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There's a four- or five-hour documentary on the band and its G'ville roots and its rise that's really worth the sitdown. Saw it a several years ago, then again a few years ago, maybe on Netflix. Really well done. They went through some hell together before they got it together.

It'll be a collector's item now. Sheez, hard to believe he's gone.

All of this on what was a great day for me personally. I've been battling bladder cancer for five months. Got a clean bill just today.

 

One thing I'll say for Franks. He may not be a great QB, but he is one tough SOB.

The whole team is tough and physical in a way we haven't seen in years.

 

My only concern is too many people here starting to like one another.

 

Don’t look now, but… the Gators are doing these things

Some, mostly, nice facts/stats about where we stand at this point in the season. Very little to really complain about. Let's have a great second half and kick some UGA butt!!


DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... PUTTIN' UP POINTS
Don’t look now, but the Gators are 4th in the SEC in Scoring Offense. At 34.4 points per game, Florida trails only Alabama (53.6), Ole Miss (41.6), and Georgia (36.7). It should be noted that they are barely ahead of Missouri (34.2) in the league. It should also be noted that Florida has played three of the four top scoring defenses in the conference (Mississippi State, Kentucky, and LSU). In 2017, the Gators finished 13th in scoring offense (22.1).

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... RED ZONE SCORING
Don’t look now, but Florida is four scores in the red zone away from tying last year’s total.Amazingly enough, with the lack of scoring a year ago, the Gators were really proficient in scoring in the red zone. That had a bit to do with kicker Eddy Pineiro, but Florida scored all but once when they made it into the red zone, getting points on 30 of 31 tries which was best in the SEC. But, seven games into this season, the Gators have scored 26 times from the red zone, missing on three giving them the fourth best percentage in the SEC.

DON'T LOOK NOW. BUT... TOUCHDOWN STRIKES
Don’t look now, but the 16 touchdown passes in seven games surpasses five of the last eight seasons totals. Feleipe Franks (15) and Kadarius Toney (1) have thrown 16 touchdown passes for the Gators in 2018. Only the 2014 (18), 2015 (20), and 2016 (18) squads finished the season with more in the ENTIRE season. The Gators had a low of 10 touchdown passes a year ago and 11 in 2013.

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... AIR DELIVERY
Don’t look now, but the Gators are scoring much more through the air than on the ground. Florida has 16 touchdown passes and just 10 touchdowns via the run. The preseason thought was that Florida was going to have to rely on a heavy dose of the running game and let the passing game come along as Feleipe Franks got more comfortable. Well, that kind of went out the window early when the running game was slow to get started and Franks threw for five touchdowns in the season opener against Charleston Southern. In the previous eight years, only the 2015 and 2016 seasons saw the Gators pass for more touchdowns than run for touchdowns.

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... POCKET PROTECTORS
Don’t look now, but the Gators have given up just nine sacks in seven games (1.29 per game). Last year, Florida quarterbacks were sacked 37 times (3.36/ game). That is more than two sacks per game improvement. A big note to that is Florida has already played the five best sack teams they will face in the SEC. Future opponents South Carolina (12th), Georgia (13th), and Missouri (14th) are the bottom three in that department in the SEC.

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... SACK MASTERS
Don’t look now, but the Gators are two sacks away from last year’s team total. Staying on the sack category, but this time for the Florida defense, the Gators are really getting after the quarterback. Florida has 21 sacks on the season and finished with 23 in 11 games a year ago. They fell behind Alabama this week which now has 23, but are still headed in the right direction. Florida’s Jachai Polite (7.0 sacks) is a half sack off of the lead in the SEC, while Jabari Zuniga (4.5) is tied for 6th in the conference. We will have to see how this plays out for the rest of the season as Missouri and South Carolina are two of the top four teams in not giving up sacks.

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... DBU
Don’t look now, but DBU is defending the second most passes per game in the last 10 years.Florida has broken up 32 passes in seven games and intercepted seven. The 39 passes defended equates to 5.57 per game. Only the 2014 defense had a higher rate of defensed passes in the last 10 years when they averaged 6.50 per game.

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... PENALTIES
Don’t look now, but… honestly nothing new with penalties against the Gators. In the same as it ever was category, there is certainly something to be said about Florida being the most penalized team in the SEC on average over the last three decades. We have seen Dan Mullen blow a gasket a couple of times in recent games wanting games to be called evenly, but the Gators still remain one of the most penalized teams in the league. Right now they are 12th in the league in penalties against averaging 71.0 yards per game in that category.

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... EVAN MCPHERSON
Don’t look now, but Florida freshman kicker Evan McPherson leads the SEC in field goal percentage. Taking over where Eddy Pineiro left off, McPherson has made good on 11 of his 12 field goal attempts this year and everybody but the ref that matters believes he is actually perfect on the season. Pineiro led the SEC in field goal percentage last year hitting on 17 of 18 attempts.

