Fire Steve Addazio

A few weeks ago, the UAA was asked what they think of this website, firesteveaddazio.com.  They responded with the following:

“People who are making comments about Steve, they are based on an emotional reaction,” a spokesman said. “They don’t know Steve or how much passion he has. It’s an uneducated opinion.”

Last week, the majority of the Gatorsports.com writers wrote that after the Vandy game, the offense was fixed.  Everything was better now.  Steve Addazio held his typical Tuesday press conference with the same amount of vigorous hand waving as usual, but also with an aura of smugness.  He almost had an attitude of “I told you I could make this work”.

Meanwhile, here on this site, I wrote that our problems with not fixed.  I predicted the exact outcome we got in the South Carolina game.

South Carolina is solid against the run and weak against the pass.  Do I expect Addazio to exploit that this week?  No.  He hasn’t shown an ability to exploit a defense’s weakness in the past, and his stubborn attitude doesn’t leave me with any reason to believe he will ever learn to adapt.  Without the trick plays, and with Addazio looking at this game as an important one, I’m predicting Addazio will curl back up into his conservative ball and we’ll all be yelling about South Carolina’s weak secondary as Addazio tries to beat them two yards at a time.  I’d love to be wrong, but I just have this sinking feeling that we’re in for a let-down, and within a few weeks we’re going to be right back where we were after the MSU game.

By and large, the readers of this site agreed.  You guys littered the comments field with more examples of how the Vanderbilt game was a mirage, and how the issues still remained.  Gatorsports and the UAA were wrong, and you were right.  So I ask the UAA now, who carries the uneducated opinion?

But there’s no sense stopping there.  Let’s take a look at what went wrong in the South Carolina game.  What were our problems?

We weren’t able to adjust.  South Carolina has a strong front seven, and a weak secondary, yet we didn’t throw a pass downfield until there were 7 minutes left in the game and things were all but over.  Our undeveloped talent was not used to their strengths as we continued to see guys like Deonte Thompson run routes that would be better suited to a possession receiver, and guys like Andre Debose remain uninvolved with the offense .  The pass routes once again looked as if they had no real purpose to them, almost as if every play was just a jumble of guys running square in routes.  I mean really, do we have any other pass play in the playbook other than a guy running a 3 yard drag underneath another guy running a 10 yard in route?  Wait, I forgot, on 3rd and 10 we also like to mix in 3 yard hitches and a few screen passes.

Worst of all, we were as predictable as ever.  Burton and Reed came in to run the ball up the middle (and when Burton lined up at FB it was a play action pass into the flats).  Addazio’s extremely conservative gameplan prevented them from throwing the ball, and allowed the defense to once again play aggressively against our offense, bottling everything up into a confined area within a few yards of the line of scrimmage.

That’s funny, because I could have sworn I’ve heard about all those problems before.  Oh, that’s right, I wrote about them all more than two months ago, and have written about them many times since then.  Other than the coach’s unwillingness to acknowledge that there is a problem, that is probably the most frustrating thing.  These aren’t new issues.  These are problems that have been there all year, problems that are entirely fixable, but problems that have not been adjusted at all.

Savvy football fans noticed the problem with Addazio last year.  Within a game or two into this season the problems were obvious to everyone.  Yet here we are, 9 weeks later, and the people in charge are still surprised by things that we’ve been talking about since day 1 of this season.  Again, who’s uneducated?

This season is lost, and has been for a while.  We all knew that when Addazio remained on the staff after the MSU game.  But the scary thing now is what all this does for next season.  It’s too late to see what Loeffler and Azzanni are made of as an OC on a trial run, so now even if we ditch Addazio we’re left with question marks at OC again entering next year.  Even worse is what this season may do to recruiting.  There were a whopping 35 recruits in attendance at the South Carolina game, and it was by far our biggest game of the season in terms of recruits on site.  Having them bear witness to an a team that couldn’t match the production of the special team’s opening kickoff return in either points or yardage until well into the 4th quarter can not have been a good selling point.

Even Pat Dooley, who called me out earlier in the year, has come around and called for Addazio’s head.  It’s just too bad that it took him so long, and he wasn’t ahead of the game like many of the users of this site, or perhaps we could have corrected things before the losses piled up (which was my first goal in creating this site), rather than after.

Amazing what happens when you threaten a team downfield, isn’t it?

