GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we recap the Florida Gators 38-27 win over South Carolina on Saturday afternoon on the road.
Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre breakdown how the Gators offense and defense looked on Saturday despite the bad weather in Columbia.
Andrew and Nick also breakdown what the Gators need to do during the bye week before they take on Georgia in Jacksonville.
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, another win. Gators went up to Columbia. It wasn’t pretty. Knew it wouldn’t be pretty when we saw the weather forecast. Guess what? Florida won. After watching some games on Saturday, Nick, involving some of these other teams, including Georgia and Kentucky playing the same weather, Florida looked really good.
Nick:                         It was always going to be a little dicey, because we didn’t know about the weather. Florida wasn’t making any excuses. Kyle Trask said it wasn’t the weather, and they practiced with wet balls. We had said that. It definitely looked like it was affecting both quarterbacks early on, for sure. People were getting on Kyle Trask, but Hilinski was throwing some ducks. He was hitting the grass a lot.
Andrew:                 Yeah. I won’t use the excuse for Kyle, because he didn’t use the excuse, but you could definitely tell. We’ve watched Kyle Trask now, what, four games? Right? That wasn’t Kyle Trask. Kyle Trask doesn’t miss his running back high. That’s not what he does. There’s a difference of throwing a dry ball and a wet ball. It just is what it is. We can dissect it all we want to. Kyle Trask has never played a football game in pouring down rain. You can practice with a wet ball all you want to, but guess what, that wet ball’s not constantly getting soaked.
Nick:                         That’s true. There’s probably a difference between they sprayed it with a hose and then put it on dry grass, and we do it for 10 minutes in practice, versus it’s raining, everything is wet, the towel you put on your pants to dry your hands is soaking wet. The ground is wet, and you’re continuing to get pelted by rain. You can’t really practice for that, unless it’s like, the hurricane’s coming, we’re going to go outside and run a three-hour practice now.
Andrew:                 Then guess what? Dan Mullen’s going to get in trouble, because he put his players in safety concerns and yada yada. You name it. That’s what would happen if he did that. Again, I’m not making excuses for Kyle. If he’s not going to make excuses, then I’m not going to make excuses for him. At the end of the day, he did what he needed to do to win. 21 for 33, 200 yards, four touchdowns and a pick. Pick was, in my opinion, 100% due to the rain, but again, we’ll see. Running game was a little bit better, but still not good.
Nick:                         Yeah. I do the 10 observations, and I was like, I thought the running game was better. Then I put it in as one of the 10, and then I went back and looked, and I didn’t have any numbers to really justify it, so I took it out and put something else in.
Andrew:                 You take out the 75-yard run by Damien Pierce, they have 79 yards.
Nick:                         Yeah. It’s almost exactly half of the rushing yards on one run.
Andrew:                 Can’t justify that. Still not seeing it. This is what, and I tweeted this during the game, Nick, but when you watch South Carolina’s offensive line, you saw some mean SOBs who want to get to that second level. Those guys were pulling and hitting Reese, James Houston, Ventrell Miller. You name it, they were pulling in and getting some run blocks going. This Florida offensive line needs to take some lessons. I don’t know what they’re going to do at right tackle, Nick. I mean, I guess you don’t do anything now, because you’re in Week 8 or Week 9,