In the two and a half weeks since Billy Gonzales has been the head coach of the Florida Gators, he has seemingly made it his mission to address the very real flaws that led to Billy Napier's downfall. Obviously, he can't fix everything in a short timeframe, but it's clear that Gonzales isn't just trying to ride out the season with no hope for the future.
Which is why it's been refreshing this past week to hear Gonzales directly address one area that was a noted problem during the Billy Napier Era.
Billy Gonzales looks to address the Middle Eight
In football, there is this idea of the "Middle Eight," which is the last four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half. It's notable because it requires situational football going into halftime, followed by a gut check to see who made the correct adjustments coming out of the half.
To put it mildly, this was an area Napier was notoriously awful at. Without fail, Napier always got conservative going into the half and seldom had a convincing drive coming out of the break.
Against Georgia, the Middle Eight doomed the Gators once again as Florida gave up a field goal before halftime (even though it should have been a fumble) and gave up a touchdown on the first drive coming out of the break.
Gonzales knows that isn't good enough. He addressed it during his postgame, and he addressed it again during his SEC Teleconference on Wednesday:
"Well, we talked about it with the football team the other day. We're going to stay with the same thing that we've always talked about. We've got to continue to start fast. We got to continue to stay focused during the middle eight, and then we got to finish strong.
I always talk about eliminating the human element with the team, part of that means failure is not an option. If you eliminate the human element, you've eliminated the failure in that capacity. So we talked about that the most invested team wins. That's attention to details throughout the game; we've got to be locked in."
Like a lot of things during the Napier Era, we'll believe the Middle Eight is fixed once it is actually fixed.
But unlike the Napier Era, it is at least refreshing to have a coach who recognizes there is a problem that needs to be fixed in the first place.