The Gators took a few more shots downfield this week against Vandy, and once again it paid off in spades.  I don’t know why it took two months for Addazio (if he even was the one calling those plays) to figure it out, but at least there has been progression in that category.  Once again, we saw our playmakers making plays when given the opportunity to do it.  On Jordan Reed’s long touchdown pass to Deonte Thompson, Thompson was fairly well covered, but Reed laid a perfect ball in there over the outside shoulder and Thompson made a nice catch.  On Brantley’s long pass to Rainey, while Rainey had his defender beat, the ball was underthrown and Rainey still made a great catch despite early contact from the defender.  This goes back to what I’ve been saying all year.  These guys aren’t possession receivers, they’re playmakers, so we need to put them in positions to make plays.  If this Vandy game proved anything, it proved that Addazio and not the players has been the biggest problem all year long.  When given a chance, these guys can make good things happen.

The disconcerting thing about those plays was that they came on trick plays.  I still think Addazio has it stuck in his head that he has to do something tricky to throw the ball vertically.  That’s not the case.  Those guys were covered, but they made a play on the ball (or in Reed’s case, he made a great throw).  We can do this on any play where we have single coverage on the outside.

Did anyone else notice how easily everything else came after that?  The offense looked like the offense has all year in the 1st quarter.  Horrible drives ending in 3 and outs all 1st quarter long.  Then we hit a couple of big plays downfield and everything opened up underneath.  You know, kind of like I’ve been saying would happen all year if we actually some fear of a vertical pass into the opponent.

But let’s keep everything in perspective.  This was Vanderbilt, and four of our touchdowns were basically the result of the defense and special teams.  The Gatorsports writers seem to think that everything is fixed with the offense.  The last time they said that was after the Kentucky game, and while things have certainly improved since then, they aren’t nearly where they need to be and Addazio is still the biggest obstacle holding this team back.  Zach Azzanni was the one who put our recent hurry up offense into place.  Is it just me, or doesn’t it seem a little off that we have to go to our wide receivers coach to make adjustments to the offense?

South Carolina is solid against the run and weak against the pass.  Do I expect Addazio to exploit that this week?  No.  He hasn’t shown an ability to exploit a defense’s weakness in the past, and his stubborn attitude doesn’t leave me with any reason to believe he will ever learn to adapt.  Without the trick plays, and with Addazio looking at this game as an important one, I’m predicting Addazio will curl back up into his conservative ball and we’ll all be yelling about South Carolina’s weak secondary as Addazio tries to beat them two yards at a time.  I’d love to be wrong, but I just have this sinking feeling that we’re in for a let-down, and within a few weeks we’re going to be right back where we were after the MSU game.  The good news is that, as usual, South Carolina has completely fallen apart in the second half of the season.  They are not a very good team right now, and their offense is prone to mistakes that I feel our ball hawking defense can capitalize on.

Before I sign off for the day, I wanted to touch on one last thing, the quarterback situation.  Rotating quarterbacks are always a sign of a struggling offense.  Typically, it teases people with sparks when it is first implemented, but always regresses back to the same struggling offense as before.  If we’re going to stick with Addazio in the short term (ugh), then we need to just go ahead and make the change to Jordan Reed.  I do not think Jordan Reed is the savior.  Even in the Vandy game, he cooled off pretty quickly in the second half, and when a team has an entire week to actually prepare for him they will be able to do a much better job against him (not to mention, again, this was Vandy we’re talking about here).  Still, Brantley is just a bad fit for this offense.  I like Brantley, but for his own sake, if we decide to stick with this offense going forward then I hope he transfers in the offseason.  He has some issues as a quarterback, but I still believe he is a good player.  He will never realize his potential in this offense though, and it would be better for both the Gators and for John Brantley if he were to move on, a la Ryan Mallet and Michigan.

Personally, I would prefer we change the offense to suit Brantley and keep him as our guy, but seeing as how I don’t believe the current staff has any intention of building an offense to suit Brantley, a mutual breakup seems to be the best option.

The Gators finally got back into the win column on Saturday, and since I’m sure Steve Addazio is too busy patting himself on the back to break down the game, we’re going to do it here for you.

The good news is that an Addazio led offense gained 400 total yards against an SEC team not named Kentucky for the first time in his tenure.  The bad news is that it came against a porous Georgia defense, and that there was still a lot of things that were done poorly, and are predictive of more future problems on offense, and losses for the team.

Let’s start with Addazio’s new wrinkle.  No, it wasn’t the ‘3-qb system’ that CBS kept harping on (newsflash CBS, this wasn’t the first time that Jordan Reed and Trey Burton lined up at quarterback for us).  You remember how in at least every big game, and in almost every week, Dan Mullen would roll out a new play or formation that eventually would become a staple in the offense?  First, it was the Bubba Caldwell option reverse, then it was the shovel pass, and it went on from there.  Well, Addazio finally joined that club today and came up with something new, and it was half a good idea to boot.

