It’s Really Early in the Sumrall Era, but Our 4 SEC Games Are Hard to Reconcile.
Our first 2 SEC games are hard to reconcile with the last 2 games. Caveat: it’s hard to accurately judge in the first year. Lost 32 players to the portal from last year and brought in the same # of transfers plus 20 high school recruits. So about 60 guys came back and 52 are new.
Still, it’s interesting how it seems like Faulkner’s creative magic evaporated so quickly. Losing VB III shouldn’t take an above average offense to completely ineffective, should it?
Brad White’s D has been mostly embarrassing bad. The CBs are poor and we may not have much talent on the D line, but Brad was Sumrall’s first choice for DC. He’s making too much $$ to be this bad. It’s definitely too early, but if it doesn’t improve next year (or ugh year 3), Sumrall’s willingness to fire his friends could be telling. Sumrall knows better than we how good the position coaches are, and maybe having bad players at underperforming positions keeps good coaches around for year 2. Still, keeping coaches, especially a DC, even a year too long would give off major Stricklin and Napier vibes.
As an aside, I maintain Strick should have been fired after not firing Napier after his second year. Giving him 4 years was inexcusable.
The final 4 games this year look A LOT different than they did 2 weeks ago: Oklahoma, at Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and at Florida State. None of those are sure-fire wins. On the flip side, we could win 3 or all of them, and we usually play UGA tough. To win 7-8 games, the Gators need to coach and play a hell of a lot better. Hopefully the staff will do great things in the last half of the season.