No Huddle: Heggie, Stewart banged up; Gators preparing for Senior Day

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – After coming from behind to defeat the Gamecocks, the Gators now turn their attention to the home finale against the Idaho Vandals. It's Senior Day for Florida and head coach Dan Mullen says it’s always special.

"Great week coming up for us," Mullen said. "We've got Senior Day with 20 seniors who are going to have their last game they're going to play in the Swamp for us. I think that's always a pretty special moment for them.

“Guys have put a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears into the program. Their last opportunity to play at home in front of the home crowd in this stadium. It's always a special day.”

Sometimes it can be tough as a new head coach to convince seniors to buy into what the new guy on the block is selling, but Mullen wasted no time letting his guys know the impact it would have if they did.

“It's always a concern,” Mullen said of convincing the seniors to buy in. “One of the first team meetings, (I said), 'If everybody buys in, the sooner we win. If the seniors want to win, then buy in. As soon as everyone buys in, we have the opportunity to win. And you don't unless that happens.'”

After that meeting and throughout the season, he has seen his seniors show no resistance to what he wants out of them.

“I think the guys understood it. And I think everybody has really bought into our program. I've had a couple seniors say, which I think it's a tremendous compliment that they are like, 'Coach, I wish we had you here for more of my career. I wish the program was this way for more than one year. Or I wish I could come back and have another year to be part of the program again.' I think those are really great compliments."

It may not have been up to the standard he wanted immediately, but the effort was always there.

“I can’t say from day one that they’ve done everything exactly the way we want it done, but I’ve never seen them not try to do it the way we want them to do it," Mullen said. "I think it helps when the seniors buy in, which I imagine is why we’re having success right now.

No restrictions means new faces on Saturday

Saturday is not only great for the seniors, but it could benefit the freshmen as well. During conference play, Mullen is limited to how many players he can dress for the games, and it’s even less on the road.

Now that the conference schedule is over, the Gators can work in more guys in certain spots.

“When you don’t have those restrictions, you have the opportunity for guys to get in in different roles,” Mullen said. “It actually helps a lot on special teams this week.

“Where you are looking at the depth on special teams, where you can actually look and say, ‘hey, this is the guy who is a two or three on special teams who does a great job.’ We’ve love for him to be in that position.

“But when we’re traveling, he doesn’t make the travel list, and he’s like 75th or 78th on the travel list, now you kind of have to put another starter into that backup role on special teams so you can put the guys where they want to be.”

Against Idaho, Mullen also has an opportunity to play someone like a Tim Higgins in the game that doesn’t see much of the field. The ‘Rudy’ type of stories are always a hit and can be a great moment.

“I think it’s always great for everybody,” Mullen said. Guys put so much work in, and the reward to get into a game and play in a game be out there in the Swamp and get to play I think is a pretty special deal.”

Medical Report

For most of the season, the Gators have been injury-free. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for Saturday. Before the game, it was announced three Gators wouldn’t be suiting up on top of Kyle Trask’s injury.

Here is an update on when we might see them back.

QB Kyle Trask (foot) – “will be possible for a return for the bowl game.”

WR Freddie Swain (ankle) – “expected to play this week.”

OL Brett Heggie (ankle) – “questionable for the game this week.”

DB Brad Stewart (quad strain) – “day-to-day.”

“Talking to our trainers they feel he could be ready to go by Saturday, but with muscle pulls you don't know.”

Gators Chomps

What would you have done if Grimes didn’t catch that third-and-7 late in the third?

“That was a big play in the game. Yeah. It’s good to be Florida. I don’t know. When you have good plays, the ball tends to bounce your way more when you go hard. A guy just made a play. I think that play, getting the first down there was critical for us. It’s hard to say that play changed the game, but that first down in that situation did … We started that drive first-and-15 again, with another penalty. That play converted that first down. If I’m not mistaken, that point on — and that’s when you see the stats go [in UF’s favor] — we didn’t have any self-inflicted penalties, any self-inflicted problems on offense. The point is, what if we didn’t do self-inflicted stuff the whole day? Would the whole day have been that way? And if we can execute at a high level, look at what we can accomplish when we’re not shooting ourselves in the foot.”

What about Ryan Farr’s third-quarter routine?

“I watched the TV copy and saw that. They’re kickers. Like they do their own victory on the sideline. I always look at a long snapper. See, he walks out there, and Every time he walks out, his job is to either snap the ball and get a PAT or a field goal, or snap the ball and run down the field on cover. The guy on the left and right of him, that’s about 1/100th or what they have to know for the game. That’s all he had to do. Everybody else is worried about all the other things. So I’m like, ‘Just make sure you take care of your business.’ Have fun. I don’t know what behind the back, I wasn’t impressed. The leg part was good, but the behind the back, I think he lost it there.”

Evan McPherson leg fatigue, kickoff strategy?

“No, I think just for him there’s a fine line between hang time and distance. When you’re playing a dynamic returner - I know we’d love to kick the ball out of the back of the end zone and not even let the guy touch the ball - but you don’t want to mishit one of those and him get it off a line drive and be coming back in a hurry before you get coverage down the field. So that’s one of the things that you talk, hey, should I try driving it to try to drive it out, I’m like, no, just go consistent. And we did because if you look at field position after a kickoff, well we had better … we didn’t return a kick and had better position after a kickoff than they did. So the fair catch strategy would have been better for them than trying to return it on every single kick. I think that’s more of, he was trying to make some excuse why he missed the field goal. But I wasn’t having any of it. You could just see he pulled out of it a little bit, opened up a little bit too much and pushed it off to the right … very much like my driver. I’ve seen that swing before … many times.”