Florida coach Will Muschamp named Jeff Driskel the starting quarterback on Monday, but that doesn’t mean much.
The Gators are runners. Muschamp made Florida’s commitment to the ground game clear after Saturday’s win against Bowling Green.
“We need to establish the run,” Muschamp said. “You can’t talk about it. You got to be about it and you got to do it. We made the decision going into the game. That’s what we’re going to do.”
In their season opener, the Gators ran the ball with fervor. Florida racked up 42 carries compared to just 21 passing attempts. After Driskel opened the second quarter with a five-yard completion to Trey Burton, Florida ran the ball on 10 straight plays.
Mike Gillislee, the go-to workhorse in Muschamp’s running back stable, logged a team-high 24 carries for 148 yards on Saturday.
No UF player carried the ball more than 23 times in a single game last season.
“However many times I have to get the ball, that’s how many times I get the ball,” Gillislee said.
UF can thrive as a run-oriented offense. Though unproven, Gillislee is a talented back, and Matt Jones proved effective in a backup role.
Even Mack Brown and Omarius Hines appeared serviceable, but how reliable each player will be over the course of a full season remains to be seen.
Gillislee may be on pace to surpass his preseason predictions of 1,500 yards and 24 touchdowns in 2012, but he will not. And that’s OK.
Florida’s running backs do not need to set the world on fire this season. They just have to do enough to get the offense moving.
Bowling Green is a Mid-American Conference squad. The Falcons finished 104th nationally in rushing defense last year. Slowing down a Southeastern Conference opponent at all would have been an accomplishment for those guys.
Saturday’s game was merely a confidence boost for the Gators’ running backs.
But it’s early. As Florida’s inexperienced group gains experience and in-game reps, they will only continue to improve.
The departures of Jeff Demps and Chris Rainey are a blessing in disguise for the Gators. Finally, UF can return to a regular north-south running game instead of accommodating speedsters who are useless running between the tackles on a regular basis.
Sure, trying to ram it down the throats of teams like LSU, Georgia and South Carolina may seem like a misguided strategy. But it’s the way things are done in the SEC.
The good teams can pound the rock, and the bad teams cannot.
When December rolls around, Gillislee will not be one of the five players recognized in New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist. Mack Brown will still be known primarily as the Texas coach, Jones will be the fourth-most popular last name in the United States and Hines will be ketchup.
But together, this group of guys will be the reason the UF offense is respectable.
Naming a starting quarterback is good news for Florida. But if the Gators do anything of note this season, it will be because they are runners.
Contact Joe Morgan at joemorgan@alligator.org.