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... FELEIPE FRANKS
Don’t look now, but Feleipe Franks has the second most touchdown passes (15) in the SEC. It was ok to put an asterisk by it when he threw five touchdowns in the season opener against Charleston Southern, but we are seven games into the season now and Franks is only behind Tua Tagovaiola (21) at Alabama. If someone would have bet you that mid-way through the season Franks would have a higher QB rating than Nick Fitzgerald (MSU), Jarrett Stidham (Auburn), Jake Bentley (So. Car.), Kyle Shurmur (Vanderbilt), Drew Locke (Missouri), and Kellen Mond (Texas A&M), you would have taken that bet. But he does.

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... SCARLETT, PERINE, AND PIERCE
Don’t look now, but the Gators have three rushers in the Top 25 in the SEC. That may not sound like too crazy of a statistic, but Missouri is the only other team to have three of the top 25 rushers in the conference. Florida’s Jordan Scarlett (381 yards) leads the way with Lamical Perine (376) and Dameon Pierce (295) not far behind them. A year ago, Perine was the only Gator to finish in the Top 25 rushers in the SEC.

 

My experience with Nebraska weather....(skip if you have ADD or just don't care)

So I have to travel with my job and had to go to Omaha in the middle of January.....it was 13 degrees BELOW ZERO. When I parked the car and got out to go into the hotel, there were two squirrels in the brush next to the car. I wondered why they were not running as I was less than 5 feet away from them. THEY WERE FROZEN....FROZEN SOLID. I went into the hotel and the desk clerk asked me if I had plugged my rental car into the outlet in front of the car. I asked why and he told me that at the temperatures they were expecting that night (-25 or colder) that my car battery would most likely be dead and if not, the oil in the car would be so thick it would not pump through the car...potential leaving me stranded somewhere. I was like WTF??? Then, the next morning, I had to borrow a hammer and screw driver to chip off the ice on the car so I could open my door and see out the windshield. I went to my meeting and told the story to the folks I was meeting with and they all just looked at me like, "yeah...so?" I thought to myself, "what the hell is wrong with you people??" and vowed to never go back to the state ever again. That was 17 years ago and I handed that account over to a newbie who later told me he quit the company because he did not ever want to go back to Nebraska.

 

Please indulge me while I honor my dad, a Marine and a member of the 1st Marines regiment that engaged in hand-to-hand combat against the Japanese on Okinawa. It looked something like this.



He took a Japanese slug to the gut and was destined to bleed to death if not for the efforts of several of his buddies who dragged him to safety. I'm here to tell this story because of their heroism.

My dad was a badass, a great dad and yet kind of screwed up, but he was my dad. I'm proud as hell for his courage and his service. Happy Vet's Day, Dad.

 

This is how I spent my last weekend. Thanks everyone for your support. Remember your votes affect us.

 

As long as there isn't two Luke Del Rios, then I'm okay with it.

 

So, we are safe.

 

We took the state back!

It seems as if our lost decade might finally be coming to a close. Four weeks ago, after we lost to Georgia, I said that we couldn't fall apart down the stretch in November like we have so many times in the post-Tebow era. And while we definitely laid an egg against Missouri and looked like crap for 2.5 quarters against South Carolina, something clicked in these guys' heads and we finished as strongly as we have in a very long time. What's truly staggering is how quickly FSU hit the skids. In all honesty it almost mirrors exactly what happened to us 9 years ago, so I'm hoping we can parlay yesterday's dominance into years of running the state again.

Franks had a few wobbly moments early yesterday, but ended up having what might have been his best game yet. He threw the ball away when he had to, only forced one throw that I can remember, didn't turn the ball over, made some nice plays with his feet, and threw some absolute dimes to our receivers. Granted, FSU's pass defense is horrendous, but the first step in being a good QB is lighting up the defenses you're supposed to light up. And for the most part, I think Franks did that this year. Obviously the Missouri game was bad, but he performed well against the rest of the mediocre/bad defenses on our schedule.

Now the challenge is getting him to elevate his game to perform like that against the good/great defenses. We can all debate on whether or not that's possible, but the Franks from this year was far superior to the version we got of him last year, with the obvious difference being the coaching he's receiving now as opposed to last year. I feel like he's only going to keep improving now that he's truly being coached for the first time in his career. It's still possible he won't be our starter next year, but at least he's giving Mullen a choice. Either way, I think down the road we'll look back on this season and truly appreciate what Franks did to hold this offense together and transition to Mullen's QB recruits. As it stands, he is our first quarterback to start every game of a season since Tebow left (look it up, it's true).

There's really not much more for me to say on the rest of the game. We just dominated them in every phase. The biggest takeaway is still the shocking fall from grace FSU had. It cannot be overstated how important this recruiting cycle is. This is where Mullen is really going to earn that paycheck. He's done it on the field so far with a mishmash of decent, but shallow talent. Now he needs to load his own cupboard up so we're not one injury away from playing walk ons. We were VERY fortunate to only have one major injury all year, which was Marco Wilson. Other than Mullen, the most important hire that was made was Nick Savage. It's amazing what a real offseason strength and conditioning program does for your results in the fall.

