Gasparilla Bowl Quote board: Florida 33, Tulane 8
- By Guerry Smith
- Joe Kennedy's Wave Crest
- 1 Replies
I was at at almost every spring practice and every preseason practice, and I promise you Ty Thompson did not look as bad as he did Friday. He never proved he was starter caliber, missing some throws and making some questionable choices, but he was downright awful either, which he was yesterday in a stinker that resembled just about every game and practice in 2016 under Willie Fritz when Tulane had the worst passing game I'd ever seen. The inaccurate throws and poor choices were off the charts against Florida, but the one I will single out occurred near the end of the first half when he had all kinds of room to run to get Tulane in field goal range (if there is such a thing for Tulane at this point) as he scrambled to his right and an underneath receiver he could have hit for positive yardage. Instead, he chose to throw deep into double coverage with a throw that fortunately was so off target, the defenders had no chance to pick it off. Maybe he was trying too hard in his portal audition, but it was a brutal performance. If Kai Horton had not entered the portal, he wold have come off the bench to take over in the second quarter and given the Wave a ghost of a chance to do something, anything, on offense.
The defense played OK, with an outstanding interception by Kevin Adams early that gave the Wave its best scoring opportunity until the final minute, but DJ Lagway had a few too many wide open receivers in an erratic performance in which he made some beautiful throws with a quick release but also some bad mistakes, none worse than the pass he threw right to Dickson Agu in the end zone when the receiver hw was trying to hit behind him was blanketed anyway. It had to be hard for the defense to stay motivated the way the offense was struggling to get first downs, but it played hard all the way, and only a fluke touchdown off an errant snap allowed Florida to extend its lead to 23-0 on a day when the score could have been much worse the way Tulane was dominated statistically.
I was happy for Mario Williams, who went over the 1,000-yard mark with a catch to start the final drive and ended it with a pretty spin move that allowed him to get to the end zone. He was by far Tulane's best player in the last two games, although his misfire on a wide open double pass likely cost Tulane a touchdown earlier in the fourth quarter (he made a similar mistake in a preseason scrimmage). He deserved to join Ryan Grant, the last Wave player who did it, in the 1,000-yard club and will be a big loss. s
Jon Sumrall, Williams and Tyler Grubbs spoke after the game.
SUMRALL
"It was a tough loss, not the way we wanted to finish. You can tell by my (hoarse) voice it didn't go great because I don't have much voice left, but I'm proud of our guys fighting. It was not the outcome we wanted at all, and we didn't help ourselves in a lot of areas. Florida's a really good team. They are extremely talented. I've coached in that league, and they look like they are supposed to look in that league. That team's really talented, but I'll love this group forever. We've got 35 guys that are for sure exhausting eligibility. They are moving on, and such a cool, blended group--some guys that have been here the whole time like Josh Remetich and Rashad Green and some guys that joined in the middle of their careers before I got here--Tyler Grubbs and Pat Jenkins--and some guys that got here right that we recruited right when I took the job--Mario Williams, who showed up in January with me, Caleb Ransaw, and then Micah Robinson and Johnathan Edwards, who got here in June. Such a cool group of seniors, a collection of guys I'm grateful for forever. I love them. This doesn't change how I feel about them. I hate the way we didn't finish the season very well with this game, but Tulane football is here to stay, man. We're going to keep fighting. We're not going to back down. I told all the youngsters in the room that will be on the team next year that they're on the clock. Everybody in that room's on the clock that's coming back and the got to be ready to go. Proud of these guys."
On what changed in second half:
"We wore down a little. At halftime the time of possession was like 20 and some change to 9 and some change. That's not ideal, so we wore down a little. They ran the ball on us. They got leaky yardage and kind of won the physical battle late. Also late in the game I went for it a couple of times, didn't get it, had a turnover and a couple of things backed up that didn't go our way. Our defense played on a short field a lot in the second half because I was choosing to go for it to try to get back in the game, and then the turnovers were not ideal. Look, at some point you have to try to hold serve. We're down 9-0 and we're fighting, and we're down 16-0 and we're still fighting, and just kind of late the wheels came off. We wore down."
On the injuries to Josh Remetich and Jack Tchienchou:
"It was nothing major-major (for Remetich). It looked like maybe a sprained MCL. It wasn't stable enough to return. Fine, but not able to play and finish the game, and then Jack, his back was kind of locked up, a little muscle tightness on his low back. I thought he got the wind knocked out of him initially, but it was like a muscle strain. He'll be fine. Nothing serious."
