Orange and blue post-game review

The only people disappointed with the Florida result Saturday were bettors who took the Gators, giving up 70 points. The Gators opened their title defense with a solid 62-3 performance against Charleston Southern.  As hoped for, Tim Tebow played less than one half of football, but looked very sharp despite only running the ball twice, which could end up to be a season low for him. Jeff Demps, Chris Rainey, and Emmanuel Moody all showed good vision and speed piling up yardage against an overmatched Charleston Southern defensive line. Their ridiculously high yards per carry average can be largely attributed to the play of the offensive line, which opened wide holes up the middle of the field. Despite a few dropped passes, the receivers made some big plays and showed the capability to replace the departed Percy Harvin and Louis Murphy.

The Gators started slow against the Buccaneers of Charleston Southern, drawing several penalties in the opening quarter, and had receivers dropping several of Tebow’s passes. Brandon James also started slow with two mishandled punt returns before getting back on track with a kickoff return for a TD. The defense looked off-balance at times against a surprisingly decent Charleston Southern offense. Quarterback A.J. Toscano led the Buccaneer offense to more first downs and sustained drives than I would have expected. Head coach Jay Mills devised a game plan that kept defensive pressure off of his quarterback, and took advantage of Florida’s speed with many plays that seemed to be over-pursued by Florida’s defenders.

Other noteworthy results from Saturday include Oklahoma losing to underdog BYU in a game in which Heisman winner Sam Bradford injured his shoulder. I still believe there will be more than one school that goes undefeated this season, meaning that Oklahoma could possibly be out of the BCS championship race. Georgia also fell to Oklahoma State, although they showed that they have a strong defense despite the loss. A new college rule penalizing helmet hits to defenseless receivers was strongly enforced during this game, possibly affecting the outcome. There were two calls in the span of 10 minutes, and neither of the calls I felt were warranted. Hopefully this rule will be reviewed and modified in the next year. The last time I checked there were no flags hanging from the pants of college players. Congratulations to Alabama for pulling out a gutsy, hard-fought victory over Virginia Tech, helping the SEC re-establish its inter-conference dominance for 2009, although at the time this article was published, LSU finds itself locked in a 2^nd quarter tie against the Washington Huskies.

Overall, a good start to the Gator season and title defense. Most importantly, there were no serious injuries. Although the Gator coaches kept the play-calling relatively simple, there was obviously no need to show all of the schemes and formations this team is capable of executing. I thought I might see Tebow under center for a couple of plays but even that didn’t happen. On to next week… Good luck Troy, you’re going to need it.