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!