Simulated Gameday Experience

So this was supposed to be yet another preview article about both teams, their seasons (including their one combined loss) and, well, who’d have a shot to win this.  There’s one heck of a stylistic matchup between Florida’s defense and Cincinnati’s offense that’s probably worth blowing 1,000 words on in its own right.  Then again, that was also before the coaches decided they were going to up and leave town – since the end of the season, we’ve had both head coaches and both the coordinators in the main matchup bail for either various other head coaching gigs or for personal reasons.  For clarity’s sake: Urban Meyer is going on vacation, Brian Kelly is at Notre Dame, Charlie Strong (Florida’s DC) is at Louisville, and Jeff Quinn (Cincinnati’s OC) is at Buffalo.  Of the four, Meyer and Quinn will be acting head coaches for their respective sides and Strong will be a DC for one final game before moving on- only Brian Kelly won’t be around for this one.  (Incidentally, incoming HC Butch Jones won’t be on the sidelines for either Cincinnati or his former Central Michigan outfit.  Apparently there’s a pipeline between CMU and UC, who knew?)

It’s a complete shame that all the coaching activity ended up drastically overshadowing the storylines on the field, since as far as matchups go this is pretty solid.  From a purely schematic approach, the offenses are about as dynamic as they come, especially matched up against each other; it’ll be a tough challenge for both defenses.  Of the two, Florida unquestionably has the better defense and it’s not even close; Cincinnati’s defense is average by the yardage metrics and somehow above average from a scoring perspective (mostly on beating the tar out of SE Missouri State, Syracuse, Louisville, and Miami (Ohio)).  All things considered, this was an impressive effort for a defense turning over more or less everyone.

One of the issues with having so much turnover on a defensive unit in one season is depth; as the season wore on, Cincinnati’s defense just wore down.  The Bearcats’ only games within eight points all season were not coincidentally all within the last four games of the season, and the largest margin among the conference games in that span was three points.  Cincinnati had only allowed more than 350 yards in two games through the end of October; it didn’t allow less than 369 yards in any of its last four.  It’s a little bit concerning when only two players on a 12-0 defense make either the first-team or second-team all-conference, but S Aaron Webster was one of the best DBs in the conference (as well as the most dangerous man post-interception in the conference; his 135 yards was good for 11^th in the country if you put stock into those sorts of things).

On the other hand, Florida’s defense is nearly all-everything.  They were one of the four elite defensive units all season (fittingly, the other three – Texas, Alabama, and TCU – are also in BCS bowls); among the many absurd stats they put up, their final TD/INT ratio was 7/20 with an aggregate QB rating of 93.58. <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> – think Denard Robinson without the legs.  Their rushing defense was comparatively pedestrian, although Alabama’s 251-yard beatdown didn’t help matters.  To be fair, Florida did only place two guys on an All-whatever as well; the difference being that LB Brandon Spikes and CB Joe Haden were selected to the first-team All-American team, Haden unanimously.  That’s a minor difference, and we’re not even taking into account S Ahmad Black, phenomenal edge rusher / DUI extraordinaire DE Carlos Dunlap (or his counterpart DE Jermaine Cunningham, minus the DUI), or even LB Ryan Stamper.  This is the best defense Cincinnati’s faced all season and it’s not even close.

Cincinnati QB Tony Pike will have his work cut out for him attacking that defense.  Helping him will be all-conference WRs (and legitimate ones at that) Mardy Gilyard and Armon Binns.  Binns was quiet in the first half of the year before the Miami(OH) game; since then, he’s scored at least once in every game and 660 of his 860 total yards.  In particular, his performances against UConn and Pitt were season-defining, emerging as a legitimate deep threat with over 100 yards on the game.  Gilyard, on the other hand, knows a few things about being a gamebreaker against Pitt; sure, his 95.8 receiving yards per game was good enough for 10^th in the country, but it’s his 200+ all-purpose yards per game that make him truly dangerous.  Were he not available against Pitt, Pitt’s playing in the Sugar Bowl and this game is a whole lot less interesting.