On Ty Thompson's performance:
"Yeah, there were some balls that weren't quite where they needed to be from a location, targeting standpoint. He's probably like to have the fourth-down run back where we were short. He bounced it and probably should have kept it inside. There were some plays. Look, that's Ty's first career at-length game action where it was like every play. He'd been kind of a rotational piece for us this year, so playing at a high level down in and down out is hard when you haven't done it. There was some good there, but clearly there were some things we'd love to have back."
on flea flicker interception on first offensive play:
"You don't want to throw a pick on the first play. I'll be honest. Coach Craddock and myself, I'd talked with Joe several times like this can go really good or really bad on play 1. They doubled Dontae (Fleming), they climbed to Dontae, and Mario was probably open. We probably could have checked it down to Mario and gotten a positive play out of it. We wanted to call that play to send a message to our team that we were play the game aggressive. Everybody knew we had a new quarterback in the lineup that hadn't been the guy all year, and some of that was like just making sure the message to our team was we're not going to play timid. I don't think we did. We just wore down."
On how much retooling he has to do for next year:
"This day and age in college football you build a new team every year with the transfers and stuff. It's a challenge. It really is. We lose three starting offensive linemen, all three starting receivers.Quarterback is a big hole right now. We lose one of our starting tight ends out of the two guys that played predominantly, and then up front (defensively) we lose Pat Jenkins, Eric Hicks, Tyler Grubbs, both starting corners, Jalen Geiger. We won't have the same bandit next year (Caleb Ransaw), so like two-thirds of our starters are going to be gone. That's why I told the young guys they are on the clock. We've got to be very active. We fly back tonight and we have 10 guys showing up tomorrow morning for transfer visits. Look, I'll say this. We walked into a situation last year where I was here by myself for about a month before I brought my staff with me. At least we got other people working now so I'm sleeping at least a couple hours a night. We've got a lot of work to do. There's a lot of roster rebuilding to be done for us to have any opportunity to be successful."
On DJ Lagway:
"He's a very talented young player. I had the privilege of coaching against Anthony Richardson when I was at Kentucky when he was a freshman at Florida. Different players. This guy's probably more natural right now at that age at playing quarterback at a high level. He's got a huge arm. He runs it good. He doesn't necessarily want to be a run-first player, but he can beat you with his legs, too. On the one (interception by Adams), they ran a lot of mesh with the over-the-ball-route. We kind of had a bead on that coming in that situation and threw a coverage in there we felt like could match it up. We had worked the heck out of that. Our defensive staff had done a great job sort of dialing that in, but he's a really good player. He's got a bright future. He's an uber talented young man and seems like a great kid, too from all accounts and a really hard worker. A lot of respect to him."
The defense played OK, with an outstanding interception by Kevin Adams early that gave the Wave its best scoring opportunity until the final minute, but DJ Lagway had a few too many wide open receivers in an erratic performance in which he made some beautiful throws with a quick release but also some bad mistakes, none worse than the pass he threw right to Dickson Agu in the end zone when the receiver hw was trying to hit behind him was blanketed anyway. It had to be hard for the defense to stay motivated the way the offense was struggling to get first downs, but it played hard all the way, and only a fluke touchdown off an errant snap allowed Florida to extend its lead to 23-0 on a day when the score could have been much worse the way Tulane was dominated statistically.
I was happy for Mario Williams, who went over the 1,000-yard mark with a catch to start the final drive and ended it with a pretty spin move that allowed him to get to the end zone. He was by far Tulane's best player in the last two games, although his misfire on a wide open double pass likely cost Tulane a touchdown earlier in the fourth quarter (he made a similar mistake in a preseason scrimmage). He deserved to join Ryan Grant, the last Wave player who did it, in the 1,000-yard club and will be a big loss. s
Jon Sumrall, Williams and Tyler Grubbs spoke after the game.
