Gators set on fixing snap count before Death Valley test
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What made the loss to Kentucky sting more than a typical loss on the schedule was the way Florida continually shot itself in the foot penalties. On the day the Gators had 15 penalties for 115 yards with eight of those coming by the way of false starts.
Many of those false starts came on critical downs, turning third and short or second and short into third and long. It was Florida's first true road test of the season and they came away from it with a resounding failing grade.
Dan Mullen's gameplan called for quarterback Emory Jones to use a clap count. Whether it was from the noise of 60,000-plus Big Blue Nation fans at Kroger Field or a lack of focus that left 11 players on a different page, the night saw Emory Jones clapping like he was at a Dave Matthews Band concert with 10 other people around him looking on in confusion.
This week the Gators are back on the road. This time they'll enter one of college football's cathedrals in Tiger Stadium. Florida is catching a break getting a down LSU team and an 11 am kickoff local time. However, even if a frustrated Tiger faithful only get 60% capacity they'll have more fans in Death Valley than Kroger Field can hold, and the questions of what Florida will change begs asking.
"We're probably going to stick with what we've been doing every game. Just the level of focus that is needed this week, knowing what happened last game we played in a hostile environment, it's mainly just the focus and the discipline in making sure we're just locked in every single play because we have to be," Jones said. "That's for all 11 guys on the offense. Really on the whole team, but I mean in the sense of the snap count and stuff like that we're probably going to do the same thing, it's just a point of just being focused and disciplined."
Jones' sentiment was echoed by Mullen throughout the week. When asked specifically if Florida would ditch the snap count to a silent count or something else, Mullen dodged giving specifics.
"I’m not going to get into what we’re going to do specifically. We discussed it. We’ll have some things. There’s tons of things you can do," Mullen said. "We’ll get under center, use a verbal count. I go back all the way. We played, when I was at Utah we played at Texas A&M on the road and at BYU, all we used was the quarterback’s voice count. There’s a lot of things you can do. We gotta do what works best for our guys and make sure all of them can function and be efficient.”
Florida's path to Atlanta is likey roadblocked by Kentucky and Georgia but the next two games will shape the future of the program and the perception of where Dan Mullen has the Gators going. Florida has lost two of its three games against LSU, including a 2020 matchup where Florida was a double-digit favorite. That loss kicked off a miserable end to the season that began to turn some fans sour on Mullen and the state of the program. This week, on the road at LSU, if the Gators pull a second act of the penalty show they debuted in Lexington, then lose to No. 1 Georgia on October 30 the perception of the fan base will continue to sour like milk left out on the 50-yard line at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
LSU comes into this game battered, bruised, and on the precipice of firing a National Champion head coach. A loss, specifically another loss due to self-inflicted wounds, would be catastrophic.
"We want to clean up a lot of things," senior running back Dameon Pierce said. "We did a lot of things that we wanted to clean up and I think we cleaned them up for the most part. We’re still working on a few things. "This game here is going to be huge for the rest of our season.”