Looking forward to seeing our bowl matchup. Win or lose, it's amazing that we're in a New Year's Six bowl when at this time last year, we were tracking airplanes and melting down about the coaching search. Going from a listless four wins (that could have easily been two) to a mostly dominating nine wins is coach of the year type stuff. Great season, Gators!

 

damn it feels good to be a gator.

If this isn’t the epitome of this game idk what is:



Here’s to a new streak. Here’s to not worrying about that shytshow in Tally for the foreseeable future. Here’s to the future.

In the legendary words of Jboss: the haters got OWNED and DESTROYED this season

 

The Cogitations are back! I had to take a bye week last week because we were moving and I hardly got to watch any of the MSU game, but the show returns!

What a day, what a win! Everything was perfect about that game day yesterday. Between the good people at the tailgate, the flyover, Tebow's ceremony, honoring the '08 team, and a classic UF-LSU game to top it all off, that was one of my favorite games I've ever been to in the Swamp. My ears are still ringing this morning and my voice is hoarse, this is the way it should always be!

Now onto the brass tacks. Franks once again had a vintage performance where we weren't quite sure what he was going to do from play to play. He dropped a couple dimes in there and had a couple head scratchers, but he did what he had to do to win the game. I still think he's doing a great job considering the OL situation, and that throwaway he had when a guy was hanging all over him might have been his most impressive play of the day. I couldn't quite tell what happened on the interception, but it looked like there was some miscommunication between he and Stephens. It was almost like he thought Stephens was going to continue his seam route, but he broke it off. I'd have to see a replay of the play to get a better idea, but it definitely wasn't just a case of an inaccurate throw. His throw of the day was obviously the corner route he hit Hammond on right before half. Stepped up in the pocket, had some pressure on all sides, and dropped a perfect ball right into the recevier's hands. If he can keep building off plays like that, we might have an honest to goodness QB on our hands.

Play calling wise, I was loving the creativity, but I was also scratching my head on a couple of our short yardage plays. There was the one 3rd & 1 where we called a keeper for Franks when Scarlett had been running the ball well, and we got stuffed. There was the 3rd & 2 where we had Jefferson on the short crosser and he didn't run his route across the sticks (although that's not as much of a play call issue than it is an execution issue). And then there was the downfield pass he called on 2nd down when we were trying to run the clock. I don't mind the pass there, but make it something that has a greater probability of success than a throw that has to travel 30 yards across the field for a 10 yard gain. But the throwback from Krull, the rocker step from Franks, the jet sweep to Toney, and that nifty speed option we also ran against MSU were all fantastic calls. We're starting to see Mullen get comfortable calling some of those gadget plays he's famous for, but I'd like to see him call some more reliable plays in short yardage situations.

Defensively, it's clear that whatever was ailing us against UK is gone. LSU came out with the up tempo and caught our guys off guard early, but that sack fumble by Polite got LSU out of their comfort zone and they never really got back in it. I'd obviously like to see them not give up two gashes on a 4th quarter drive when we're protecting a lead, but they made up for that in a big way once they got back on the field after that. Stewart's pick six was one of the loudest moments I've ever experienced in my 9 years going to games in the Swamp, right up there with the opening play TD against Bama in '11 and the miracle plays against UT in '15 and '17. Polite and Zuniga continue to be absolute terrors in the pass rush, and it's clear that opposing offenses sure as hell better do whatever they can to stay out of obvious passing situations. It's been astonishing to see the improvement by this unit over the last few weeks. The UK game was a wakeup call, and they answered the bell. I remember saying in the UK Cogitations that our defense woke up and played lights out after struggling against UT in '15, and it seems as if the same thing happened again this year.

All in all, it's great to see this team buying into Mullen's philosophies so quickly. I, like most of you, was not thrilled with the hire when it was made, but he's won me over in a big way. You don't see a head coach in a close game in the 4th quarter jumping around the field pumping up the crowd during a timeout. The entire crowd was going apesh*t from that moment forward. It's quite obvious that UF was his dream job, and he probably should have been here a long time ago. This is a coach who knows the crowd, knows the town, and even though it didn't feel like it 11 months ago, was the perfect man for the job.

Sleepy noon start at Vandy next week, so if you're able to get to Nashville and turn it into the Swamp North, get your butts in those seats to pump our guys up! Till next week!

 

Dan Mullen is...good at coaching sports.

 

He was his quarterback coach. Stop making up **** to feed your stupid narrative.

Leak passed for 3k in 06, Tebow passed for 3200 and 2700 yards in 07 and 08.


Dak passed for 3500 and 3800 yards his junior and senior years.

Doesn’t pass huh? You don’t have to like him but stop lying.

 

If the towing company had just painted the fence to resemble a defensive line, he'd have never gotten in.

 

Am I the only one who’s disappointed that didn’t happen?

 

As long as Meyer calls all three timeouts in the 4th quarter against Georgia again he can come back