THE GOOD Jennings played steady and smart. Both lines stepped up their play and were not dominated. O-line opened some holes. LSU had no turnovers. LSU caused turnovers. Fournette is looking like the feature back he was expected to be. Magee got 8.3 yards a carry and Hilliard seems to be a powerful Red Zone specialist. Things are starting to click for Jermauria Rasco who had a hell of a game. Delahoussay is reliable from 50. Dubose will be gone next year, at long last. Kwon Alexander continues to improve and excel. Fabulous TD catch by Dural. Hello, Melvin Jones. The power running game worked. It kept the defense off the field, controlled the clock, and held a 13-minute time-of-possession advantage. THE BAD 110 yards and 45% passing won't cut it against the beasts of the SEC West. Special teams gave up big returns and did not make a big return of their own. Middle linebacker is still a problem. DT is still a problem. Another missed PAT. The defense tightened but still gives up big plays. The O-line has improved . . . but is not distinguished and far from dominant. THE UGLY LSU still has serious trouble with running quarterbacks. This is ugly. The no-call on the block in the back that sprung one of the big Florida returns. Muschamp's face in the 4th quarter. That guy is under serious stress. The Florida guy that whiffed on Fournette's spin move.
Your analysis was spot-on. Our team needed this win badly. Going forward after this win, we should win some more games. Had we lost? It could have been a long, hard fall.
Play calling was still terrible, a tad bit improved but still terrible. There were MANY times that bigger plays were open because Fla was all in expecting us to run up the gut. We did.
That was a great clutch kick. Our ST coverage hasn't been very impressive the past couple years, and our return game is run of the mill. When we kicked onside kicks I was not impressed either. Our D is a huge disappointment to me. I'm not pleased with our QB situation, but our D may be more troubling. The game basically came down to who had the ball last, and this UF team ain't all that. On the other side of that, Jennings and Co continued to respond. Fournette looked good and getting more confident, but the OL helped get him some room to run. I thought Miles did pretty good with clock management this game. This could have easily been a loss to a bad Florida team. But it wasn't. Muschamp is not a good coach. Muschamp gave Miles all that he wanted.
#1 from the good and bad seem contradictory that was pretty poor QB play by Jennings, but at least he didn't cough up the ball to the other team (I guess you are considering that "steady").
Son, let me tell you about something called "controlling the clock". When you have a rookie quarterback and need to limit his mistakes and you have a soft defense that needs to stay off the field for a while . . . and a lead . . . you line up and run your four stud running backs right at them in long, time-consuming drives. The opponent can't score when he can't get the ball back. The kind of frustrating shit that makes Tebow cry on the sidelines. It's a game winner, when you can do it right. It doesn't matter if they suspect what is coming if they can't stop it. With just a bit more improvement from the O-line and the emergence of Fournette, we can return to effective power running mixed with spread options and some pro-style passing to these rookie receivers.
FWIW Jesse Palmer made several comments that our WRs were NOT creating any separation from the Gator DBs. It is hard to make completions to covered receivers. Point is the pass game has too many elements to blame the OB or play calling only.
No turnovers is huge, certainly. But also he didn't get flustered out there, didn't panic on the road and seems to lead the offense well. Steady. Jennings has room for improvement in accuracy, but I also think the low passing was Cameron's game plan. I suspect that he thought they could run on Florida and not risk interceptions. I don't think Florida planned to let Driskill pass much either. But they did and he tossed two interceptions which sunk them.
