Creativity

I found this gem on Facebook. Yes, we had a brand new 'up-tempo' offense for Georgia to try to defend (which they did). I am sure all of you remembered how we all easily predicted each play call and misuse of players' talents. This was a repeat of Vandy 2005, and I am not sure this team deserved to win this game. They did everything possible to give the win to UGa.

Midseason Zook Awards

We have reached the midpoint in the regular season and so without further ado, its time to check the Zook Awards standings and season-to-date summary and hand out some awards and bonus points! Note that these do not include the yet-to-be-released week 8 awards.

Overall Midseason Point Standings
Total number of nominations in parenthesis

Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio, Florida, 39 points (5)
Houston Nutt, Ole Miss, 20 points (3)
Tim Brewster, Minnesota, 19 points (3)
Turner Gill, Kansas, 18 points (4)
Les Miles, LSU, 13 points (3)
Frank Beamer, VA Tech, 11 points (1)
Butch Davis, UNC, 10 points (1)
Joe Paterno, Penn State, 10 points (1)
Rich Rodriguez, Michigan, 10 points (1)
Mike Locksley, New Mexico, 9 points (3)
Danny Hope, Purdue, 8 points (1)
Derek Dooley, Tennessee, 7 points (4)
Lane Kiffin, USC, 6 points (3)
Paul Hewitt, GA Tech, 4 points (1)
Doc Holliday, Marshall, 4 points (1)
Mack Brown, Texas, 3 points (1)
Rick Neuheisel, UCLA, 2 points (2)
Mark Richt, Georgia, 2 points (2)
Ron Zook, Illinois, 2 points (2)
Jimbo Fisher, FSU, 1 point (1)
Dan Hawkins, Colorado, 1 point (1)
Randy Shannon, Miami, 1 point (1)
Jeff Tedford, Cal, 1 point (1)

Midseason Awards
As you can see, Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio are way out in front of the pack thanks to 3 straight wins in weeks 5, 6, and 7. However we feel that there are some coaches who also deserve an extra bit of recognition:

First coach fired award: Tim Brewster, Minnesota. Brewster earned a well-deserved and overdue pink slip, the first coaching casualty of the season. Not only was he fired but he was sent packing immediately a la Tommy Bowden and offensive coordinator Jeff Horton will take over for the rest of the season. 10 bonus points.

Next on the chopping block award: Mike Locksley, New Mexico. The former Zook protege has somehow escaped an actual win so far this season, probably due in large part to the fact that no one pays any attention to New Mexico football. The Lobos are 117th of 120 with 13.6 points per game for and dead last with 44.1 points per game against. Locksley's career highlights include 1 win in 19 tries, a 1 game suspension for punching out an assistant, and 1 sexual harrassment lawsuit. 10 bonus points.

We're going to bolt for a new conference and leave our coach behind award: Dan Hawkins, Colorado, who no one expects to ever coach a game in the Big XII. If Locksley is next on the chopping block, Hawkins will follow soon after. 5 bonus points.

We forgot you were still there award: Paul Wulff, Washington State, proud owner of a 4-28 (1-21 PAC 10) record in his 2 1/2 seasons in Pullman. Wazzu is 1-6 this season with a 1 point win over Montana State. 10 bonus points.

Mad Hatter clock management award: We decided the award itself needed to be named after Les Miles. Lucky for him he has that Satanic contract so we only award 5 bonus points.

Worst analogy ever award: Derek Dooley, Tennessee, for comparing his team to the German army in World War II, awaiting the allied D-Day invasion. I'm sure Tennessee fans greatly appreciated being compared to Nazis. 5 bonus points.

These midseason awards will be tacked onto the season standings. Now onto the week-by-week summary.

