Saurian Sagacity, a UF blog, has taken a look at how teams were ranked in the final 2007 poll vs. their ranking in the first poll of 2008. It's interesting to see how far the coaches catapulted Florida (+11 spots), Clemson (+13 spots) and Texas Texas (+9 spots) vs. their position last year.I'll grant you that the Gators should have a dominating offense this year. They return 9 starters from a unit that averaged over 42 points per game last year (3rd in the nation). But how much better can that unit really be when it comes to scoring points against SEC defenses?
As a point of comparison, UF in '07 (42.5 points) was already the highest point total per game for an SEC defense in many years. From '02-'06, the top scoring offense in the league averaged less than 33 points/game with no team scoring more than 34/game.
I'm not going to say anything ground breaking here, but defensively...are they really going to improve enough to move up 11 spots from last year?
Run Defense:
Meyer's secret sauce defensively has been a run defense that has finished ranked in the Top 10 each of his first three seasons. Even factoring in the hot knife through butter show that UGA displayed in Jacksonville, the Gators still had the #10 run defense last year.
The ability to stuff the run better over year is questionable given that they are losing three starting defensive linemen, and it's hard to improve from a Top 10 ranking. Also, if Omar Hunter (mega recruit DT) is banged up as rumored, the task of improving this unit becomes even greater.
Pass Defense:
So that leaves the Gator anti-air assault as their biggest opportunity to move the needle. They finished 98th in passing yards allowed, 46th in scoring defense and 71st in defensive pass efficiency. They return three of the starting DBs who were responsible for that mess, and they are razor thin at safety due to injuries.
Schedule:
The only opportunity left for improvement is the schedule. On the non-conference side, they swap Florida Atlantic for Hawaii, Troy for Miami and move the FSU game to Tallahassee. In the SEC, they swap UT and LSU home/away sites so it's basically a wash. The game site for UGA, SC, UK, and Vandy won't really matter. However, they do gain a likely win by exchanging a home game with Auburn for a road game against Arkansas.
I think the Gators will be better this year. But going from 9-4 to 11-2 (roughly the move that an 11 position jump in the polls suggests) seems a big much without overwhelming improvement in the secondary.
PWD
Georgia Sports Blog
