9/6: Urban Meyer’s Monday press conference

Head coach Urban Meyer meets with the media each Monday after the Florida Gators participate in a game the previous Saturday. OGGOA has compiled some of the most important notes and quotes from the event this week.

PLAYERS SET TO RETURN SATURDAY

Meyer plans to have redshirt sophomore wide receiver Frankie Hammond, Jr., junior free safety Will Hill and redshirt senior left guard Carl Johnson back with the team for next Saturday’s game against South Florida after all three served suspensions during Florida’s opening game against Miami (OH). Though it is known that Hammond’s punishment came as part of his DUI arrest earlier in the summer, Meyer did not disclose the particular reasons for sitting Hill and Johnson.

On the injury front, Meyer believes redshirt freshman tight end Jordan Reed (knee) and sophomore left tackle Xavier Nixon (knee) will be able to play on Saturday. However, he is not as optimistic about redshirt sophomore LT Matt Patchan (wrist), who is still recovering.

ANOTHER SETBACK FOR MOSES

After three years of mostly playing special teams, senior cornerback Moses Jenkins was finally able to see the field as a starter on Saturday. Unfortunately for Jenkins, he hyperextended his left elbow while in action and will be out for at least six weeks. Redshirt sophomore Jeremy Brown, with whom Jenkins was competing with for the job during summer and fall practice, took over for him during the game even though he was nursing a sprained ankle. He is expected to be the starter this week.

Redshirt junior guard James Wilson was also injured during the game, but he will be fine to play on Saturday.

WEEK ONE CHAMPIONS

Meyer announced that eight Gators graded out as Champions after the Miami (OH) game. As indicated by the contest itself, seven were defensive players while only senior tackle Marcus Gilbert earned the honor on offense. The defenders who were awarded include Brown, junior CB Janoris Jenkins, senior safety Ahmad Black, redshirt junior defensive tackle Jaye Howard, senior defensive end Justin Trattou, sophomore linebacker Jon Bostic and redshirt senior LB A.J. Jones.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE SNAPPING?

After reviewing game tape, Meyer said he and offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Steve Addazio discovered that senior center Mike Pouncey was not locking his wrist while snapping the ball, causing it to come out at any number of different angles. It was also mentioned that redshirt junior quarterback John Brantley, in his first game as a starter, was not paying as much attention to the snap as he should have been, leading him to mishandle some bad snaps that nevertheless should have been corralled.

QUOTES (After the break…)

Meyer on the team’s performance Saturday: “I will say this: We practiced last night and, coaching a team that has urgency is a positive thing. Mistakes are a part of football – athletics. It is much easier to coach a team that is urgent – and they are urgent – and a staff that is urgent as opposed to complacency, disinterest and entitlement. … Mistakes and urgency to correct mistakes that’s part of the game, that’s what you got to do. Now the bottom line is to get it fixed. […] There’s nothing like coaching a team that’s urgent – nothing like it.”

Meyer on the offense: “We obviously need to do a lot of work.” On offense

Meyer on Howard’s performance: “Jaye Howard played his best game as a Gator. […] There’s two things: First and foremost, the young guy has finally had enough – we’ve all had enough, he’s had enough. He’s a talented guy that just has to let it rip. And he’s letting it rip right now – he’s done that in practice. The other thing is there’s good competition there. You get [Terron] Sanders back this week, you get [Lawrence] Marsh full speed, so we now have a rotation. At Florida, when we’ve played our best defense, is when we had the ability to roll guys through there.”

Meyer on redshirt freshman WR Andre Debose not playing: “He’s not hurt – and certainly not suspended. Great kid. We’re working extremely hard to get him ready. We want to get him on the field.”

Meyer on the wide receiver rotation: “The other thing we’re working hard [on] is having a rotation. I did not realize at the time but Deonte Thompson and Carl Moore and some of those kids played every snap, and you can’t … that’s the first time that’s ever happened here at Florida. You gotta get a rotation in there.”

Meyer on his relationship with South Florida head coach Skip Holtz: “We’ve been close since 1996. … Our families are great friends. [I have] a lot of respect for the whole family.”

