1. It is weird to play a game where neither team had much to do with each other, but no game with a total of nine turnovers is. The Florida defense barely noticed who the Tennessee quarterback was; the Tennessee offense hardly noticed who was coming, be it Dante Fowler (who is simply monstrous this year,) Dominique Easley, or Vernon Hargreaves. The strangest thing about this game is that it was less contest than a mutual seizure for a half, and then a continued seizure for one party through the second half. they had
2. Note for no reason whatsoever: I want to call Hargreaves the Combat Wombat so badly, and have no idea why. I know why not, though: Combat Wombat is the name of an Australian rap group featuring "DJ Wasabi."
DJ Wasabi enjoys; eating lollies, lighting and all things to do with lights, lasers etc., scratching, making beats, programming, and is nicknamed "smoke dog" a name he earned for his reputation of making turntables smoke with his hyper-charged scratching.
So yeah, let's not do that, because sometimes your random thoughts are insanely dumb, and lead you to fruitless knowledge about Australian hip-hop.
3. But let's just reiterate: for a half, It's not like this even resembled football.
Two drunk teams fell off barstools for the most disgusting half of football we watched all weekend. It was an embarrassment bordered by down markers, two leprous sprinters winding around the track and seeing whose legs fell off first, a stampede of mediocre livestock off a short, ugly seawall, a bus terminal brawl between a pack of stray dogs and a doomed rabid cat, a birthday party at an orphanage, a Chinese mountaineering disaster filmed live by a dispassionate and unhelpful Werner Von Herzog, a wagon train with dying oxen headed the wrong way down into waterless deserts.
4. Someone took Jake from Adventure Time singing the "Bacon Pancakes" song and looped it for ten hours. I would rather watch this whole thing than the first half of the Tennessee game ever again.
At least it's about something you can believe in: bacon, pancakes, and dogs being allowed to cook over open flame. Additionally, I could eat bacon and pancakes cooked in deep, heavy fat for years before I would die. Watching this game again would kill me so much quicker, and with way more pain and discomfort involved.
5. I know Jeff Driskel broke his leg, and that is terrible. Specifically, the guy who has worked very hard to get better, and has done everything in his powers as a very young athlete to improve, broke his fibula. Reach down on your leg and grab it: it's not your femur, but it still qualifies as one of those bones on your body that, when it starts hurting, signifies that something very large has gone wrong, and that in another century you might have been in mortal trouble. It sucks deeply that he is injured, and that anyone would take pleasure in that is horrendous.
6. That said about Driskel: Murphy may not be that much of a downgrade for what this offense wants to do, which is mostly running the ball and occasionally taking a few tentative pokes downfield. He seems to make decisions faster than Driskel, at least in the few he was given, and scrambles effectively. Driskel holds the ball for days both because he's confident in his arm and ability to do things, while Murphy either takes off or gets rid of the ball before anything too bad happens. He doesn't seem too eager to do too much, and for an offense this dysfunctional that might be healthier than ambition. Ahoy, competent economy car quarterback. You'll probably power-slide if we take the traction control off, buddy! (Brent Pease and Will Muschamp say touch that traction control off and die, son.)
7. The offense ran the ball and asked nothing of its quarterback in the second half. This is all this team should do, ever, since they gained almost 200 yards, squatted on the clock, and played unambitious, boring offense. I'm emotionally over this team being designed to win games 10-3. I'd just like them to start doing that, and this is a step in that direction. I'm really over it. I am. Protesting too much is bullshit. I like it. I do. I love kale. It tastes great and you're all wrong about how you can't wash the sand out of it. It's delicious. Survival is overrated. I meant underrated. Please help. Anything. Just help me watch this team play offense and fill this glass of alcohol when it is empty. It is empty. LIke my soul after watching this offense. Drink. Booze drink alcohol this offense oh god please booze. I'm not laughing Michigan State. I'm holding you as hard as I can and saying how sorry I am.
8. The defense might be otherworldly, since even against bad teams they reduce your efforts to bland nullity at best, and tragicomedy at worst. Tennessee's only positive moments were accidents, mistakes by the Florida secondary, and their worst moments weren't just good Florida offense, but collusion via incompetence to create truly spectacular things like Peterman's interceptions. I would not blame Nathan Peterman if he never played football again: that, more than anything, is a testament to the Florida defense this year, the second in the nation in total defense right now. I would not blame a healthy young person for quitting after playing against them.
9. This is true except for Pig Howard, who cannot give up the game because we love anyone who embraces the nickname "Pig." More agricultural nicknames for Tennessee football players, please, and more names of people you would want on your team, something else Tennessee is short on these days. In the bad old days, there were at least people you would steal if you could. Now, there's...A.J. Johnson on defense, maybe? Derek Dooley spent his days poorly at Tennessee, and had a lot of them. That's all you can think watching this team play, and looking at the barren depth chart.
10. All a fan can ask at this point: that you be excellent, bordering on great, at one thing as a team. The reason Alabama has been so fiendishly good for so long now is never being awful at more than one phase of the game at a time. When the offense fails, defense and special teams kick in; when Alabama's defense sputters, the offensive line transforms into a herd of armored water buffalo and lets T.J. Yeldon do the rest. Florida is good at one thing, so good it almost doesn't matter. (Almost: see Miami.) That's nice. We should be happy to watch them annihilate a rival decimated by time, tide, and the DooleyKiffining. We really should, because that is living in the present, the only thing one should do.
11. You know that thing where you say things aloud you don't mean in hope of believing them? That's this thing, but it still doesn't mean it isn't right. It also doesn't mean you're not saying these things aloud to yourself because you don't believe them. But to paraphrase Bo Pelini on bad fans: fuck me.
11. If you did not watch the game, there would have been two things to actually see. One would have been Darious Cumming's potential Fat Guy TD rudely interrupted by Dominique Easley pushing him forward, and then inadvertently tripping on his heel. The second was Easley combat rolling on the ground in between snaps.
I don't know how we ever found him, but you cannot have him or his dancing between snaps, ever. Now let's never talk about this game ever again, except to say that Antonio Morrison is magnificent leading this defense, and that you cannot have him or his fondness for barking at dogs in cars, either.