For Offense, Defense, Special Teams ... a Fourth Quarter to Forget
Sunday, November 16, 2014 | Football
RJ Schaffer
GatorZone.com Intern
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- If the first one was an outlier, the second was downright shocking.
After it looked like Florida's dream of a Southeastern Conference title game appearance could still be alive, it came down to a blocked field goal and blocked punt in the last 3 1/2 minutes of the game that let the Gamecocks walk out of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium with a numbing 23-20 win.
“When you have two kicks blocked, you're going to lose that football game,” Coach Will Muschamp. “We had every opportunity to win, settle down defensively. “
The saying goes that the third time is the charm. For Kyle Christy, the third time turned out to be the only play the Gators couldn't afford to make to secure a third straight win.
The senior punter seemed to have everything going right. His punt with just over two minutes left in the first half was downed at the South Carolina 6-yard line and allowed Florida to get a touchdown pass from Treon Harris to Demarcus Robinson right before half.
His next punt was even better.
With 9:25 left in the fourth, Christy set the Gamecocks back again by downing a punt at the two yard line, which almost led to a defensive touchdown a few plays later by defensive tackle Jonathan Bullard before he juggled the ball multiple times in his outstretched hands. But it was the third punt that changed it all. With 39 seconds left, Christy went to pin South Carolina deep in its own territory with no timeouts left when Carlton Heard sprinted past the Gators' punt team untouched and blocked the kick.
“We were in a look where we should've kicked it out the other way, but we didn't,” Muschamp said. “As far as the protection was concerned, they came free and we didn't get the ball off quicker. That's a situation where that shouldn't happen.”
At times it seemed as if the Gators were beating themselves. The blocked kicks hurt, but it were the chances that would have made the kicks irrelevant that will be looked at as the turning points of the game.
Harris had his shot to keep the special teams off the field and took full advantage when he scampered into the end zone to put Florida up two scores late in the fourth quarter. The only problem was that receiver Quinton Dunbar was called for holding that brought the play back. The 32-yard field goal was blocked four plays later.
Even with the missed chance to go up by two scores, the Gators' defense gave the team every opportunity to walk away with the win. The Gamecocks' first drive after the blocked field goal amounted to a pseudo Hail Mary attempt on fourth and 10 from the Gators' 41 that bounced out of two Gamecocks' hands before hitting the turf.
After the blocked punt, it was much of the same until the very end. South Carolina got to the Florida 7 after running back Mike Davis took a short pass and ran with it.
Just when it seemed that a goal-line stand may have been possible after two straight incompletions, the missed opportunities flared up again when safey Marcus Maye was flagged for pass interference in the end zone.
“Better technique,” defensive back Jabari Gorman said of the penalties that hurt his squad. “That's just pretty much what it is. Better technique and being able to let the guy go and play the ball. It's just simple stuff that we can improve on.”
Players after the game stressed that the team is still unified.
Offensive lineman Chaz Green said the team put itself in the right spot to win the game, but it needed to finish better because of how unpredictable the sport can be.
“You can point at a lot of things,” Green said. “You can say that the offense did this, the defense did that and you can see a team blocked a kick, but at the end of the day, it's a team game. A lot of things just added up and we didn't win as a team.”
Despite all of the missed chances a loss that was as close to a win as it could have possibly been, Gorman still had reason for optimism.
“If you're a Gator fan, stay a Gator fan,” the senior said. “Don't give up on [anybody.] We don't give up on each other.”