Week by week

Preseason: Butch Davis (10); Rich Rodriguez (10); Lane Kiffin (4); Houston Nutt, Les Miles, Derek Dooley (1)

Week 1: Houston Nutt (11); Turner Gill (10); Mike Locksley (4); Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio, Ron Zook (1)

Week 2: Frank Beamer (11); Paul Hewitt (4); Doc Holliday (4); Jimbo Fisher, Lane Kiffin, Dan Hawkins, Tim Brewster, Rick Neuheisel (1)

Week 3: Houston Nutt (8); Turner Gill (3); Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio (3); Jeff Tedford (1)

Week 4: Danny Hope (8); Tim Brewster (8); Mack Brown (3); Mike Locksley, Derek Dooley, Mark Richt (1)

Week 5: Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio (12); Les Miles (11); Derek Dooley (4); Mark Richt, Turner Gill, Lane Kiffin, Ron Zook (1)

Week 6: Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio (11); Joe Paterno (10); Mike Locksley (4); Les Miles, Randy Shannon, Rick Neuheisel, Derek Dooley (1)

Week 7: Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio (12); Tim Brewster (10); Turner Gill, Kansas (4)

Week 8 nominations

Butch Davis, UNC - Allowed Miami to reel off 30 straight points in a 33-10 win. Maybe he excused his players from the game early to attend a party in South Beach?

Mack Brown, Texas - Iowa State? Really? The same team OU just beat 52-0 a week ago? Looks like a very impressive 9 year streak of 10+ wins a year is coming to an end. This marks the first back-to-back home losses for Texas since 1997. At least they don't have Steve Addazio as their OC though.

Dan Hawkins, Colorado - Blew a 10 point second half lead against Texas Tech. Plus we haven't given him quite the attention he deserves in this, presumably his last season.

Bill Stewart, West Virginia - Automatic under the Jeff Bowden clause. Losing to Syracuse is embarrassing. Losing to Syracuse at home when you score 14 points in the first quarter and hold Syracuse scoreless in the 2nd half? The only word I can think of to describe that is Zookworthy.

Randy Edsall, Connecticut - Weren't the Huskies a popular preseason pick to win the Big Easy? Instead they're 3-4 (0-2) having just gotten shut out 26-0 by Louisville. On the other hand, congratulations to Coach Strong who is doing a great job in his first season!

Bill Lynch, Indiana - Automatic under the Out-Zooked clause. How do you get blown out by Illinois? Pathetic!

Kirk Ferentz, Iowa - He must have read "How to Manage the Game Clock" by L. Miles and U. Meyer before the game.

Week 7 winners

Co-winners:
Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio, Florida, 12 points (including a bonus point for winning the poll and a postgame press conference bonus).

Tim Brewster, Minnesota, 10 points. Automatic under the Mississippi State clause.

Runner-up: Turner Gill, Kansas, 4 points

Week 7 postgame press conference bonus

We haven't seen press conferences this bad in Gainesville since 2004. Steve Addazio definitely gets a bonus point in the Zook Awards for a press conference bonus. Watch if you dare. Disclaimer: You will feel dumber for having watched this.




I will hopefully have time for a further analysis later -- first things first I need to step up my campaign to become Floirda's new OC and work on my playbook -- but what I will write will mirror the excellent analysis over at firesteveaddazio.com so click on the link and check it out.

Week 7 nominations

Let's start with the "other nominees" this week before getting to the main course because there is a lot to write about that.

Tim Brewster, Minnesota
Automatic under the Mississippi St. clause (more to come on Miss St. later too). Brewster got the axe on Sunday after losing to Purdue. Congratulations Minnesota and good luck in your coaching search!

Turner Gill, Kansas
Year 1 for Turner Gill has been ugly so far but wow, 59-7?

That's about it - there really wasn't a lot of bad coaching going on this week. There were some upsets sure - Texas beat Nebraska but that was certainly not a total shocker - neither was Wisconsin beating Nebraska. UK beating S. Carolina was somewhat surprising until you remember the Chicken Curse which manifested itself in the form of an injury to Lattimore and a terrible pass (on a great playcall) by Garcia at the end. None of these is really Zookworthy. However...

Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio, Florida
After a recruiting trip to PA to get a plan B in case Tim Tebow (who spent the day with Mike Shula) didn't come to UF, Urban Meyer and Greg Mattison sat on a plane in 5 degree weather on a tarmac in the middle of nowhere in PA. "He [Mattison] said, 'You realize if we don't get Tim Tebow, that will set the program back 10 years,'" said Meyer. "I said, 'Shut up.' He said, '10 years.' I got so upset with him, I grabbed a blanket and didn't talk to him the rest of the trip."