SUMRALL
"It was a tough loss, not the way we wanted to finish. You can tell by my (hoarse) voice it didn't go great because I don't have much voice left, but I'm proud of our guys fighting. It was not the outcome we wanted at all, and we didn't help ourselves in a lot of areas. Florida's a really good team. They are extremely talented. I've coached in that league, and they look like they are supposed to look in that league. That team's really talented, but I'll love this group forever. We've got 35 guys that are for sure exhausting eligibility. They are moving on, and such a cool, blended group--some guys that have been here the whole time like Josh Remetich and Rashad Green and some guys that joined in the middle of their careers before I got here--Tyler Grubbs and Pat Jenkins--and some guys that got here right that we recruited right when I took the job--Mario Williams, who showed up in January with me, Caleb Ransaw, and then Micah Robinson and Johnathan Edwards, who got here in June. Such a cool group of seniors, a collection of guys I'm grateful for forever. I love them. This doesn't change how I feel about them. I hate the way we didn't finish the season very well with this game, but Tulane football is here to stay, man. We're going to keep fighting. We're not going to back down. I told all the youngsters in the room that will be on the team next year that they're on the clock. Everybody in that room's on the clock that's coming back and the got to be ready to go. Proud of these guys."
On what changed in second half:
"We wore down a little. At halftime the time of possession was like 20 and some change to 9 and some change. That's not ideal, so we wore down a little. They ran the ball on us. They got leaky yardage and kind of won the physical battle late. Also late in the game I went for it a couple of times, didn't get it, had a turnover and a couple of things backed up that didn't go our way. Our defense played on a short field a lot in the second half because I was choosing to go for it to try to get back in the game, and then the turnovers were not ideal. Look, at some point you have to try to hold serve. We're down 9-0 and we're fighting, and we're down 16-0 and we're still fighting, and just kind of late the wheels came off. We wore down."
On the injuries to Josh Remetich and Jack Tchienchou:
"It was nothing major-major (for Remetich). It looked like maybe a sprained MCL. It wasn't stable enough to return. Fine, but not able to play and finish the game, and then Jack, his back was kind of locked up, a little muscle tightness on his low back. I thought he got the wind knocked out of him initially, but it was like a muscle strain. He'll be fine. Nothing serious."
On Ty Thompson's performance:
"Yeah, there were some balls that weren't quite where they needed to be from a location, targeting standpoint. He's probably like to have the fourth-down run back where we were short. He bounced it and probably should have kept it inside. There were some plays. Look, that's Ty's first career at-length game action where it was like every play. He'd been kind of a rotational piece for us this year, so playing at a high level down in and down out is hard when you haven't done it. There was some good there, but clearly there were some things we'd love to have back."
on flea flicker interception on first offensive play:
"You don't want to throw a pick on the first play. I'll be honest. Coach Craddock and myself, I'd talked with Joe several times like this can go really good or really bad on play 1. They doubled Dontae (Fleming), they climbed to Dontae, and Mario was probably open. We probably could have checked it down to Mario and gotten a positive play out of it. We wanted to call that play to send a message to our team that we were play the game aggressive. Everybody knew we had a new quarterback in the lineup that hadn't been the guy all year, and some of that was like just making sure the message to our team was we're not going to play timid. I don't think we did. We just wore down."
On how much retooling he has to do for next year:
"This day and age in college football you build a new team every year with the transfers and stuff. It's a challenge. It really is. We lose three starting offensive linemen, all three starting receivers.Quarterback is a big hole right now. We lose one of our starting tight ends out of the two guys that played predominantly, and then up front (defensively) we lose Pat Jenkins, Eric Hicks, Tyler Grubbs, both starting corners, Jalen Geiger. We won't have the same bandit next year (Caleb Ransaw), so like two-thirds of our starters are going to be gone. That's why I told the young guys they are on the clock. We've got to be very active. We fly back tonight and we have 10 guys showing up tomorrow morning for transfer visits. Look, I'll say this. We walked into a situation last year where I was here by myself for about a month before I brought my staff with me. At least we got other people working now so I'm sleeping at least a couple hours a night. We've got a lot of work to do. There's a lot of roster rebuilding to be done for us to have any opportunity to be successful."
On DJ Lagway:
"He's a very talented young player. I had the privilege of coaching against Anthony Richardson when I was at Kentucky when he was a freshman at Florida. Different players. This guy's probably more natural right now at that age at playing quarterback at a high level. He's got a huge arm. He runs it good. He doesn't necessarily want to be a run-first player, but he can beat you with his legs, too. On the one (interception by Adams), they ran a lot of mesh with the over-the-ball-route. We kind of had a bead on that coming in that situation and threw a coverage in there we felt like could match it up. We had worked the heck out of that. Our defensive staff had done a great job sort of dialing that in, but he's a really good player. He's got a bright future. He's an uber talented young man and seems like a great kid, too from all accounts and a really hard worker. A lot of respect to him."