Meyer on the snap problems: “You like to lock your wrist when you snap and at times we weren’t – the ball was coming back awkward. Johnny Brantley at times wasn’t focused on the ball. A quarterback’s asked to do a lot of things: catch the pass, identify the defense, [read] the rotation of the safeties, the movement key and then throw the ball. […] Also the sweat, we are in Florida so you are going to have to deal with that. So we’re looking at some different things. So the three things we ID’d were just the actual snap, being able to grip the football, and then Johnny’s focus on the ball. So those are the three things we have identified, and we are working extremely hard as of [Sunday].”

Meyer on the play calling and throwing short passes: “I’d imagine any offense in America, at least efficient ones, that you just don’t launch it deep when people are playing deep. You take what the defense gives you. So when you see underneath throws, a lot of times – probably 95 percent of the time – there’s an intermediate [route] behind it. If they play deep, you throw short. If they play short, you throw deep.”

Meyer on the play calling in general: “I think we had to do what we had to do to find a way to win that game. It wasn’t a beauty pageant. If it was, we would have lost. But we had to find a way to win that game. Everybody saw what we saw – it was a mess. Balls on the ground, lack of perimeter blocking and just the mechanics of the game. […] I give our staff a plus on that; I give us a minus on other things, but a plus on that.”

Meyer on sophomore RB Mike Gillislee“ “I love Mike. He got special teams player of the week. He’s earning playing time. He’s our gunner on punt. He’s the No. 1 guy down on kickoff. You give us a bunch of Mike Gillislees and this team’s a good looking team, ‘cause he’s a tough nut that goes hard. He’s not a perfect kid at all, but he’s getting closer. He’s a good guy. And he’s good for our program.”

Meyer on what he told Brantley on the bench: “John’s a competitor and he wants to do well. I’ve had a few of those talks with Tim, a few of those talks with Chris Leak, Alex Smith and Josh Harris. You just have to settle them down. Just worry about the next play, don’t worry about what just happened, just worry about the next play. I try to lighten the mood a little bit.”

Meyer on South Florida: “Extremely talented. Probably a top 25 team, top 15 team with talent. […] This is an SEC-caliber team we’re playing.”

Meyer on the team’s issues Saturday: “I’d say the number one disappointment was ball security, number two was blocking the edge. That’s going to solve a lot of problems when we get that cleaned up. The good thing is, we can.”

Brantley on what Meyer said to him on the sideline: “He was really positive to me. He was just trying to calm me down. I just remember him telling me, he goes: ‘This is why we play this game. You gotta love it. Just settle down, things are gonna work out. Keep going on.’ He’s very positive, very supportive. He just wanted to calm me down a little bit. He knows it was my first game.”

Brantley on snapping with Pouncey on Sunday: “We got together at around 11 in the morning, watched film, did some snapping together. It was just us two. We’re just trying to clean some stuff up, make sure it doesn’t happen again. […] I don’t know if it was the heat, the sweaty hands, I don’t know what it was. But we were figuring that out. We figured it out yesterday, and we’re just going to keep building on that this week. […] It wasn’t all Mike’s fault [on Saturday]. It was obviously my fault also. It’s a team game also. Mike will take the blame, he’s a veteran; he feels like he’s responsible. But he’s really not. It’s a team game. I really respect that – that he will take that responsibility, but it wasn’t all him. It’s a team game.”

Brantley on turning the ball over: “It makes it difficult. One of our things are to try to eliminate turnovers. It’s tough to get things going when you’re doing turnovers. We know what we did wrong. We all know as a team what we did wrong. And we’re going to fix that this week.”

Brantley on not getting the ball to Moore: “We just go out there and take what the defense gives us. They ran a couple coverages over there, doubling our outside guys. We take what the defense gives us and we just try to get positive yardage no matter who gets the ball.”

Brantley on getting the win in the end: “A win’s a win. Things went wrong, but we learn from our mistakes. We’ll get better from here. […] As long as we get that W, it doesn’t matter if we run the ball every play or throw the ball every play.”

Brantley on the final TD pass to Rainey: “We drew it up like that, actually. […] It’s good to know our guys are still going hard, getting that touchdown in or extra yard.”