Who gets the blame; the players or coaches?

For the slow learners amongst us, if UM riding his defense all year last year to an inevitable loss in the SEC title game wasn’t enough, it should have been obvious how oblivious and stubborn both Addazio and Meyer are when they moved a perfectly good offensive guard to center – a position Pouncey had never played before. When it became immediately clear he could not handle the position, instead of moving him back to guard and replacing him with an experienced center (we can assume they recruited one, can’t we? Who snapped the ball to Brantley when he was on the 2nd team?), they did nothing – result, numerous bobbled snaps, poor pass protection – but a grade of A from Addazio every week. Might as well have asked him to play tight end. Just an illustration.

The blame has to be mainly on the coaches for this all. There are a lot of worse offensive teams doing a lot more offensively than us. Bad teams with a lot less talent find ways to score and put up points yet we cant get a drive going… Brantley has been terrible but the coaches should then not have him play. We have way too much talent to not be doing anything with the offense and that means it comes down to the schemes and coaching.

A team boils itself down to it’s essence pretty quickly, if allowed and leaders emerge. If a team is overly tampered with, it’s true leaders may never come to the surface. A big part of coaching is observing and respecting the natural chemistry among the players. Tim Tebow was a once-in-a-lifetime player with all the gifts and the fire to compete. Brantley has not been given an ideal situation for his abilities but he has not left his heart on the field either. The raw talent of this Florida Gator team is stunning. If Meyer and Addazio take a two week ski vacation and let the team choose the starters, UF will win their remaining games. A coach’s job is to guide and let the fire burn.

it’s the coaches obviously but meyer has won two championships which pretty much gives him the right to burn this program to the ground and replace it with a dance team if he wants. (which is what he appears to be doing)

Given the high expectations, they needed to reset expectations, like lower them so they can develop the talent they have instead of try and win now and slow the development of players.

They seem to want to continue to run a scheme that needs a dual option QB. But they don’t have Tebow anymore so they are creating a 2-3 headed Tebow. They should stick with developing a dual threat and pick someone who will get the needed reps so they can develop. The current 3-headed QB seems to only confuse the offense. Also with a defense that cannot stop the run, going no-huddle 3-and-out will only wear down the defense. If Brantley is in they might throw but doesn’t look like he gets enough reps or the passing attack isn’t that well developed. When Burton or Reed is in you know it’s a run, so they can just run blitz.

Coaches should have just said it’s going to be a transition year because they need to develop that dual threat QB, Reed or Burton. Because I don’t see them changing their stripes and going with a different style offense. But even if they do develop such a dual threat, folks are starting to figure out the run oriented spread attack, even Tebow last year wasn’t moving the ball as well. It’s all about being able to adaptable.

Gator football should take a look at the basketball team and see what they went thru after the national championships. They had down years trying to rebuild and it’s kinda expected. It should be more a transition year.

Meyer says he’s not into blame and excuses but rather into finding solutions (sounds good, right?) and yet he has repeatedly blamed the players (poor execution, lack of intensity, lack of energy, etc.) and has repeatedly made excuses (inefficient practices, injuries, some kind of unknown ‘void’, etc.). So, stop contradicting yourself, coach, and truth is – if you don’t correctly identify the problem, how will you ever find the right solution? Here’s the point, what he’s really not into is…he’s not into blaming the coaches and having to then make excuses for THEM. I’ve always liked Meyer well enough up to this point but to be honest, lately he’s been saying some strange things. One of the strangest is when he said there are no bad plays/calls. In other words, in his world, the play may not be executed properly but that doesn’t mean it was a bad call. So, the jump pass was a good call (even though Alabama knew we were going to run it well before the ball was ever snapped) and we could all give many examples of supposed ‘good calls’. Please. Main point and question – Has Meyer ever admitted that he and/or his coaches are at least partly to blame? His failure to ever blame HIMSELF or his coach/friend smacks of arrogance and it’s getting very tiresome. Meyer should pay Tebow at least half his salary from the past four years because it’s becoming very apparent that in additon to Tebow’s great ability to make plays, HE brought an intensity to the team which Meyer, without Tebow, doesn’t have.

The “intensity” lacking is a function of horrible offense. No one gets excited about 3 and outs. Can you imagine Brantley pumping up the crowd after getting sacked on 3rd down for the 3rd time???

Meyer has lost his mind if he thinks it’s not time to “blame.” Blame is part of identifying the problem. That blame belongs to Addazio (and Meyer for trusting Addazio). We fell off last year and made excuses about missing Harvin and Murphy. We played a lot of close games, relied on the defense, and Tebow went and won games on his own at the end. You could just see Tebow at the end of games glaring at Addazio and doing the exact opposite of what Addazio wanted, which was exactly what it took to win.

So what do we do this year? We take a QB fit for a passing attack and give him the keys to the offense when the O-line has never blocked for a pocket passer. We recruit no big RB and no blocking TE. It’s too late to recruit the pieces Brantley needs to be successful. The coaches need to do Brantley the favor of recognizing this and allowing him to go somewhere he can be successful with the one season he has left to audition for the NFL.

I’m sorry to disagree with Urban, but the reason the effort isn’t there from the players is they don’t believe in the system either. The stats show very clearly that it is play calling not player effort. There is no plan or organization to the play calling. They don’t stick with anything long enough for it to work. It is like he can’t figure out what kind of team they are, and every play is within 10 yards of the line. Using half of your plays on the dive play or end around that everyone knows is coming doesn’t work. If we would have had Dan Mullen as OC last year with Tebow there is no doubt we would have had another National Championship. Tebow will-powered us to several victories even though he was hamstrung by Adazio’s play calling. As long as Adazio is around the Gators will continue to struggle and lose recruits. I just feel bad for Brantley and all of the players who are stuck in this system without direction.

If you live on or near campus will you please print the graph out and post it around campus on the bulletin boards and whatnot. It is really time for the players and coaches to realize that this is the prevalent attitude amongst Gator fans. If Meyer thinks the players are about to mutiny then perhaps change may happen.

Also, don’t go to the App St game this weekend. It will probably be another embarrassment anyways and if the stadium is half empty the UAA will start to worry about lower concession revenue.