Urban Meyer was 48-7 with Tim Tebow. He is now 13-6 without him. Think about that for a second. Steve Spurrier never lost to an unranked team at home in 12 seasons. Urban Meyer has now lost to 3 in the last 4 years.

Once again the playcalling was anemic. We gained 14 yards on 12 first down plays in the first half, putting ourselves constantly in 2nd and 3rd and long situations. For the 6th time in 7 games this season, we failed to score in the 1st quarter. For the 2nd time since pre-Spurrier (Auburn 2007), we got shut out in the first half. For the 2nd time in 3 games, we got held to 7 points or less and the first time at home since a blowout loss to unranked LSU in the first year of the dark ages. On 14 of our first 21 first downs, we ran a read option dive play. The last 7 first downs we actually threw the ball because we were behind.

There were at least 4 or 5 plays where I went "oh shit" in the stands because I could see what play we were running and I could see that Miss St. also saw what play they were running. Every "oh shit" ended up in a loss or at best a no-gain on a play that the defense had sniffed out. It was shocking when Mullen punted on 4th and 10 from our 37 -- I couldn't believe that he actually was confident that 10 points was enough to win. Most unranked underdogs coming into the Swamp would have gone for that because as the HBC used to say, you can't beat us by kicking FGs (much less punting the ball). But Mullen would say after the game "This was not an upset. Our team expected to win this game." It was clear at that moment that they did. And they proceeded to simply play to run clock the rest of the game, running on 29 of their last 30 plays. Did we make any adjustments to stop them? Of course not. And they knew we wouldn't be able to do anything on offense.

I feel bad for Chas Henry. Its not his fault and I hope he knows no one blames him. He's a punter, not a place kicker. Tell me why is it that we don't have a viable backup placekicker on the team?

We never ran a play-action pass. We never tried to stretch the field vertically. I actually just watched a highlight video of our game against Cincy, in which Loeffler called the plays because Addazio was acting head coach due to Meyer's health issues. On Riley Cooper's long TD, the announcer says "That is uncharacteristic for the FL offense. They are not a big play offense." Sad but true. Contrast that to 2007 and 2008.

Our red zone woes continued, going 1/3 on the day. We have scored TDs on 55% of red zone possessions under Addazio compared to 75% under Mullen (with Gonzales helping). That includes last season (34/68 with Tim Tebow).

Meyer said after the game we were "down to zero running backs". Umm isn't there a supposedly super-talented freshman named Mack Brown (no relation to the Texas coach) sitting on the bench? I really don't know what more can be said. The last time we lost to Mississippi State, a lot of good came out of it (God bless Sylvester Croom). Hopefully the same will be true this time because if Addazio isn't gone Monday morning, Meyer needs to be gone Tuesday morning!

Week 6 winners

Co-winners:
Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio, Florida (11 points, bonus point for winning poll)
Joe Paterno (10 points, automatic under the Out-Zooked clause)

Runner-up:
Mike Locksley (4 points, words cannot describe how bad a coach he is).

Honorable mention (1 point each):
Les Miles, LSU
Randy Shannon, Miami
Rick Neuheisel, UCLA
Derek Dooley, Tennessee

The REAL Reason UF Has Been Struggling Offensively Since 2008...

The Red Sox had the Curse of the Bambino. The White Sox had the Curse of the Black Sox. The Cubs still have the Curse of the Billy Goat. Well, fellow Gators, we too have fallen victim to a curse, and our offense has not been the same since. And I'm not just speaking about the blithering idiot currently calling our offensive plays...no, I'm talking about a different breed of blithering idiot altogether.


Behold...the Curse of the Retarded Politician...

Is There Really A Need To Do Nominations This Week?

Thank God we still have a coach who gives a crap in Billy Donovan.

Week 6 nominations

Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio, Florida
Seriously was there anyone in the Swamp on Saturday night outside of the 11 people on the field and the UF coaching staff that didn't know Les Miles was going to run the same fake FG play he ran against S. Car. in 2007? We were all yelling watch the fake from row 5 but then our players sold out for the block on what would have been a 51 yard attempt and of course with a Satanic contract to hold up, the over-the-shoulder flip was 0.5 inches from being forward and ended up bouncing like a basketball right to the intended target.

