by Jason Lieser
Florida coach Will Muschamp finally said what most people have been thinking for months: Urban Meyer’s players don’t fit Charlie Weis’ offense.
Muschamp did not phrase it that way and he never would. But after watching his team gain 34 yards on 15 running plays during Saturday’s 24-20 loss to No. 22 Georgia, he conceded Florida does not have the right personnel to run this offense.
“I think we’ve got to build our numbers back,” Muschamp said. “We’ve got to get better on the line of scrimmage. It’s very difficult to try and run a power running game … right now with who we have. And I like the guys we’ve got, but it’s just the bottom line of — you look at some situations of where we are. It doesn’t take anybody real educated to figure it out right now.”
His comment seemed specifically aimed at the offensive line.
Since training camp, Muschamp and Weis have talked about the process of blending their system with players they did not recruit. They made it sound seamless. Every answer was some variation of, “You change your system to fit what your players can do.”
That is not working. Saturday was Florida’s best offensive performance this month. A hot start and a virtually empty second half amounted to mediocrity.
Beyond not having the right fits personnel-wise, they overall lack of talent and depth on offense is an indictment against Meyer’s staff for poor planning. Again, Muschamp will never come right out and say this. But the above quote, coupled with every time he says Florida “doesn’t have numbers” on the line, could be interpreted as saying the previous staff left him without enuogh firepower.
At receiver, no one looks like obvious NFL talent. On the offensive line, the Gators got a transfer in Dan Wenger and still don’t have enough quality players.
They want to be a power running team, but they have the third smallest offensive line in the SEC and two of the conference’s seven smallest running backs.
