It's taken me a few days to catch up to this thread. The wife took me away for the weekend (late birthday gift) and we left the kids with friends. Ended up in DC catching the game at Acre121 with the DC Gator Club. 100% Gator support in there, even the staff had Gator shirts on. That was nice. That's about all that was nice.
She told me before we left that I'm not allowed to get mad during the game. I explained I expect us to get our 4$$ kicked, don't worry. Then, rather than getting kicked in the nuts from the get go we actually showed signs of life and potential with the opening drive. I knew better, I'd seen this before. I told her we won't get consistency on offense after the scripted drive. I missed the blocked punt (thank goodness) but the returned XP for 2 points was an evil attempt to bring hope. My wife was beside herself until I explained the return is only 2 pts, not 7. She still doesn't get that. Still, 16-9 means we have a chance....then life took that flicker of hope and twisted it, stomped on it, and burned it...then pi55ed on it. And life got worse than the beatdown that I anticiapted.
3 INTs, a blocked punt for a TD, all the other crap....miserable. I was quite upset, as I expected, and she's gets mad at me for getting upset. What am I supposed to be, joyful our QB just punked us again?
There were definitely things I felt better about than I expected. The scripted drive scored, unlike against F$U. The effort by the offense that got us to 1st and Goal from the 2, and the effort the offense gave early in the second half told me they hadn't quit and do a few things right....just not enough, and not well enough or consistently enough, but still better than the complete shutdown from last year. They simply didn't have enough (players, coach, ,etc) going right to be effective. Unlike last year with Treon where you had NO hope, this offense showed sparks. Additionally, the depleted defense did better than I thought. Part way through the 2nd Qtr I told my wife to watch the defense give up and fold like all 3 games last year. I didn't see that happen. They didn't have the horses to compete, but IMO, they didn't quit either....they simply wore down.
Am I 'just happy to be there'? No, but I'll take it over the alternative. I believe the month off allows us to get healthy again enough to compete with Iowa. I'll have to wait and see if the coaches use that time to build more than a one-drive-script. I don't expect to see a QB other than AA, nor do I expect his performance to change significantly from what we've seen thus far. Defense should be solid and keep us in the game, if they don't check out (start their NFL dream now). I want to view last year's bowl debacle as Mac teaching a lesson on what happens when players don't keep focus as an effort to keep focus this year. "Happy to be there" in this bowl game will make me officially give up on Mac. Winning the game, as I know we 'can', will make a statement.