Well, with Tim Tebow playing, a loss was, while not exactly predictable, not really a big surprise either. Exactly how it happened is open to much discussion. Here are my Snap Judgments.
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Jordan Jefferson played a poor game, and once again went into the tank in the 3rd quarter. He started holding the ball forever and inviting sacks, getting 3 of them in the 3rd quarter alone, a quarter in which we ran 8 plays. He'll finish 11 for 17 on the night, but very few of his passes went down the field, and he took sacks.
- Never has LSU gotten more infuriating penalties. We were called for a neutral zone infraction 5 times. We had, I think, 3 false starts, including two on consecutive play attempts. We had a personal foul facemask call on a play where we would have gotten off the field if not for the call (and the call was somewhat questionable as to whether it should have been a personal foul or one of the old-fashioned incidental facemasks that are now supposed to be waived off).
- The defense is going to get a lot of credit for holding Florida to a small number of points, but they also gave up yardage every time Florida touched the ball. We relied on a missed field goal and a failed 4th down try to keep the score as low as it was.
- I do not understand why Russell Shepard got not playing time in this game. I know they'll say, "We were having a hard time getting into a rhythm and we didn't want to bring in a new guy," but the fact is that the offense was stagnating, and we needed to do something to shake things up.
- On our 2nd to last possession, which we all thought was likely our last gasp, we saw another example of poor game management by our coaching staff, which was also on display at the end of the 1st half last week. This time, facing 3rd and 2, we went to Charles Scott who came up short. The ensuing events made it clear that our coaches had NO PLAN for what to do if we were faced with a 4th down. It took forever to get a play into the game and when Jefferson dropped back to pass, it appeared the receivers were run-blocking. The critical 4th down play was dead virtually before the snap.
- I still think that the game was not of any special importance, as our goals are still in reach, and we needed to win out from here even if we had won.
- Florida's defense is really good, but our offense lacked all dynamism tonight. How many times did we even attempt to throw the ball more than 10 yards down the field?
- Special teams had a quiet game. Except for one poor punt, Derek Helton had a good night. I don't think we had any opportunity to return a punt, and our kickoff returns were nothing special but also not awful.
- I thought the offensive line didn't do a bad job tonight. We had a little running room and Jefferson usually had time to do something with the ball. He just did not often use that time wisely.
- That's all for now. Due to work obligations, i doubt I will get to do a second viewing of the game, and frankly it was boring anyway.