How will the Gators respond to easily winning a "rivalry" game, on the road, on national TV? What is with the offense? Is our pass defense for real? We should get answers, or at least more data toward an answer, for all of these questions this week. I'm going to do my best to predict what these answers will involve.

 

How will these Gators respond after the UT game? I'm in Texas, far away from the program, so I can't say for sure. But all the quotes from Urban Meyer, and from the assistants, are building up Ole Miss to be our greatest test of the year so far. So I think the mindset should be pretty solid. Additionally, I don't think our offense, with it's current stats, should be overly cocky. So I don't foresee a big letdown, though usually this is a prime candidate for a 'trap game'. However, for all the reasons listed above, I think the outcome of the 'trap' could be only 'this game is closer than you expect early'.

 

What is with the offense? The main thing, that can't be understated, is we have not shown our entire playbook. Quotes from Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow this week have confirmed that. Another huge factor is the excellent play of our defense (in getting turnovers) and special teams (field position). I haven't confirmed it, but I bet we have a shorter field to work with most of the time, and we are happy to take the defense and special teams scores to distance ourself from the competition (This happened to many of my NCAA football teams on GameCube). The more interesting question is 'why be so conservative, when we obviously weren't a year ago'? While I agree with the party line ('we don't need to, we've been very efficient': Chas Henry only punted once against UT), I think there are two more reasons not getting enough attention. First, (I've stated this a couple times in blogs, podcasts, etc.) our main receivers from a year ago are either in the NFL (Caldwell), out for the year (Ingram), or coming back from injury (Harvin). I'm not sure the Tebow-to-the-WRs timing/connection/whatever you want to call it is entirely smooth yet. This might also be impacted by our desire to get our 784 running backs some touches as well, to sort out that whole logjam (which was much more of a problem area a year ago). The second reason, that I've been thinking about this week, is the defense. I realize I said earlier that they've been playing well. That was in regard to turnovers. But don't you think Urban could be going conservative to put the defense in a lot of situations to succeed, and allowing a young group to mature and gain confidence? This year we seem to be playing more as a complete team on both sides of the ball, using the defense and special teams and the offense to help each other out... each unit has been doing its job, efficiently, and it's got to be scary to opposing coaches how easy we've made it all look. At any rate, as we get pushed into different, more difficult situations, as the offense gets it's timing and identity figured out, and as the confidence in our defense grows (from a coach and a player perspective), I expect the playbook to open up. And relax, we're still leading the SEC in points/game.

 

Is our pass defense for real? I really don't know. Joe Haden is becoming a monster, and Janoris Jenkins looks like a future star. Ahmad Black, inexplicably, seems good. But we still haven't had a spectacular game rushing the quarterback, so I'm a little worried about the better QBs we play down the road- they could have the time to pick our secondary apart a little. The answer for this one is "we'll have more answers this weekend", but in the interest of making predictions, I'll say "yes". I think it's entirely possible we improved this much from one year to the next. We are still so young, far from a finished product. I think fans fall into a trap of seeing a player his freshman year, and if he's not Percy Harvin or Tim Tebow, they pass judgement on 'that guy sucks'. They are college kids! They will be dramatically different physically, mentally, and every other way by the time they leave school. And in this case, I'm going to give our coaching staff the benefit of the doubt and say that after this weekend we will be able to say "The Gator defense is for real".