squarely on Couch is up for debate, but there is no debate that special teams have been a problem. And since Couch is, on paper, in charge of the unit we have to direct our questions toward him.

Florida football has had the opposing team kick the ball off 52 times this season. The Gators have taken or opted for a touchback on 70% of kickoffs. In modern college football where a touchback brings you to the 25-yard line, this isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s when Florida has tried to return the ball that fans have asked why the touchback rate isn’t 100%.

Of the kickoffs that Florida has returned, the Gators have taken a penalty on 31% of those returns. That’s not great that one out of every three returns is resulting in a penalty. In addition, Florida’s punt return defense has been terrible. The Gators are giving up an average of 9.5 yards per return, 95th best in the country.

Outside of a couple of big returns this season, punt returns from the Gators have been largely uneventful (though to be fair Florida is 33rd in the country in average yards returned with 9.9 yards, so not the worst).

All of this came to a head against South Carolina on Saturday. Yes, Shane Beamer is cut from the same cloth as his father and is a wizard at creating chaos on special teams. The problem is that the issues the Gators had weren’t exclusive to Saturday.

Xzavier Henderson almost had a disaster before that when he fumbled a punt that the Gators were fortunate to recover. On the touchdown off the punt fake from the Gamecocks, Florida was in a punt safe formation and still had a blown assignment. Coming out of halftime after a big turnover, the Gators had a field goal blocked. Then on the next field goal attempt there was a bad snap/bad hold. Then on a punt return Florida football committed a facemask and still didn’t get the Gamecock returner down. Florida also had a false start on a punt attempt.

It all added up to a really bad day for the GameChangers unit. And when that is the one job that Couch has, the question must be asked what exactly is being changed? Maybe for the other team but not for Florida.

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