Preach on Brother.... 9-30-2003
Since fireronzook.com has been taken down I thought it would be appropriate to post as much material from that site here as possible. The posts are dated by original publication date.
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I went to the local Gator club hung over to get ready to watch the Gators pummel Kentucky. I can't stand these 12:30 games but what do I expect when no one wants to see your team play. I promised myself I wouldn't drink because I was so hung over from the night before. By the third quarter I was on my third bucket of beers. Zook drove me to drink! I had even picked us to cover in my friend's football pool. What the hell was I thinking? It must have been the hangover. I thought, hey I know, Kentucky has Abney but he's not going to kill us on special teams this year. This year we're ready for him! I figured that our talent would prevail and that we could beat Kentucky handily. Last week against Tennessee was a wake up call, right? BOY WAS I WRONG! I can't think of a game in the last 10 years that we deserved to lose more. Kentucky handed us this game. We pulled this game out of our proverbial asses more than the Doering game (God Bless Doering) and more than the Gaffney catch/non-catch game against Tennessee.
The Gators do not look like a team that is improving every week. We're getting worse if that is possible. These teams are not ready to play. How many illegal substitution penalties can one team get? Zook says we are
learning from these losses. What are we learning? How to lose? These quotes about what we're learning from playing like shit are getting old fast. You don't learn anything from losing other than how to be a loser. Learning what it takes to win comes from winning, not losing. That's how those scumbag Hurricanes win close games. They know they have to make plays late in the game.
I don't understand Zook's game plan. Why not go in there and pound the ball? Kentucky had one of the worst run defenses in the league. Maybe Zook was too busy trying to please all of us that wanted him to throw long. He put on a stupid show at the end of a practice for the media showing them that we were running long pass routes. Yes, we need to throw deep still (which we still didn't do enough) but not when you are playing a team with a horrible run defense. Our offense line was not prepared for Kentucky's 3-4 defense. KENTUCKY! I want a coach that knows what's wrong with the team and sees the obvious BEFORE the fans and the media have to tell him what to do. Is that so much to ask? For example, it took this guy 4 weeks to realize that 2 QB garbage wasn't working. WHY? I do applaud the Zooker for sticking with Leak. I thought he was going to panic and put Martin in the game. However, before I die, I'd like to see the Gator WRs return to catching the ball on the run and not after a 10 yard curl or WR screen. Our entire offense is premised on the notion that the other team will miss tackles. If I never see the shotgun draw on first down again, it will be too soon. Another thing - how does Zook decide when to go for two? Does he flip a coin? Does he bust out a slide rule? Does he call Ms. Cleo? Someone explain to me how he decides when to go for two and when not to. Most coaches have a sheet that you look at that takes the guesswork out of everything. I guess that's too easy.
What if I told you that we were going to hire a coach who would have us eeking out an 18-point comeback against Kentucky? You would have told me that I was crazy but that's the reality of the situation. This game was a
record comeback that should have NEVER had to happen. This is a young and talented team. Should they be world-beaters? Probably not. Should they be better than this? Definitely. Zook took over a successful program. We didn't ask him to build one from the ground up like Steve Spurrier did. We only asked him not to run the program into the ground.
Thank God for Kentucky's even poorer coaching. Way to have 12 men on the field to keep the drive alive for us Kentucky. Nice decision by Lorenzen - throwing the ball away to a defender when it was obvious he should have taken the sack. What a dope. That was almost as bad as Clint Stoerner laying the ball on the ground in that Arkansas game against Tennessee. Thank God Abney's punt return got called back too. Have we ever had more returns against us in a 2-year period? Called back or not, we're not making the plays. You can make all the comparisons you want to this Kentucky game and the Kentucky-Doering game but look at how that team finished the season and tell me how you think this team will finish the season. It doesn't get any easier from here on out with games against LSU, Arkansas, Georgia and FSU. I had the Gamecocks checked off as a win but after watching them against Tennessee and seeing us against Kentucky, I'm not so sure anymore. This is NOT the NFL where any team can win on any given Sunday. This is college football where you have the occasional gimmie. If you look at Zook's games against SEC opponents: we were lucky to beat Tennessee last year, lucky to beat Auburn, lucky to beat Georgia, got smoked by LSU, lucky to beat Kentucky last year and struggled against Vandy. Maybe we should join the ACC like every other Florida college afraid to play in the SEC? Zook is doing his best to make it look like we no longer belong in the SEC. I don't know if my liver can handle one more year of this.
HNIC
