When Brent Pease took over as Florida’s offensive coordinator in January, he had no idea what to expect from Mike Gillislee.
Pease knew very little about the senior running back, but it didn’t take long for Gillislee to make an impression.
“I didn’t know Mike from what’s happened in the past, and I didn’t look at him that way,” Pease said. “I looked at him from what I saw in the spring. I knew in the spring, ‘This kid’s got something.’”
Gillislee has proved Pease right so far, leading the Southeastern Conference with 231 yards and four touchdowns in the Gators’ first two games
Gillislee scared Florida fans when he disappeared for the majority of the fourth quarter of Saturday’s win against Texas A&M with an undisclosed injury. Coach Will Muschamp said Monday that his starting running back suffered a strained groin but would be at full strength for Florida’s game against Tennessee this week.
Still, Muschamp said he would avoid overloading Gillislee in this week’s practices, and offensive coordinator Brent Pease said those limitations will help Matt Jones and Mack Brown, his primary backups.
“In any situation, whether he’s a little sore or not, he understands his reps now as far as practice goes,” Pease said of Gillislee. “So he doesn’t need as many. That’s where you try to get the other kids (involved) and build up their repetition base because he’s taking so many and he gets such live situations in the game he doesn’t need to continually take those.”
Driskel getting rid of the ball: The one glaring negative in an otherwise solid performance for starting quarterback Jeff Driskel at Texas A&M was his failure to get the ball out of his hands in a timely fashion.
Rather than throwing the ball away when he was unable to find an open receiver, Driskel ran out of bounds twice for a loss of yards, giving the Aggies two of their eight sacks.
“I’ve got to get rid of the ball earlier and not lock in onto my first read,” Driskel said. “Like I said, ‘Live another day if nothing is open and someone is coming at me and throw the ball away.’”
However, on Tuesday, center Jonotthan Harrison said the offensive line should shoulder more of the blame for the sacks.
“I’m just going to do my job,” Harrison said. “As an offensive line unit, we’re going to do our job just to ensure that we pick up as many people as we can for protecting the backfield.”
Pease happy with wide receivers: Florida’s wide receivers were highly criticized in 2011, when the Gators finished 89th in the country in passing offense.
Florida’s leading pass catcher at wideout so far this season is Frankie Hammond Jr., who has just five receptions, but Pease said he doesn’t mind not having a standout No. 1 at the position.
“I don’t really think you necessarily have a No. 1 guy emerge because you want to have balance in those guys,” Pease said. “If you have balance, that means production is each guy. I don’t want a defensive coordinator looking at it and saying ‘They’re throwing it to this guy all the time.’
Contact Josh Jurnovoy at jjurnovoy@alligator.org.
Runningback Mike Gillislee moves the ball against against Texas A&M on Saturday at Kyle Field. Gillislee rushed for two touchdowns in Saturday's victory against the Aggies.