Urban Meyer is now 9-8 vs the SEC West in just short of 6 seasons. In my 6 seasons under the Head Ball Coach, he was 14-4 against the West. The one difference is FSU which was top 4 every year Spurrier was here except 2001 while they have never been top 4 with Meyer which has allowed for Meyer's success. Under Spurrier from '93 until 2001, 8 of 9 years, UF still had legitimate national title hopes going into the FSU game. 1997 was the only year we took 2 losses into that game. .889 under Spurrier is .500 under Meyer. We don't expect to win championships every year but with the talent assembled here, we expect to be in contention and we certainly don't expect to be outcoached by the Mad Hatter.

We must not let the defensive failures at the end of the game detract from the horrible play-calling on offense once again. 14 read options on 22 first down plays. We have seen worse but over 60% of the time is still horrible. Our average gain on those 22 first down plays was 1.05 yards (23 yards on 22 plays). That is horrible. We put our offense in 2nd and 3rd and longs almost every series. Yet because Johnny Brantley is a pretty good QB and Carl Moore is turning into a very good WR (why is this not obvious to the coaching staff?) we pick up a lot of 3rd and longs and then ... go right back to the read option again. That is a primary reason why Florida is 96th ... yes, 96th, in total offense this season.

News flash: its not an option if everyone knows Brantley is going to pitch it and Burton is going to keep it. There's a reason it worked with Tebow -- he could run or take his patented self-play action rocker step and throw it. When was the last time you saw a UF team run a real honest-to-God play action? Brantley made a half motion in that direction once or twice but it wasn't a real play action fake. Look at Boise State's highlights for what I'm talking about - sell it by putting it in the RB's gut, then drop back with the ball behind your back then throw it. That play would be so money on first down for UF considering that every DC opposing us is expecting the read option dive!



Here are the lowlights from the game:


More stats to come later but for now I'll end with food for thought: Alabama and Florida are about equal in talent level. Nick Saban has destroyed us twice in a row. South Carolina is nowhere near the talent level of either of us but nonetheless convincingly beat Alabama. The difference: they have a ball coach in Columbia.

Les Miles, LSU
Not to be forgotten, The Mad Hatter tried to give use the game. We just wouldn't take it. He wasted 35 seconds off the play clock before calling timeout on 4th and 1 from the 34. Then he called a play that 90,000 out of 90,030 people in the stadium knew was coming. Luckily for him those 30 people were on the field or on the UF sidelines.

Randy Shannon, Miami
No shame in losing to an FSU team that is clearly on their way back. But getting destroyed 45-17 in a rivalry game in which you were favored? Embarrassing to say the least. Let's hope Randy Shannon doesn't still have sand in his vagina after FSU added two 4th quarter TDs like he did when UF kicked a late FG against them in 2008.

Joe Paterno, Penn State
Automatic under the Out-Zooked clause. This is his first win I believe but lets hope its also his last and we don't have another Bowden/FSU scenario on our hands. Get to 400 wins and retire with dignity JoePa!

Mike Locksley, New Mexico
I think the loser of this game was getting a Zook regardless but Locksley's Lobos are now 0-6 after losing to quite possibly the 2nd worst team in division 1-A.

Rick Neuheisel, UCLA
Seriously? You get blown out by Stanford, blow out Texas, then get blown out by a not-very-good Cal team that had itself recently gotten blown out by Nevada? Well good for Boise as the Broncos march on to a showdown with a Nevada team that is looking better by the week!

Derek Dooley, Tennessee
Again, losing this game is one thing. Getting embarrassed is another. Tenn could very well be a 4-8 team this year, repeating their 2-4 from the first half of the season!

I Don't Care What Happens In The Second Half...

...if Steve Addazio is still offensive coordinator by the end of the day Monday, Meyer and Addazio should be awarded the Zook Award for the year, and we should institute an Addazio Award for sheer offensive idiocy.

Week 6 nominations

Post your thoughts here...

LSU/Florida and UGA/Tennessee games are both on Zookwatch!

