Over at Rivals, Mike Farrell wonders whether Florida will take the conference’s biggest step back in the 2021 season, and, honestly, I love the way he phrases his rationale more than I even do the answer.
My opinion is that the Gators lose so much on offense and have some questions on defense with coordinator Todd Grantham coming back…
Of course, you could argue that most SEC offensive coordinators don’t have any questions about Todd Grantham.
Get The Picture 
Why doesn’t Mike enumerate exactly what those questions happen to be?
Why leave us all in suspense by making such a statement and not properly defining it?
😂🤣😂
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They probably only budgeted 1,500 words for the piece.
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Keeping Grantham was the best move they made in the off season…….for the rest of the conference. #rd and Grantham is not a myth. Mullen doesnt care very much for recruiting. With the dumpster fires that FSU and the U have been the last few years it is almost criminal that they haven’t managed a top 5 class.
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FSU definitely has a window. They are just a mess.
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Yeah I have no faith that either FSU or Miami will be able to challenge UF in the near future. Both of those programs are “has-beens”.
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You forgot the 2017 National Champs out of Orlando.
😉
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Seriously. UCF is Sofa King awesome.
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Unless Dopey finds a QB who can lead their offense to outscore teams, there’s no doubt the Handbags are going to take a big step back in 2021.
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Word is out huh? Oh well, couldn’t last forever.
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All this Florida is going to be shitty in 21…..are we setting ourselves up for disappointment?
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I think they will step back. Too many big losses to overcome. However, if Bowman or Lingaard play decent and one of Jones or Richardson do the same, they’ll be 9-3. (For the record, I believe they will be above avg at qb and eventually Richardson will be the starter.)
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Apparently we didn’t learn from last year. I prefer to tell them how bad they are on the field of play.
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Exactly, PTC. I was worried about them in 2020. Their problems are their problems, but don’t overlook them. They’ll get throttled by Alabama so at best they could be 6-1 going into our game assuming that they can beat LSU. I hope that they are. I’m concerned that if they are 5-2 or 4-3 we’ll overlook them and play to their level.
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I don’t think Kirbs will allow the team to overlook UF. Sarkalina maybe. Kentucky maybe. Vandy maybe. But never UF.
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Kirby has as much love for Florida as Spurrier has for us.
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What ever happened behind closet doors, we’ll never know or care concerning the dismissal of multiple defensive staff members…the FU dc is riding this one as long as possible after smelling first hand the stink swirling about the FU hc, $o a$ to collect a$ much a$ possible till the grantham express heads out of Hogtown to parts unknown…
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Last year the conventional wisdom was “This is the year Florida beats Georgia for the East title.” Turned out to be correct. I’m fine with the CW being right two years in a row.
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No disappointment this year. We are going to go through the gators like croton oil thorough a midget. (and several other teams as well)
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I thought croton oil was a typo, but I looked it up, and will just say I learn something here every day.
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Me too! From Wikipedia:
“During World War II, the United States Navy added a small amount of croton oil to the neutral grain spirits which powered torpedoes. The oil was intended to prevent sailors from drinking the alcohol fuel. Sailors devised crude stills to separate the alcohol from the croton oil, as alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than croton oil”
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you… The United States Navy
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Torpedo Juice was what it was called. Sort of like the habit of taking the C-4 out of a claymore to cook your food. It was not such a good idea if you need the claymore.
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Don’t you mean, “Shit through a tin horn.”?
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UF’s O line is supposed to be better. Their running game is supposed to be better. Their QB is a dual threat. Put all of that into the blender and you come out with mushy shit. Could be another 8-4 season or worse.
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Yep. Has the makings of a typical Mullet MSU team. Beats the teams he is supposed to beat and no one of any note.
I think with their schedule the big games become LSU, UK, Mizzou. The others would be pretty baked in wins or losses.
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Lower down in his article he list uf as loosing the most as far as WRs, wasn’t there a correlation that the drop off of teams is really based on the losses at WR more than any other matrix?
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Loss of passing production, and they lose all of it, passer and all the catchers.
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I know some here will jump me for this but honestly after his first season at Georgia I thought Towel Boy was just as bad as Willie. UGA really had only one good season (2012) while Towel Boy was DC and the success was mainly because the O was so good.
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The 2011 defense carried that team. 3rd and Grantham was a compliment back in the day when it started IIRC.
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Florida is going to suuuuuuck. If they don’t play their cards right with the end of the Mullen era and their next hire, they’re looking at Tennessee/Miami/Nebraska level “former power with zero hope of returning to glory” territory.
The biggest thing recruits remember Florida doing is getting smoked in the SEC championship and beating Georgia in an obvious down year. Before that they… got smoked a few more times in the SEC championship. These kids were sucking thumbs during the Tebow era.
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I’m sorry, but this is just ridiculous wishful thinking.
They will never become Tennessee or Nebraska. That will never be an issue at Floriduh because of the recruiting base. Even Miami is only 20 years removed from their last national title and one good coach away from actually contending with Clemson. Same with FSU, who last won a title 8 seasons ago.
Tennessee and Nebraska are Tennessee and Nebraska because of the lack of viable in-state recruiting now that recruiting has become the be-all, end-all for any non-Nick Saban-led football team. Because if Saban went to either school, they would win a national title within three years. But as there are no Saban clones, and as their state high school football programs are not likely to start producing 4 and 5-stars like Florida, Texas, Georgia, California, and Louisiana do, then those two schools are not ever coming “back.”
Florida however, can, and likely will. All it would take at Florida is another great coach like Spurrier or Meyer who recruits as well as Kirby, Dabo, or Day, and they’re right back to winning titles. Bear Bryan knew it in the 1970’s when he called them the SEC’s sleeping giant.
