LA ESQUINA

Welcome back my faithful brethren. Congratulations to us all for a huge win at LSU last week. And the best part is that we’re only a day and a half away from the next game. You gotta love college football season. Frankly, I don’t even remember what I used to do on Saturdays in the off-season. Lets just get to the nitty gritty…

As you all know, last Saturday we went into Les Miles’s backyard, walked into his house, and made a big cheese sandwich in his kitchen. Put the fact that we were the better team with the better players and better coach aside for a second, the truth is that funny things happen in those kinds of environments and we should all be thrilled to get out of there with a big W. Especially in death valley, that place was thundering.

As predicted, the defense was incredible. LSU only had 1 third down conversion the entire game, only 4 yards in the 3^rd quarter and 44 yards of offense total in the second half (mostly when we were playing prevent D in garbage time). Our d-line was hounding Jefferson and our corners just straight smothered their receivers. To be specific, Jermaine Cunningham was a blur coming off the edge…one play in particular in which he beat Ciron Black (one of the best tackles in college football) around the corner probably put him in the first day of the draft. Dunlap would have had bigger numbers also but he was held the whole game and they weren’t calling it (watch the tape). And of Course, Sir Brandon Spikes was ubiquitous…all over the field. I really believe he is going to be a staple in the pro-bowl for years to come…what a beast! He reminds me a lot of Lamar Woodley who plays for the Steelers. He would be perfect for a 3-4 scheme in the pros. But forget the No Fun League…let’s talk about our boys and specifically, our corners.

Joe Haden (Mighty Mouse) and Janoris Jenkins (Jack Rabbit) are the best corner tandem in college football. That’s just a fact. Lafell and Tolliver were completely shut down the whole game. They barely threw at Jack Rabbit’s side and every time they did he made the play. Same for Joe who also had a pick. It’s as if they were a step ahead of every LSU play…. incredible to think about how far we’ve come in that position since the Michigan bowl game in 2007 when it looked like Chad Henne was throwing against air. Overall, a dominant performance by the entire secondary. I “think” we have the best defense in the country (Alabama might have something to say about that) but I KNOW we have the best secondary in the country. One other observation here, did anybody else notice that Will Hill started over Major Wright alongside Ahmad Black…discuss amongst yourselves, I am going to sit this one out for now.

La Esquina really hopes that you took my advice and bet a 1000 dollars on the gators last week (I know a few of you did). The only thing better than winning that game was being handsomely compensated for your team’s awesomeness. That’s the first and last time for the season though. I am not tempting the football gods anymore. Although for those of you lucky enough to witness it, there was a late night post-game incident whereby yours truly may have possibly broken, but at the very least bruised, multiple ribs. I guess the mixture of rum and cokes 6 hours before kick-off, a huge gator victory in Death Valley and winning copious amounts of money is a recipe for over elation and believing that one has secret ghetto ninja powers. Lets just say you had to be there to see this epic flop. At least now I have a valid excuse for not going to the gym. It could have been worse though, a little birdie told me that one particular avid reader of La Esquina was so wasted by kickoff he missed the entire game (you know who you are). Tighten up people, it’s ok to get sh*tfaced but for god’s sake, we only get 13 or so of these magic Saturdays a year…get it together. Or at least remember to set your DVRs.

There were some negatives in this game, as always, leave it to the spoiled brats that are gator fans (myself included) to nitpick about an undefeated team ranked #1 in the country. Again, I thought the play calling was lacking creativity. It’s just kind of boring when we’re not slinging it around and when we’re punting on 4^th and short. Urban was running the spread offense’s version of 3 yards and a cloud of dust with that dive play on replay the whole game. I get it. With the O-line and RBs that we have that’s all we needed to do to win the game. Controlling the ball and playing great defense is an age old adage for football success. It’s just not what we’re used to around these parts. We were spoiled with the Spurrier fun and gun and last year’s killer spread offense with Percy and Louis Murphy certainly raised the bar. The truth is that I don’t really mind too much because we are winning but there are a few things that irk me about this approach besides the fact that it’s not as exciting to watch.

1) It’s not doing anything for Timmy’s pro-prospects as a QB or for his Heisman campaign. He is putting up pedestrian numbers in an offense where he is throwing the ball only 15 times a game. But whatever, that by itself is not too disconcerting…I mean, we are talking about one of the most decorated college football players of all time as it is and he has a lengthy body of work already.