Week 5 winners

We have co-winners this week. Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio won the poll but the Mad Hatter is at least equally deserving if not moreso. Both are deserving of the full 10 points for the award. Both get a postgame comment bonus for their idiotic ramblings (Addazio & Miles that is). Meyer and Addizio get a second bonus point for winning the poll.

We would like to remind everyone that when we give the award to a head coach and an assistant, that means that we believe the shortcomings to be in the assistant coach who should be fired. The head coach shares the award because it is his job (see Sparano, Tony) to fire/demote the hapless, incapable assistant. We think Urban Meyer is a great CEO head coach but needs 2 good coordinators to be successful. He won't have that until he gets rid of Addazio.

Without further ado, co-winners:
Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio, Florida (12 points)
Les Miles, LSU (11 points)

Runner-up:
Derek Dooley, Tennessee, for enabling the Mad Hatter to still somehow win. 4 points.

Honorable Mentions (1 point each):
Mark Richt, UGA
Turner Gill, Kansas
Lane Kiffin, USC
Ron Zook, Illinois

Note that Bronco Mendenhall avoids honorable mention by way of firing his DC and taking action to resolve BYU's problems.

Time for the Zookers to swim with the fishes

A huge Anti-Zook goes out to the Godfather, Tony Soprano. Umm that's Sparano. But one could easily understand any confusion: Dolphins' special teams coach fired after loss. It took the Godfather all of 12 hours after the Dolphins MNF special teams debacle to fix the problem and give his special teams coach a pair of cement boots! When they talk about "axing" someone...

That is how you deal with someone who is not capable of doing their job. Can we please get him on the phone with Urban Meyer? And while the rest of us are very happy as the Mad Hatter bumbles his way through another season, I'm sure LSU fans would like their AD to give ol' Leslie an offer he can't refuse.

Even the head ball coach got into the act at his press conference:

But in vintage Spurrier fashion, he didn’t stop there.

“Of course, sometimes you can win and still be a dummy,” Spurrier cracked. “We’ve learned that recently, too.”

Now, he didn’t mention any names, but the smirk on his face was priceless.

Any chance he might have watched the ending of that LSU-Tennessee game last weekend?

Gotta love the HBC!

Meanwhile at Steve Addazio's Tuesday press conference:




What an absolute moron! You think he's going to start saying "If you sleep 4 hours fast, its just like sleeping 8 hours" and "We're really close. We've got a long way to go but we're really close!" any minute now!

And then there's this image from the game:


Notice anything wrong with our O-line play? And then there's the issue of course of our playcalling as CBS thankfully pointed out to everyone:





Not to be outdone though, there is this absolute must read in today's Forde Yard Dash absolutely ripping into Miles. The white meat:

In Satan's lair, there is a lockbox with the words "LES MILES (2)" written on it. Inside is the LSU coach's soul.

There is no other possible explanation. The Hat clearly has made a deal with Lucifer that allows him to win nearly 80 percent of his games as coach of the Tigers, capture a national title and make more money than all but a tiny fraction of working Americans. And doing it with a unique flair for coaching lunacy in pressure situations.

The latest installment, of course, was the Tennessee-LSU game (3) on Saturday in Baton Rouge. The winning drive contained this masterpiece sequence -- LSU timeout, incomplete pass, delay of game, LSU timeout -- but that ultimately was dwarfed by the 30 seconds of anarchy that ended the game.

The Dash's mind reeled while watching the Tigers simply … fail … to act … as the seconds drained away. Were they really doing this again? Would the game really end with LSU on the 1-yard line, down by four points, running a catastrophic fire drill of a final play?

Alas, no. There was a Satanic contract to uphold, and half of the Volunteers' travel squad was on the field, and so there was an untimed do-over that of course went The Hat's way. And thus LSU won 16-14, in a game that set football coaching back to somewhere in the 19th century.

And apparently the following press conference was just as bewildering as Addazio above:

And the do-over TD sent Miles to the postgame press conference as a winner for the second time after massacring clock management (see below for the other). There, with his mind still off somewhere in the Lesmosphere, he spoke before taking questions for four minutes in his usual baroque and bewildering way.