Don’t delude yourself into thinking this. It is a foolish line of thinking.
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*Bryant
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I get what you are saying about the talent in the state of Florida but if you suck at recruiting your team will suck.
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Of course you will. That’s not what I’m saying.
MGW said if they don’t turn it around soon, they’re going to become Tennessee and Nebraska, which is ridiculous.
All it takes is a coach to come in who WILL recruit better than Mullen, but be a better coach than Boom, and they’ll be right there winning national titles again.
This idea that Floriduh would just become Tennessee and Nebraska, when the situations at those two schools are wholly unique to those two schools because of the lack of in-state recruiting, because recruits “don’t remember” is ridiculous.
To quote a commercial, “That’s not the way it works. That’s not the way any of this works.”
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Or Florida could turn into us for the past 40 seasons. Looks like something like this:
One thing that every successful UF coach didn’t have that Mullen and his successor have to deal with is Kirby at Georgia. I think that changes things for uf. If either miami or fsu shows life it could be a long hard road for the gators.
One thing as georgia fans we should know: in state recruiting advantages don’t always result in titles.
As as far as the right coach, imho corch, sos, bear and saban are the top 4 of my lifetime without a real close fifth out there. Odds are they don’t get the next coaching legend. Possible. Not likely.
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Yes. FSU, UF, and UM should be contenders every year based on talent base within driving distance. The fact that they aren’t says everything about the coaching staffs at each place. Go back an look at the Nebraska 1995 natty team roster. It was littered with Florida, California, Louisiana, and Texas kids like Tommy Frazier from Florida and Lawrence Phillips from California. Sure, lots of Nebraska kids too, but they were totally getting national talent at key positions. Look at the 1998 Tennessee roster. Peerless Price from Ohio, Jamal Lewis from Georgia, Travis Henry from Florida (Mr. Florida Football), Tee Martin from Alabama, etc. As Corch points out, Nebraska and Tennessee won national championships in spite of being in states with poor recruiting bases because they recruited so well outside of their own state.
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Hey Corch, what happened to Nebraska was 1. the NCAA rule limiting the number of walk-ons. They would have a hundred walk-ons and got some great offensive lineman that way. 2. Nebraska is the only FCS school in Nebraska so they needed to get the skill players from surrounding states. When they took the money an ran to the B1G they lost the surrounding state players. The U just lost their way with a series of politically correct coaching selections and they became less popular with the south Florida HS players. FSU kept Jimbo one season too long and then went the way of the U with Willie and the rest as they say is history. I would also point out that in FSU’s and The U’s heyday there were no USF, UCF, FAU, FIU etc. A lot of those good but not great supporting players wanted more playing time. Texas now has the same problem with Texas recruits.
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Dude, y’all keep thinking like it’s the 1990’s around here. That recruiting dries up at a school because recruits aren’t “old enough to remember” their heydays.
That’s not the way recruiting works anymore. That’s not how ANY of this works anymore. A great coach will be able to recruit as long as they have access to great in-state talent, or a pipeline to somewhere that does, like Dabo with Atlanta.
It also isn’t enough to be able to recruit nationally, because all the big schools recruit nationally. You need to have at least some kind of foundational level of recruiting in your home state that allows you to build depth while you go out and recruit blue chips elsewhere. Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina produce some pretty great blue chip players. Maybe not on the level of Georgia or Florida, but they’re the next tier down. Not like Nebraska or Tennessee who are basically barren.
Floriduh, Miami, and FSU are good head coaches away from being back in contention very quickly. FSU and Miami may have those guys, we don’t actually know yet. We know Floriduh doesn’t because Sideshow Dan the Clown doesn’t pay near enough attention to recruiting as he should. He’s basically a socially awkward, weirdo version of Mark Richt or Jim Donnan. He gets some good recruits, but he’s not getting out of the bottom of the top-10 or top-15.
It would take a Nick Sabam-like coach to bring Nebraska and Tennessee back from the dead. That’s the point I’m making. Those situations at Nebraska and Tennessee are specific to them. They do not have the ability to recruit blue chip recruits from their home state, thus they are forever behind the 8-ball. It doesn’t matter that recruits “don’t remember or don’t know” about their past success. What recruit remembered Clemson from 1981? Any good recruiter can recruit, but not even Kirby could truly contend at Nebraska or Tennessee. Sure, he could get them to win a division every four years or so, but it would take a Nick Saban to win titles there up to and unless the demographics of those states begin to change and they have exponential growth like Georgia had in the 1980’s and 1990’s, thus creating the natural recruiting advantage we now enjoy. I know Tennessee fans keep pointing to Nashville, but their growth metrics lag behind the metro-Atlanta growth metrics from the 80’s and 90’s, so it’ll never reach that level.
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Can we all agree that somewhere around 9-3 is what we want for them? If the wheels come off this year, we may lose sideshow and towel boy. It’s a talent rich state. If they manage to hire a good coach, we may not own them the next decade.
Jeez it pains me to write that. As a Jacksonville native, I typically can’t think of a record or beat down that is bad enough for those clowns. I just really believe they’ll be mediocre for the foreseeable future as long as Dopey is running the show. Not to mention I would miss the media gold he hands out with his stupid antics.
Oh…and a heart felt FTMFs.
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I mean, they went 8-4 last year. Do I expect them to do worse than that? No.
Their schedule has an awful lot of fluff outside of Alabama, LSU, and Georgia.
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Dude used an Alabama message board as support for his hypothesis. Apparently Alabama’s fans are now experts because their team has been so good.
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