It's back to the basics for Florida football

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – After defeating the Seminoles in the season finale, the Gators received some much-needed rest.

“It’s been good,” quarterback Feleipe Franks said. “We haven’t really gotten a break from football in forever so it’s been good to just get your body back.

“I mean for all these guys, just available time being in the training room and be with [Director of Strength and Conditioning] coach [Nick] Savage and them, get your body stretched out, little things like that just taking carte of your body so we’re ready to go by the 29th.”

Florida is now shifting its focus to the its bowl game against Michigan in the Peach Bowl. Although the Gators are going to use some practices for game planing, the team will first focus on the basics in order to help younger athletes develop.

“You’ll see at practice today there’s no scout team work, it’s all good on good,” head coach Dan Mullen said. It’s kind of like spring ball or early training camp practice, a lot of fundamentals, individual and all our team stuff is good on good, not scout team, working on things.

“It’s all about base offense, base defense, getting individual time to do things. So the 3s will get more reps than the 1s today, that’s what you get to see that these types of practices.”

These practices will not only help for the game against Michigan, but it will also lay the groundwork for the program's future.

“Everybody you get on the field today is at a different level, at a different stage of what they’re doing,” Mullen said. “If I’m a veteran guy that’s played a lot of football games, I might be working on one or two technique things, getting my body right, staying in the right position and making sure I’m getting game ready for the next game.

“If I’m a guy that redshirted this is my opportunity, I’m at a different stage. This is my opportunity to get myself out of redshirt mode and into playing mode and get a lot of quality reps and build a foundation to move into spring with in the offseason as we get into offseason review, offseason film study and get ready for spring practice.

“So everybody is at a different stage and needs to take advantage of the stage they’re at, don’t worry about what the other guys are doing in the developmental practice, worry about where you’re at and are you putting yourself in a position to better yourself for the future.”

As you can imagine, most of these practices do not have a lot to do with the game plan, but it is still crucial that some things are installed because there is a shorter time span to learn the plan for this game than in previous years.

As a coach, you want to install as much as you can, but in order for it to be successful on the field, it’s up to the guys out there executing to run the plays correctly. Learning plays can take time, and too much all at once could overwhelm a player.

“What you always have to be careful of because my time to prepare is not as important as the players’ time to prepare, what can they do, what can they handle, what can they process, how much can they go execute at a high level because they’re the ones who have to go out on the field and do it,” Mullen said.

“So for us, we’re juggling a lot of different things right now - managing this team through finals and expectations, preparing for the bowl game and recruiting with signing day upon us.

“It’s probably not as much time as you used to have to prepare for bowl games in the past when you could be like, OK, we have plenty of time to get things ready.

“Then being a little bit earlier kickoff, being the 29th where not a traditional New Year’s time where you’re playing these game, just scrunches the calendar a little bit more.”