Florida Vets Look Like Freshmen in Shaky Debut

Having now slept on what I saw in Gainesville yesterday, I am fairly confident we won't see that again. A lot of key players were out, three guys on the O-line were playing out of position, and the first-game jitters were in full effect.

That said, it wasn't any of the young guys who were the real problem. Aside from Josh Evans's comically stupid pass interference penalty and Mike Gillislee's fumble a femtosecond before being down, the freshmen and sophomores looked all right. The veterans were the real problem:

• Senior Mike Pouncey couldn't find the quarterback on a litany of bad snaps.
• Junior John Brantley fumbled a couple of those bad snaps.
• Junior Deonte Thompson and senior Carl Moore dropped passes.
• Senior Emmanuel Moody fumbled a standard toss sweep and got nothing done between the tackles.
• Juniors Jeff Demps and Chris Rainey had fumbles in the open field.

It was far and away the strangest game I've ever attended in the Swamp, and I hope I never see one like it again. You would think that veteran players won't play like freshmen into the indefinite future, so Florida might turn out all right after all. Yesterday's game was just a snowball rolling down hill, where one thing just lead to another. After a while, you just knew they weren't going to gain their composure again.

That said, a repeat performance will get them beat next week against USF. If they're going to, ahem, snap out of their first weekend funk, they had better do it quickly.