Gator Country brings you a new podcast as we recap the Florida Gators loss on Saturday to the Alabama Crimson Tide, plus update you on recruiting.

Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre break down the SEC Championship game and what went wrong for the Gator on offense.

Andrew and Nick also look at this huge recruiting week for Florida, plus what the Gators are trying to do at quarterback.

TRANSCRIPT:

 

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, back with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, after the SEC Championship season’s over with for a little while, but recruiting goes on.

Nick:                         Recruiting heats up.

Andrew:                 Yeah.

Nick:                         That starts Sunday. So I’ll ask you this real quick, we’ll do a recap of the game, but last year Florida lost, and Jim McElwain was in a kicker’s living room. What living room is Jim McElwain in this year?

Andrew:                 Jarrett Steadman out at Baylor, the Baylor transfer quarterback is the hot commodity, and Florida’s out there, and selling what the offense can do. We’re going to talk about the game here in a second, but when you look at the game, Florida very well is a quarterback away from being a good football team. There was plays to be made on Saturday against Alabama. A quarterback with anything capable of being decent makes those plays, and it’s a different ball game.

Nick:                         I think Austin Appleby’s a decent quarterback.

Andrew:                 No.

Nick:                         Just to say that he’s not decent, I mean, is he a good quarterback? No. It’s like I said, there aren’t a lot of good graduate transfer quarterbacks. You can say Russel Wilson. There’s an exception to every rule, but I said it before the year, there’s a reason why you’re a graduate transfer quarterback. I think it got into, remember before the game I said, “Florida is not going to ask Austin Appleby to win games,” and I said that about Luke Del Rio before the year. Not going to ask Luke Del Rio to win games. When you play a team like Alabama, they’re going to take away what you do well, and they’re going to force you to do something else. That meant, “Austin Appleby, we need you to try to win a game today,” and that’s what’s going to happen.

Andrew:                 Yeah.

Nick:                         That make sense?

Andrew:                 Yeah. I mean, it does, but it just is, it has to happen. You have to find a quarterback.

Nick:                         No, I agree with that. I just don’t think, everyone’s saying Austin Appleby’s a terrible quarterback. I don’t think he’s a terrible quarterback. Listen, people on social media were going crazy saying, “I miss Treon Harris.” No, you don’t.

Andrew:                 I mean, Treon Harris don’t make throws either. It’s just there is receiver after receiver after receiver wide open. The come back is, “Well, the running game sucked.” Yes, the running game sucks, but the running game sucks because there’s eight in the box, because quarterback can’t beat you. The first drive is a really good drive. They score, but guess what? He made the throws. The second possession the play action’s not there, and instead of just throwing it away he throws it across the field, which is a huge no no. Pick. Then the next drive Callaway has three steps on his receiver on the post route, and instead of leading Callaway to where he catches or it falls incomplete, he throws it behind. It gets picked off. You can’t throw behind on post route. It gets picked off. It just is on and on.

Then you look at the fourth drive. He hits Goolsby on a wid