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That was a lot of fun. It was a nice day for nearly everything, including serving up some barbequed hog. I agree with these grades. Criticisms of Saturday’s effort feel like so much nit picking. But why not?
Special teams usually go near the end of these reports, but I think they should get higher billing this week. ST play was very good and Maze’s masterful run definitely took a lot of fight out of the piggies. Our punts are short, but very high and we mostly cover them well, so I’m not as concerned there. I have a feeling we may have made a conscious choice to kick higher rather than further (though why we are put to that election is a matter I am trying not to think about). Kickoffs are another story. It seems to me that our kickoffs are too short and the coverage isn’t very good . One may be leading to the other. I just think we are going to eventually get into trouble letting opposing kick returners field the ball on the run at the 10 yard line (and that’s generous). I’m not smart enough to know what the issue is, but I do know the fact that we can occasionally kick off the football into the end zone means that we have the potential to do that more often. I understand if we just don’t have anyone on campus who can kick it that far, but we do, because sometimes he does it. Again, nit picking after Saturday, but the contrast to Arkansas’ placekicker was painfully clear.
On offense even the plays that didn’t work, such as the attempted screen pass to EL that hit a defensive lineman in his weakest spot, the hands, was well-designed and going to go a long way if AJ could have gotten him the ball. Of course, the offense didn’t score all of those points, it had help, though I can’t quite credit “special teams” with the first touchdown -- I mean, the starting quarterback threw the ball to the starting tight end….
The offensive line had come in for some justifiable criticism from even the head coach. It was not flawless on Saturday, but it was at least much improved, and played a game capable of beating most, maybe all, of the teams on our schedule given how the defense is playing. Not pushing it in from the one so that even the extraordinarily near sighted officials in our league could see it again, wasn’t good, but I told you I was nitpicking. Oh, and #3 picks up blitzes better than #42, but neither one is bad, it’s just that Richardson sometimes stands up blitzing linebackers like he is an offensive lineman, not some silly cut block.
I can’t really think of anything to nitpick about the defensive performance. Bottom line, they beat the ever living you-know-what out of Arkansas. Make no mistake; Arkansas is a very good offensive football team. It will win a lot of games this year, just by running up the score on people. Their top two receivers could start for just about any team in this league, including ours. Their second touchdown was just an outstanding play on both ends and had not an inch to spare. By the start of the fourth quarter, you had the sense that they just wanted to get back to the other side of the Mississippi River. We did not appear to miss a beat after the loss of the very talented CJ Mosely, though I hope he will be back for the Florida game.
Dre Kirkpatrick is just an outstanding football player who is also an outstanding leader on this team. It takes a lot to lead by example on a team with this kind of talent. To his further credit, he appears to be in control of those issues that kept in endlessly in the Coach’s doghouse a couple of seasons ago.
The game plan was just excellent. We had some busted assignments and I hate have the ball inside the one and going backwards to the five to hand it off, but these nits are too small even for me. Simply put, our team was well-coached and the opposing sideline was outcoached.
The Commissioner has already taken Hubert Owens’ normally flag-happy officiating crew to task. The fact that they rated the assignment of the CBS game of the week between two teams ranked in the top 15 shows how low we have fallen. I will be in the front row of those who say that Barrett Jones may have taken a beginning acting course as one of his electives. But what he could not act out was the fact that an opposing player shoved his hand under Jones’s facemask and pushed his head back. This happens from time to time, but almost never is not penalized. Hubert’s crew chose to ignore it. The only question is usually what to call it – hands to the face, facemask, unnecessary roughness, or just garden variety personal foul – and whether the offending player should just be penalized or whether he should be ejected. Jones was correctly upset and so was his head coach, who did the right thing in taking up for his player. Perhaps the official was just unwilling to add the insult of a flag to the injury of the beating Arkansas was being handed. The problem, of course, is that if the players believe such behavior will be tolerated they will continue to engage in it. Worse, players who are hit after the whistle will eventually take matters into their own hands (no pun intended). Football is a violent game played by powerful individuals. The rules are there to keep things from getting out of hand. Those rules need to be enforced, and enforced evenhandedly. You’d think the officials would understand that. And it’s not nitpicking.
On to Gainesville. Despite Saturday’s dominant performance the scenario is uncomfortably similar to last year’s dominating performance against Florida, followed by a trip to play South Carolina, which we will not further dwell upon because we’ve just eaten. But if those of us down by the hydraulic lift have noticed the parallel, we expect Messers Saban, Smart, McIlwain, Cochran, et al. have noticed and mentioned it. More importantly, we read in this morning’s fishwrapper that after the interception return for a touchdown Mr. Kirkpatrick remarked to Mr. Menzie: “Stay focused. That’s what happened last year. We got complacent. I’m not about to let that happen this year.” And you thought I was nitpicky.
Your correspondent From The Tire Store
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