No. 1 Tide topple No. 7 Gators 31-6 in Tuscaloosa

By Adam Silverstein
October 3, 2010

The rubber match of the last two Southeastern Conference Championship games was expected to be a heavyweight battle. Instead, the No. 1/1 Alabama Crimson Tide (5-0, 2-0 SEC) showed their might with a 31-6 victory over the No. 7/7 Florida Gators (4-1, 2-1 SEC) at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, AL, on Saturday evening.

Scoring on their first four offensive possessions, Alabama took a 24-0 lead over Florida halfway into the second quarter. The Crimson Tide scored a field goal on their opening drive and intercepted a pass from Gators freshman quarterback Trey Burton on the following possession in the end zone on fourth down.

Alabama would then get on the board with back-to-back rushing touchdowns from Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram in the second quarter, also scoring on a 19-yard pass from wide receiver Marquis Maze to tight end Michael Williams with 6:09 left in the first half. Maze’s touchdown pass came after redshirt junior quarterback John Brantley threw his second interception of the season to cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick on 3rd and 11 from Florida’s 27.

Gators senior punter Chas Henry, filling in for junior kicker Caleb Sturigs, ended the second quarter with a 39-yard field goal and opened the third quarter with a 21-yard field goal to give Florida its only points of the contest.

Down 24-6 halfway through the third quarter, Brantley threw another interception, this one to linebacker C.J. Mosely on 2nd and 5 from Florida’s 33 yard line, which Mosely returned for a touchdown to give Alabama its 31-6 lead.

Even with the Gators’ poor execution, the offense outperformed the Crimson Tide’s 281-273. Brantley was 16-of-31 for for 202 yards compared to Alabama QB Greg McElroy’s 11-of-17 performance for 84 yards. Ingram was held to 47 yards on 12 carries, though RB Trent Richardson ran for 63 yards on 10 touches. Florida RB Jeff Demps carried the ball 11 times for 47 yards, and redshirt junior WR Deonte Thompson led the Gators with 60 yards on three receptions.

Hoping to rebound from their worst performance of the season, the Gators will take on the No. 10 LSU Tigers (5-0, 3-0 SEC) in Gainesville, FL, next Saturday. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m., and the game will air live on ESPN.

Photo Credit: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

16 Comments

  1. Aligator says:

    I am honored to kick this off today.

    The obvious MVP to this fiasco has to be Addozzio. He is not a very good OC and it affects his Oline. That in turn just make John Brantley suck, or maybe he sucks and the rest of the offense looks lost.

    Then the defense, which held the team to less yards on offense than we had, has to play from way behind.

    Lord Jesus, precious baby Jesus, please deliver us!

  2. John S says:

    Except for the 1st quarter the defense played well, they can certainly compete with Bama.

    The offense is still playing chicken even against an entirely rebuilt secondary. Watching the replays it does look like both Burton and Moody had TD’s, Pouncey is a walking time bomb at center, he couldn’t even block last night. The line looks over matched and confused. We’re still going five wide even when the defense brings 6. It’s like Addazio is pretending we have a great line.

    Last rant: Brantey should not be trying to fake out linebackers, he should be screwing with the safeties. Dump passes are last resorts and not an offense. Bama sat on those all night.

  3. Scooterp says:

    Does anyone else see the obvious? Our O-line play, and the offensive play calling are the two most glaring weaknesses on this team. Who is responsible for those two areas? Hmmmm.

  4. Scooterp says:

    Congrats to the Gator D, for coming up big in the second half. Except for a few trickery plays, albeit big ones, they made the Bama offense look unimpressive. The offense showed the ability to move the ball effectively at times, until they get in the red zone and decide to pull out the 2008/2009 Tebow offensive playbook. It seems as though we have no deep threat, even though we’re loaded with playmakers and have a QB who has an nfl caliber arm, so we’re told. And are we really still talking about bad snaps in week #5. Memo to coaching staff: THIS ISN’T WORRKING. TEBOW GRADUATED. TIME TO EVOLVE.