"I think this team will force out some of the fat, and get to the leaner meat," he declared at one point.

Week 5 nominations

Urban Meyer & Steve Addazio, Florida
Absolutely inexcusable! Addazio needs to be gone yesterday! Actually can we make it retroactive to a week ago? I was at the game so I didn't realize until someone called us that CBS actually showed like 5 replays of Bama's entire defensive coaching staff jumping up and down yelling "jump pass" to the players! And we still run the play and surprise, its picked off! Then our coaching staff just gives up in the 2nd quarter. We are down 24-0, 3 scores, and we kick a FG to cut it to ... 3 scores!?!?? And then we kick another FG to cut it to ... 3 scores!??! We stopped trying to win midway through the 2nd quarter and that is inexcusable!

More thoughts to come later and some video evidence but let's leave this out there for thought - in the past season and a half, our offense has looked really good in one game - against Cincinnati, when Tim Tebow set a BCS record for most passing yards. Who called the plays for that game? Scott Loeffler, our QB coach, as Addazio was assuming the role of "acting head coach" for the game due to Meyer's health problems. Ironically we'd actually be doing much better if Meyer was taking time off as was once mentioned and Addazio were interim head coach because then he wouldn't be calling the plays. Of course as soon as he wasn't able to recruit the players Meyer would, that would go downhill very fast but it is ironic.

Mark Richt, Georgia
The seat is now white hot for Richt. Wow. Blowing a 10 point lead against Colorado and their lame duck coach Dan Hawkins (who no one expects to coach a game in the PAC 12 next year) is downright awful. I still think Richt gets one more season to turn it around but I'm not as sure as I was after last week. They are all but guaranteed a losing record at this point for the first time in Richt's career. What if they go 3-9?

Derek Dooley, Tennessee
Seriously? 13 men, not even 12. And when LSU was in such an obvious state of disarray (as they usually are in late game situations). All they had to do was keep the guys they had on the field and they walk away with the win. Instead the Mad Hatter's neverending string of crazy luck continues for one more week at least...

Les Miles, LSU
Les started the game of "anything you can do I can do worse" before Dooley one-upped him. Is there any coach who has more Zookish late game management skills? I think we may have to name a clause after him for blowing a game with horrible clock management! Somehow he continues to get insanely lucky (if you ever see Les in Vegas, make sure you put all your chips on the same number he does on the roulette wheel!) Yes LSU somehow won the game but certainly not because of anything they did right as they did their absolute best to give it away.

And that's just the SEC ... wow what a week of terrible coaching!

Bronco Mendenhall, BYU
See Gerald's post below.

Turner Gill, Kansas
55-7 loss to Baylor? Baylor? Wow.

Lane Kiffin, USC
Worth at least of an honorable mention. We knew they weren't very good ... so did the voters who had them #18 at 4-0 ... but we didn't expect the first loss to come to a Washington team that had been embarrassingly bad against Nebraska.

Week 4 winners

Co-winners (8 points each):
Danny Hope, Purdue
Tim Brewster, Minnesota

Runner-up (3 points):
Mack Brown, Texas

Honorable mention (1 point each):
Mike Locksley, New Mexico
Derek Dooley, Tennessee
Mark Richt, Georgia

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http://www.firesteveaddazio.com/

A Long Overdue Nomination for BYU

They've been flying under the radar so far this season; but after an opening week squeaker over a pitiful Washington squad, BYU has not come within two touchdowns of beating an opponent since. Their latest loss: a 31-16 thrashing at the hands of Utah State, a team less than a week removed from its own 41-7 thrashing at the hands of San Diego State. The performance led to the immediate firing of BYU's defensive coordinator. I couldn't find a way to qualify BYU's coaching performance under any of the recognized clauses (though technically the fired DC, Jaime Hill, gets honorable mention under the Mississippi State clause, he wasn't a head coach, so it doesn't exactly fit here), but it's time to recognize the coaching futility of Bronco Mendenhall, who has led a traditional non-AQ power to a 1-4 record that doesn't begin to do justice to just how far this once proud program has fallen. I hereby nominate Mendenhall for Zooking the Mormons.