Of course, this doesn’t happen without a good line and a rushing attack decent enough to keep defenses honest.  In case you’re curious, Isaiah Pead isn’t exactly the next coming of Mark Ingram, nor is he even Montario Hardesty 2.0.  What he is works well enough for this offense; he can’t carry a team on his own, but he can be effective at times.  Ignore him and he’ll burn you, which is precisely what happened to West Virginia (175 yards on 18 carries).  It also helps that Cincinnati has a pretty good interior line; C Chris Jurek was a first-team All-Big East selection and OGs Alex Hoffman and Jason Kelce were both second-team selections.  TE Ben Guidugli is a good enough TE; again, since TEs are typically underused in college games (especially in this offense save as a safety-valve type) it’s tough to count on him doing too much, but like everyone else on this team, he’s a threat; he rolled nearly 150 receiving yards against Illinois.

Florida’s targets and backs are a bit more noted, amazingly enough.  TE Tim Tebow has led a storied college career (and lest you think it’s not actually storied, just wait until all the books that took 20 minutes to write start coming out in a year) even though this year has been a struggle.  Even with that, “struggle” is a relative issue only; his 155.59 rating was good enough for eighth nationally.  Somehow, that’s the mantra for the entire offense – truth be told, I was surprised to see they still managed to average nearly 35 points a game.  More than anything, it feels like wasted potential somehow; Tebow was good but not transcendent, the Rainey/Demps combo were effective but not the signature of this offense (that being the three-yard Tebow Smash), Riley Cooper was the best WR as expected but that was only to the tune of about 60 yards a game, and the myriad of other fast and talented guys were there but not great.  TE Aaron Hernandez was possibly the only guy to live up to the hype, delivering with a first-team AP All-American nomination and being the only consistent receiving threat.

Give Florida’s offensive line credit, too; they helped to salvage what can charitably be called an unimpressive schematic season.  (God bless Charlie Weis for bringing “schematic” back to the public lexicon.)  Consistency on the offensive line was great all season, including C Maurkice Pouncey getting named to pretty much any All-American team you care to name.  Health and consistency helped to solve a lot of the problems associated with a subpar attack.  At its peak, Meyer’s offense is a slashing, cutting, fast nightmare to defend; I’ve used the phrase “pro-style spread” simply because if it’s going to transition to the pros, it’ll look like this.  (Half the Wildcat-type stuff is also run through this offense.)  It’s an amalgamation of more or less anything that works; that’s why it was so surprising to see so many playcalls that just didn’t work.  OC Steve Addazzio seems content to just chuck playcalling spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks; that’s fine, but once he finds a play that gets approximately 3.4 yards per play, he’ll keep calling it.  That’s fine if you have a lackluster offense, but these guys are good and handcuffing them is a complete waste of everybody’s time.

This manifested itself even worse in conference play; it’s simply staggering to think that an offense that had been so good regardless of the situations suddenly regressed to the tune of 50 yards less per game and a full 17(!) points less per in-conference game.  Quite frankly, by the stats this offense is on par with the 2006 unit that, yes, won the title exactly like this year’s unit was primed to do.  However, that group wasn’t forced to settle for three nearly as much as this unit was; of the 21 made FGs on the season, a full 20 of them came in conference play.  This unit is still dangerous, just …well, it just doesn’t feel like it’s dangerous.

Cincinnati has the opposite problem.  They’ve been running a relatively simple spread offense which has served them well, precisely because they’re maximizing their playcalling and talents.  Watching the Cincinnati offense when it’s working is a thing of beauty, and it’s adaptable to boot; witness Zach Collaros stepping in with very little issue.  There’s something refreshingly honest and effective about this attack, and I’m a big fan of it.

Still, the Cincinnati attack hasn’t seen a defense even close to Florida’s all season.  Alabama is very good at what they do, and they put together a great plan of attack to take advantage of this defense.  However, Cincinnati’s probably watching the tape from the Arkansas game: Arkansas is way closer to Cincy’s offense than Alabama’s is, and there’s enough there to piece together something.   Health shouldn’t be an issue on either end; the biggest factor on either side of this matchup is the presence of Dunlap.  That should be enough to tilt this slightly in Florida’s favor.

Similarly, Florida’s offense should be able to find enough success against the Cincinnati defense.  I’m not sold that Cincinnati’s going to have enough to be able to consistently slow them down; their best chance is for someone to go pseudo-Eric Berry (I’d guess Webster if I had to) but more importantly, if they can take away Rainey and Demps they’ll be okay on the ground.  Tennessee laid out the plan of attack against the Gators, but I don’t think Cincinnati has the horses to execute it.  I can easily see Florida getting up early and slowly pulling away.

*not really
(stats provided thanks to CFB Stats)

Tags: Bowl previews, ESS EEE CEE SUPERIORITY