Despite the Gators’ well-documented struggles this season (they rank 71st in the nation for total offense), offensive coordinator Steve Addazio said his players have not strayed from the plan.
“They have complete faith and trust,” he said. “They watch the tape. They know. You come in here and watch the tape on Sundays and you surely see what was set out to do, what happened, what didn’t happen. There are no mysteries there.”
Addazio says none of the players have approached him about their frustrations with his scheme, but he knows it’s normal for players to talk about the unit’s inefficiencies amongst themselves.
Even UF running back Emmanuel Moody admitted teammates have been increasingly vocal because of the rough season.
“Everyone has their opinion on why we’re losing,” he said.
UF-FSU a hot ticket: SeatGeek.com, a search engine forecasting ticket prices for future events, predicts Saturday’s Florida-Florida State game will be the 10th-best-selling college football rivalry this season, based on how ticket sales for the game compare with the average ticket sales at Doak Campbell Stadium.
The average ticket for FSU’s first six home games cost about $60 compared to about $140 for this Saturday, Mason Pastore of SeatGeek.com predicts.
Gators thinking bowl projections: UF takes on No. 22 Florida State in the last regular-season game Saturday with no chance of a BCS bowl game berth, so what’s motivating the Gators?
“We look at this like our bowl game,” senior center Mike Pouncey said. “If we win this game, we’ll be in a better bowl game, so we want to win this game for our fans and for ourselves.”
A win against FSU would set UF up in a better bowl game, be it the Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta or the Outback Bowl in Tampa.
Addazio OK with progress of freshmen: UF coach Urban Meyer has stated that his team’s freshman class didn’t develop into playmakers at as fast of a pace as he hoped, but Addazio said it doesn’t concern him in the long term.
The Gators have ranked in the nation’s top 10 all season for highest number of true freshmen used.
“You can wish some guys come along faster, but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” Addazio said. “I don’t think that’s going to change, I just think that in recent years there seems to be more attention on it because there is so much more hype on players coming out of high school than there used to be.”
