Now that College Football has jumped out of the blocks, I want to start up my weekly Gators review. Plus, I will touch on the rest of what I’ve seen from the Top 25 and how things look to be headed as we come towards December.
Week 1: Florida vs. Charleston Southern
Why the heck was this game scheduled? I’m glad Charleston Southern got a sizable pay check for being a practice squad, but come on now! We did get to see the backups, and that the speed of the team has not fallen one bit with Percy Harvin moving on. Them boys are fast. And the defense? I think the 11 returning starters are going to do just fine. And honestly, who didn’t think Florida would chalk up 60-70 pts?
Next week we play another scrimmage against (un)mighty Troy.
The rest of the matchups went pretty much as expected, with two glaring exceptions. First, Georgia was well overrated. Folks thought a bit too highly of the bulldogs. While Oklahoma State didn’t look all that great themselves, Georgia is obviously short on talent this year. Second, and of course the most obvious, was BYU taking down Oklahoma. Sam Bradford went out with the shoulder injury and I know many were thinking after the game, “Oh. If only Bradford hadn’t been injured, that would have been a different game.” I’m not so sure.
For the second straight game, Oklahoma failed to score more than 14. Remember the 24-14 loss to Florida in January? Before Bradford went out as the first half ended, the vaunted, record breaking offense could only muster 10 points with their Heisman winner. Why should we believe things would have been much different? Plus, Bradford wasn’t slated to play on D, was he? Could have have stopped BYU going into the endzone? Could he have taken that 54-yard field goal? Yes, Bradford’s a great QB talent, but he wasn’t going to be the savior for the Sooners yesterday. The team as a whole couldn’t handle BYU.
For the future of this season, I’m keeping an eye on Georgia and LSU. Florida will play them, and obviously win. I say obviously because they looked yesterday like shadows of their teams from the last few years. If they don’t play well against other schools, Florida’s schedule will not look as good as it will need to. This year more than before they’re going to need to beat up on 9-10 win teams. They should easily go undefeated into the SEC Championship game, and hopefully play an undefeated Alabama (who looked good) or Ole Miss. We shall see.