I’ve said all along that if Trey Burton is going to be able to run the ball for us against good teams, he’s going to have to throw the ball a bit to keep the defenses honest.  Since Addazio is completely terrified of any measure of risk, it seems he’s not willing to do that.  Instead, he came up with the idea of having Burton line up at QB, and then walk up to the line of scrimmage like he was calling out protection schemes, while John Brantley slips into the backfield and takes the snap.  The idea is decent.  The defense sees Burton at QB and expects a run, but then at the last second Brantley runs back there and lines up to throw the ball.  The problem is that Addazio just couldn’t quite come up with a whole good play without doing something stupid with it.  So, we now have the defense fooled, thinking run, with the box stacked, but have the ball in our passer’s hands.  So what do we do?  Throw a short, quick pass right into the heart of where the box is stacked to stop the run.

What’s the point?  We go through all this effort to get a team to commit to the line of scrimmage, then trick them by throwing right at that spot?  That play should have been designed to go downfield, that’s the only way it makes sense.

Speaking of downfield (which you all know I’ve been harping on all year), that’s something the Gators finally did a couple times in this game.  The first time it didn’t work out as Hines gave up on his route (probably because he thought we would never actually throw it down there), but after that it worked beautifully.  The throw down the sidelines to a well covered Donte Thompson is exactly what I’ve been talking about all year when I say he needs to use players to their strengths.  Deonte Thompson does not have good hands, so why have we spent the whole season using him in basically a possession receiver role?  That’s not what he excels at.  He’s a playmaker.  He’s not going to reliably catch a bunch of 10 yard ins consistently, but he can make plays when you put him in position to do it.  And on that play, he was covered, but Brantley finally gave him a chance to make a play, and it paid off in spades.  The funny part is that when Brantley threw that pass, Addazio (before he saw the result) probably wished he had checked down to another 2 yard hitch on 3rd and long instead.

So finally, for the first time in months, we got to see the reward end of a risk/reward play.  One of the biggest problems with our offense is that with our refusal to stretch the field, plays that are normally “safe” plays become risky plays because the defense plays them aggressively, only they don’t have the reward to go with them.  In Addazio’s never ending desire to play safe, he has only created more risk.  Instead of “risk/reward” plays, they’re “risk/modest gain” plays.  It was nice to see that change, even if it was only for a few brief minutes.

On the next drive, we saw it again, as Brantley connected deep downfield for a long touchdown to Jeff Demps on a wheel route.  Finally, a long passing play.  Maybe things were starting to look up, if only a little bit.

Then, the second half, and the introduction of the prevent offense and more horror.  In 2009, Florida returned all 11 starters from the #1 defense in the country.  Apparently, Addazio did not get the memo that we no longer have that defense in 2010.  Our defense is solid, yet mediocre.  But Addazio called his plays in the 2nd half like we were up by five scores, not two, to the extreme extent of lining up Burton at QB and running the ball on 3rd and 7 and 4th and 12 (which came after an attempt to complete a 3 yard hitch on 3rd and 12 to boot).

There was some debate as to whether the 4th and 12 run was actually supposed to be an option pass that just blew up when Burton thought he saw an opening and took off the other way (for 1 yard), but that’s even worse.  If you’re going to run a trick passing play, you can’t run it in an obvious passing situation.  It’s the same reason that everyone knew the jump pass was coming in the Alabama game, because it was 4th down.  If it was first down or second down, no one would have been ready for it.  Same story here.  Why does he think an option pass is going to fool anyone on 4th and 12?  The defense can play pass D and still have plenty of room to stop both the run and the pass.

Later in the game, at the end of regulation, we got to see how much faith our coaches have in the offense they’ve created.  After Brantley’s near interception with under a minute left, the Gators elected to take a knee on their own 40 yard line with enough time to run 3 plays to get us into field goal range.  That’s right, the mighty Florida Gators would rather take a knee then try to win the game in the last 25 seconds from the 40 yard line.  Think about that for a second, and then consider that later that same night, the Oregon Ducks decided to try and score after getting the ball at their own 5 yard line with a minute left in the half, and nearly did it.  Yet we have so little faith in our offense that even starting at the 40, we’d rather just sit on the ball.

Am I the only one that cringed when Will Hill stepped out of bounds inside the 5 yard line in overtime?  Normally, an interception in overtime means virtually an automatic win, but I knew that with our offense, it was a toss-up.  And, they did not disappoint, going 3 and out with yet another questionable 3rd down play call.  Again we lined Burton up at QB on 3rd and long, only this time we brought with him the incredible trickery of throwing a swing pass to the short side of the field with no room for Demps to do anything.  As expected, no one was fooled.  The really sad part here is that the two wasted possessions where we just ran Burton on 3rd/4th and long were probably put in to set up exactly this play.  Addazio probably thinks he’s some kind of super genius who would give away two possessions to have this awesome ace in the hole later on.