  5. agree with all that has been said but we have to execute better as well…..this game was closer than the score indicates…..give us those two scores, trey’s screw up jump pass and take away that pick 6 of theirs and we are in this game….but the O line is not as good as pouncey brags…maybe the freshmen should tell him to just “shut up and play”….

  6. GG says:

    Don’t we have another center option? Couldn’t get much worse. o-line looks pretty hapless….can’t really blame QB, running scared most of the time. Bama’s reloading, we are rebuilding. Can’t help but think how much better this team would be with Haden, Dunlap, Hernandez, Pouncey, etc. If we can’t keep our best players as seniors this will happen every 2-3 years.

  7. Basshole says:

    I was going to say something about like “if that was a heavyweight fight, then we got knocked out in the first round”, but I really thought we we in it for until late in the game. I agree with John S that our defense made some adjustments and seemed to be able to slow down Bama in the later stages of the game. The offense was erratic, and terrible in the endzone, but we showed some good drives.

    That game was a beating, but I think we showed some things we can build on. All though I question how smart it was for Brantley to come back in, I love his resolve to finish it.

  8. zach says:

    They need to get Debose a lot more involved. When he gets his chance he plays really well. He reminds me of percy the way he runs with the ball which is north and south.

  9. Ted says:

    The Gators have a team with talent to die for. I have one question for Addozzio that requires a yes or no answer. were you or were you no out coached?

  10. Aligator says:

    Yes, Thank God the Defense played as well as they did. I do not see another offense out there we will be playing that our D can not take care of. Hopefully we will make it back to Atlanta and a rematch.

  11. g8ter27 says:

    Well like most of you here I wonder: 1) why if we have a qb with a cannon arm do we NEVER throw down the field? can’t we at least do it once or twice to soften up the safeties from playing up? 2) why do we run otion plays when our qb is not a run threat?..that is not an option3) why is our O-line loaded with blue chip players and vets (exception Nixon) yet seem softer this year than they were as sophmores?4) why do we call a good set of plays on drive #1 but from there on and when we get into “panic” mode we resort back to the dive play? 5) speaking of the dive play, remember in 2007 and 2008 when our -Line ran the same play with little running backs but the line had those wide splits ?…yeah, what happened to that? we bunch veryone up now and they don’t blow anyone (Miamia of Ohio included) off the ball.

    I think Steve is a great guy, he loves the Gators, he is a great recruiter…I sound like I am talking about Zook here…but something is not right and it is not getting better….Steve, THROW THE BALL DOWN FIELD and stop with the short passes every play…..finally, John Brantley may have the physical tools but he is making bad decisions….but with this game plan I guess that can be expected. Good defensive game overall and looks lk Henry may be our answer to the kicking problem.

  12. g8ter27 says:

    I am so mad I can’t spell. Ha

  13. liveoak87 says:

    how about we offer dan mullen what hes getting now plus 5-10% more to come back and be the o-cordinator. How about having robey*? start at center and mike go into the oline rotation? what about throwing a deep pass once and a while? stop running the option sweep with brantley, stop using the dive play so much.

    demote addazio to oline coach only and find someone who can call more than ten plays.

    alabama knew what play was coming before we did.

  14. Daniel M. says:

    I CANT BELIEVE WE ARE STILL USING THE F’ING DIVE PLAY

  15. Gatorgrad79 says:

    As has been said, we only spread their D line out in a panic 3rd and 10 (or more) , nad then when that WORKED we reverted right backl to bunching up in the middle and running off tackle. Floriduuuuuuh!! I think we also need to address theat SPEED IS NOT THE ANSWER TO EVRYTHING!! We need BIGGER physical lines and backs ( on both sides of the ball), that can MAN-HANDLE the opposition and play smash-mouth when they have to. We better beef up this next recruiting class, and keep speed for very specific positions. Where’s the beef!? (PS I was AT the game – I love the Gators, and spend considerable time and $$ to support them, but when we squander talent with poor coaching, it angers me, and is not even fair to the kids AND WILL KILL RECRUITING IN SUBSEQUENTYEARS!!)

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