2) My real concern is, what’s going to happen when we fall behind in a game and need to throw to catch up? And that will happen, don’t kid yourselves into thinking it won’t…it always does. Even last year where we had a more potent offense we were in dog fights against Alabama and Oklahoma. Can our offense just flip the switch and all of the sudden start airing it out? My boy dark meat D-Rod has a good theory on the lack of production from the WR position this year, I got a text today that went something like this “I think Urban should only play WPL and brother Markihse in practice to let the WR’s get their confidence up. They’re probably getting smoked by shake (#5) and bake (#1).” Makes sense, they play against the best corners in practice and presumably look like dog poop hence, the coaches don’t trust them in games and game plan around them.

3) This cannot be good for recruiting. If I am a stud WR (which we need to get) and I see that Florida has a bunch of 4/5 star receivers into their 2^nd and 3^rd years in the program not doing crap and I notice that Florida isn’t throwing the ball much I am skeptical. The flipside is that we can spin it by saying that when Tebow leaves we will open it up more with Brantley but still, it’s an uphill battle. At the beginning of the season I was down on David Nelson and Deonte Thompson and company but the reality is, they aren’t given a chance to make plays. They can’t catch balls that aren’t thrown to them. I just hope this conservative style doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass.

**RECRUITING TANGENT** Word on the street is that with the Bobby Bowden fiasco and FSU imploding we are now in line to pick off some of the criminoles’ top recruits (e.g. Lamarcus Joyner, Christian Jones etc.). Also, I want you all to add an extra prayer this Sunday for our recruiting efforts (those of you of course who still believe in that kind of thing anyway). Keep an eye on the following recruits: Ronald Powell, Chris Dunkley, Ivan McCartney, Shariff Floyd, Lamarcus Joyner, Jordan Hicks and Jeff Luc. If we get 4 out of these 7 guys next year and can keep the guys we have we should win the mythical recruiting national championship for the 3^rd time in the Urban Meyer era and gator nation will be in good shape for years to come. On a side-note, does anybody think it’s weird that I am obsessed with 17 and 18 year old high school boys who play football? I would appreciate your feedback on this, I think it’s quite normal but then again…I may be clinically insane about my college football at this point.

One last thing about the LSU game, there’s a developing trend that is very worrisome. Our red zone offense is not getting the job done. This has historically been a team strength but this year we are walking away with field goals or even worst, no points at all after long drives. They need to fix that or it’s going to cost us a game. That just didn’t happen last year. First and goal last year was an automatic 7, this year not so much. God bless our defense because our O is taking their sweet time to get cranking this year.

MOVING ON TO THE ARKANSAS GAME…

This ain’t going to be no walk in the park. I predict a fairly high scoring affair for UF standards. Arkansas has some serious firepower with their tall 6’7 stud QB Ryan Mallet, the former Michigan transfer. They lead the SEC in passing offense and have hit a ton of big plays this year. I am concerned about this but on the other hand, as stated earlier our secondary is the strength of our team. This means that there should be plenty of opportunities for the boys in the deep back to make some BIG plays (whether it be picks or Major Wright style hits on receivers coming across the middle). I think Arkansas scores more than anybody else has on us . Although, I think we will score a ton too. Their defense is soft and sweet so we should be able to do what we want with them…which is why this is the perfect time to start working on that passing game!

This has all the makings of a trap game by all accounts…coming off a big win against LSU one would expect us to overlook a 3-2 team that has been somewhat inconsistent. But we won’t. And you know why? Because we have the built-in insurance policy that is Tim Tebow. The human safety net -- this is what separates us from the USC’s of the world who are good for one or two fluky losses a year even though their talent level is head and shoulders above that of their opponents. The whole team can be groggy, down, unmotivated, having a bad day…but you know there’s no way Timmy lets us lose a game like this. This is what he brings to the table above all else, the ability to wake up the team and utterly WILL us to victory when other similarly talented teams might flounder.

Can’t be stopped, won’t be stopped, Gators 38-20.

P.S. Be on the look-out for funky uniforms this week. It’s homecoming and my “sources” tell me that we’re going to be using different unis (not sure if it’s a throwback slant with funky helmets or just some weird color coding but something’s up).