Gators advisory
Florida’s offense blowing away foes
FAYETTEVILLE — University of Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman was asked his thoughts on the potential effect of Tropical Storm Eta when the Razorbacks play at No. 6 Florida on Saturday night.
“You talking about a hurricane from the University of Florida or a real hurricane?” Pittman said. “There’s two of them.”
Florida blew away Georgia with the effect of gale force winds, 44-28, last week in Jacksonville, Fla.
The Gators had 571 yards in total offense — the most allowed by Georgia since 2001 when Florida had 584 in a 2410 victory.
Florida quarterback Kyle Trask was the eye of the storm against the Bulldogs. He completed 30 of 43 passes for 474 yards and 4 touchdowns.
Trask threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown by Eric Stokes to give Georgia a 21-14 lead in the second quarter, but no one at Florida was complaining after he led the Gators to a 38-21 halftime lead that grew to 4121 in the third quarter.
After Georgia jumped ahead 14-0, Florida had 408 yards on 43 plays the rest of the first half while holding the Bulldogs to 30 yards on 18 plays. Georgia finished with 277 total yards.
The Gators (4-1) broke a three-game losing streak to Georgia and took control of the SEC East race.
“I mean, it feels great,” Florida linebacker Amari Burney said. “It’s hard to win games in the SEC and just winning last week was a big deal for us, but it’s time to
move on and try to win all the games from now on. We can’t get complacent.”
Florida Coach Dan Mullen talked to his team Monday about shifting the focus from celebrating a victory over Georgia to preparing for Arkansas.
“We’ve put ourselves in a good position at the halfway point of the season,” Mullen said. “We still control … what we want to accomplish this year.
“But any great team is going to get better from one week to the next. Great teams don’t peak at the midway point of the season.”
Mullen said the Gators need to stay on a path of peaking at the end of the season.
“For us, that’s got to be our goal and our focus this week,” he said. “Last week was really irrelevant if we don’t improve and get better this week.”
It might be tough for Trask to play much better than he has in the first five games. He’s completed 125 of 183 passes (68.7%) for 1,815 yards and 22 touchdowns with 3 interceptions.
Trask had the most passing yards by a Gator against Georgia, but fell 8 yards short of breaking Tim Tebow’s school record of 482 in the 2010 Sugar Bowl against Cincinnati.
It’s likely Trask would have broken Tebow’s record if Mullen hadn’t put the offense on cruise control in the second half against Georgia.
“We’re up by huge numbers and we’re going to control the clock and control the tempo of the game,” Mullen said of the Bulldogs having a 7-6 edge in the second half.
Trask has thrown at least four touchdown passes in each of the first five games, the only FBS quarterback to accomplish that feat this season.
“He’s playing pretty well through five games,” Mullen said when asked to rank Trask’s performances among other quarterbacks he’s seen. “If we play a five-game season, he’d rank really high. The fact we play a longer season, I don’t know where he ranks.
“If they came out today and canceled the rest of the season, I’d say he played a really good season, sure. Let’s hope they don’t do that and let’s hope he continues so at the end of the year then we can rank and say, ‘Hey, you know what, he did have a really, really great, great year.’ ”
Pittman said Trask has been outstanding.
“Lot of confidence and a lot of help,” Pittman said of what he’s seeing from Trask. “The guy can throw any ball, but he has some outstanding skill players.
“He’s getting rid of the ball, he’s getting good protection and the guys are getting open. He’s not holding the football because obviously he knows where he wants to go.”
Trask has loved going to tight end Kyle Pitts, who leads the Gators with 414 receiving yards and 8 touchdowns on 24 catches. But Pitts is in concussion protocol this week and questionable for the Arkansas game.
Pittman said Pitts is “awesome,” but that the Gators have other good tight ends in Kenmore Gamble and Keon Zipperer.
“Those guys have three of the best tight ends in the country on the same team,” Pittman said. ‘“I was thinking, ‘There’s going to be a drop [if Pitts is out].’ Well, listen, there is a drop because Pitts is incredible. But not much.”
Florida wide receiver Kadarius Toney has 29 catches for 339 yards and 8 touchdowns, and Trask also throws a lot of passes to the running backs. Florida running backs Malik Davis, NyQuan Wright and Dameon Pierce combined to burn the Bulldogs for 10 catches for 230 yards, including several wheel routes.
“I think all of our coaches, as an offensive unit, do a great job of finding the tendencies of the defense that we can take advantage of,” Trask said. “This past game it was the running back matched up on linebackers.
“We thought our guys were more agile and faster than they were, and I think they did a great job together as a running back unit.”
Pittman said Florida does as good a job as any team in the country of passing to its running backs.
“I’m not talking about just a flare route,” he said. “I’m talking about running them deep, running them across the middle, running them outside.
“They’re doing a really good job with protection. I think this is the best I’ve seen Florida’s offensive line look in some time, actually.“
Pittman, who faced Florida the previous four seasons as Georgia’s offensive line coach, said the Gators are getting bigger on defense.
Nose guard Tedarrell Slaton is a key for Florida, Pittman said, along with end Brenton Cox and linebackers Ventrell Miller and Jeremiah Moon.
“They will get after you on third down,” Pittman said. “I think you’re going to have to chip, you’re going to have to help on their defensive ends to protect for Feleipe [Franks] to have enough time to throw the ball.”
Mullen said that when he came to work on Monday, he saw Steve Spurrier, who won the 1966 Heisman Trophy as Florida’s quarterback and as a coach led the Gators to the 1996 national championship.
“Coach Spurrier set the bar of fun as not just winning, but scoring a lot of points for the fan base,” said Mullen, whose team is averaging 42.4 points. “So we’re trying to make sure it’s not just fun for us, but it’s fun for the whole Gator Nation.”