So, we escaped Jacksonville with a win, which is great.  We saw a few small glimmers of hope on offense, surrounded by more heaps of bad play calling and philosophy.  The offensive line didn’t really improve at all, and many of the issues in this game were with guys coming through unblocked after simple stunts or delayed blitzes.  5 guys rushing and 6 blocking (counting the RB), yet guys still came through untouched.  That’s a scheme issue, too bad our O-line coach is too busy designing creative ways for Brantley to throw a 2 yard drag route to fix it.

It was nice to see Chas Henry finish as the hero.  He’s taken a beating for not doing well at a job he was never supposed to do, which has completely overshadowed just how good at the job he actually is supposed to be doing (punting).  It was a beautiful punt by Henry that set us up with a chance to win it at the end of regulation (if our offense had enough confidence not to just sit on the ball) as well.

Mississippi State disrespected Steve Addazio on Saturday night, and doing so gave them a huge “upset” road win.

After taking a 10-0 lead into the half, MSU threw the ball once in the entire second half.  Dan Mullen sent a message.  He said that he didn’t think our offense could score 10 points without our defense setting us up with an interception, and he was right.

When I started this site a few months ago, early on some people ragged on me because we were scoring ~30 points per game.  I told them that wasn’t our offense’s doing, and that it only appeared that way because special teams and the defense were gifting us with great field position, or outright scoring on their own.  Saturday night was our offense, same as it’s been all year.  7 points.  The only difference between the MSU game and most of our other games is that our defense and special teams didn’t score for us.  7 points is what we can expect out of our offense when they actually have to score on their own.  Same (basically) as in the Alabama game.  Same as in the LSU game.  Same as in most games.

I’m not going to dive too deep into what Addazio did wrong on Saturday night.  We’ve been there before.  Saturday night was no different, as we saw much of the same.  Only one shot down field all game long, Brantley running the option, Burton telegraphing when we’re running in the redzone, blah blah blah etc etc etc.

Saturday night was unique in that we got to hear the announcers, who are typically way behind avid fans of a team, be as dumbfounded with the playcalling as we were.  Spielman and Herm constantly wondered outloud why we couldn’t figure out that the offense wouldn’t work unless we could get the defense to back off with some downfield passes, and Herm practically yelled at his monitor in disbelief as we continued to kill drives with Brantley option calls.  One of Addazio’s biggest faults is the same as the Zookers.  He plays the field 10 yards at a time.  18 play scoring drives are nice, but they’re too fragile to count on.  One holding call, one run for a loss, or one false start and our entire drive is shot.  The  goal in football is to score the most points, not pick up the most first downs.  You’ll never find a team being successful without picking up yardage in chunks at times throughout the game, and you can’t pick up yardage in chunks if you don’t call plays designed to do so.

But perhaps the most telling thing out of the announcers mouths was their anecdote about their interview with Addazio earlier in the week.  In it, they asked Addazio about the O-line’s problems with blitz pickup this season.  Addazio responded simply, “we’re fine”.  This anecdote came as Brantley was hitting the turf for the 5th time in the last 6 plays.  Addazio continues to stick his head in the sand and tell us that no problems exist, as if we’re too stupid to know any better.  “Oh, our OC says everything is great, so it must be”.

An interesting stat popped across the screen during the game.  Florida has only gained 400 yards of total offense against SEC opponents twice in the last two years, and both of those games came against Kentucky.  It really sheds to light what I’ve been trying to beat into the Addazio apologists heads all along, that this problem isn’t new, it’s not the overreaction of one or even a couple of games, and that it has been there all along, even when he had an all-time great team to work with.

Look at how far we’ve fallen this year.  Not only have we lost three games in a row for the first time since 1988, but perhaps even worse is that we lost two games in a row at home, at night.  Even Pat Dooley has finally jumped onboard the bandwagon.  If only he’d have listened to me sooner, before the damage was done.

At this point, I’m numb.  This is the first Gator loss I can remember that I wasn’t angry afterwards.  It’s almost as if I expected it.  The announcers kept remarking about how shocked the Florida fans were.  Were any of you shocked?  The major websites hung the tagline “Mississippi State upsets no. 22 Florida”.  Do any of you consider this an upset?  In our current state, with our current coaches, I don’t think we’re any better than Mississppi State.

That picture you see at the top of this article was Addazio after Brantley was once again dropped behind the line to end a drive, leaving us with no points in the 1st half against Mississippi State.  That was his reaction.  Just standing there.  Just like the LSU game.  At this point, the guy barely even fits the definition of the word “coach”.

And Steve, don’t you dare try and tell us about all the good that came out of this game in Tuesday’s press conference.