I did suffer a setback, however. Early in the game when I went to throw a block, a guy ducked as I lunged to hit him. I"m not sure how it all unfolded, but I rolled over him onto the ground, and he then ran over my right shoulder, the same one I"d hurt against Kentucky, and as a result I reaggravated the injury. I was so mad at myself. I had an AC sprain again, starting from the third play in the 2008 season.
I knew G.o.d had a plan for it, but it was a little bit frustrating to be going through this again, especially on such a freak play. It was irritating to start the year hurt on a block, of all things.
Still, I tried to look past the injury and just focus on our next game: Miami. Both teams were fired up for this game, and during the pregame warm-up I used so much energy that I had to regroup and regather myself to get a second wind. Maybe it was because of this excitement or maybe it was just the mood I was in; Miami was the first time I ever wrote a Bible verse beneath my eyes. I was getting ready to put on eye black before the game and trying to decide whether to wear the black paint stuff or the black patches that are like stickers. I thought maybe I could use a Sharpie to write a Bible verse on the eye black if I used the patches-I figured that black paint would just make a total mess.
I wasn"t even sure if people would be able to see it, but I thought if they could, it might be a really simple way to share a great Bible verse with some folks in the television-viewing audience. And if somebody noticed and asked me about it, I"d have a chance to talk about things of real significance beyond football.
The first verse that came to mind was one of my favorites, Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." That was perfect to summarize my approach to football, and it seemed like a good verse to go with the first time out of the box. Paul"s point is that Christ gives us the ability to be content with a little or a lot.
I wrote it on the eye-black patches and wore the patches into the game. I don"t remember that it got a lot of attention, and I really hadn"t given any thought to whether I would do it again. As I recall, a few reporters asked me about it after the game. And so I continued to write Philippians 4:13 on the eye-black patches all through the rest of the season. Actually, I wrote PHIL under my right eye and 4:13 under my left-occasionally I"d have someone ask who Phil was and what that number had to do with him. And even that question gave me a chance to talk about things of eternal significance.
On the opening drive against Miami we made some good plays to move the ball down the field, and I eventually hit Aaron Hernandez in the corner of the end zone for a touchdown. But it was all uphill from there, a tough game. They made some big plays and kept it somewhat close, but we played pretty well and managed to stay ahead, largely due to Aaron Hernandez who had a great game.
Because it was early in the season, we were still getting used to who was doing what. In the off-season, we never fully know who our playmakers will be and who will emerge as focal points of the team. The year before, Louis Murphy had a good year, but he had been more of a Z receiver, while Bubba Caldwell, who was a senior, was the X receiver. The Z receiver is the one who lines up on the same side of the offensive line as the tight end (called the strong side of the line). The X receiver is the receiver who lines up on the other side of the offensive line-or on the weak side. The Y receiver is, in fact, the tight end himself. This year, with Bubba no longer on the team, Murph was going to slide into the X position, and the real question was: will Murph be able to handle the X position? He ended up being tremendous. We knew that Percy Harvin would continue to be great again this season, but we didn"t know who else would step up.
The next question was: who was going to be the primary running back? Jeff Demps, Emmanuel Moody or Chris Rainey? The Miami game also gave us an opportunity to see who was going to step up, especially when we had the game somewhat under control. Murph stepped up and made some big plays from the wide-out position and put the game out of reach in the end. He scored on a corner pattern, which came right after a fifty-yard touchdown that was called back for an illegal man downfield. The play was a good response by our offense to the penalty.
As for Murph, he"d been very good my soph.o.m.ore year, but in that Miami game you could see he really was staking a claim to being the go-to guy in the 2008 season. His leadership and pa.s.sion and, more than anything else, his compet.i.tive excellence would end up making a mark throughout that season. Miami was a big win for us and my only time to play against them, so I certainly didn"t want to miss this opportunity to come out on top. I wanted to make certain we did everything we needed to do to end up with a victory. I already had an 02 record against Auburn; I didn"t need any more winless records against rivals. The defense played well once again, holding them to only three points and 140 yards of total offense. Our 263 win was a total team effort-we scored early and finished up by scoring late.
The next week we played Tennessee in Knoxville. The year before we"d beaten them pretty badly in the Swamp, so we knew they were going to come in motivated to turn that around. At the same time, they were the ones who won the SEC East Division the previous year, not us. We drove down the field and scored on our first possession of the game on a pa.s.s to Aaron Hernandez. We led 200 at the half, and Tennessee"s only points against our defense came on a Jonathan Crompton one-yard run in the second half, as we eased to a 306 win. It"s always good to win an SEC game, but it"s particularly big when you can go to Neyland Stadium in Knoxville with their 110,000 fans and come away with a big win.
We had gotten through a tough early stretch and thankfully had a bit of a breather ahead, with Ole Miss coming into the Swamp.
Chapter Seventeen.
The Promise.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
-JAMES 1:24.
We trailed in the overall series with Ole Miss by one game and would even it with a win. But more important than any history, we"d move to 20 in the conference for 2008. We were starting to play pretty well on offense, and we were looking to match the defense"s continuing high level of play in this week"s game.
However, for some reason, we seemed to be in a funk the whole game. It"s hard to even explain. We started out fine-moved the ball fairly well, scored some points, and went up 177 at halftime. Not a great half for us in what we antic.i.p.ated would be a game that we controlled much more, but we were still leading. Usually there"d be a point in the second quarter where the internal switches would flip to On and we"d automatically feel some additional drive, get the momentum, and score a touchdown, or the defense would stop them, and then we"d begin to go about dominating them. But in the Ole Miss game we never felt that click or anything similar. Several times I thought we"d start blowing them out, because we really were better than they were. It was easy playing against them. Maybe that was the problem.
Honestly, it"s hard to even explain some of the things that happened in that game.
In the second quarter, we ran a shovel pa.s.s that turned out to be a great call by the coaches. It caught Ole Miss off guard. After his catch and run for a thirty-yard gain, Aaron Hernandez fumbled-our first turnover of the year. In the third quarter, on a read play, I was supposed to read the defensive end and the guy he commits to defend (me or the running back) to determine whether to hand the ball to the running back or fake the handoff and keep it. Brandon James and I both let go of the ball, and it fell to the ground. The defensive end-who himself had a read on everything that was happening-recovered our miscue on our own eighteen yard line. That was the only time I fumbled on a handoff exchange in my entire career at Florida.
We knew we were so much better than they were, but we weren"t playing like it. Usually we found a way to win, but we struggled to find one that day. Near the end of the game they scored on a long touchdown pa.s.s thrown by Jevan Snead to go up 3124. The Swamp was silent.
We got the ball back, and I felt that there was no chance they would stop us now-we were going to will the ball down the field. I was right. We drove the ball right down the field for the tying touchdown, but the extra point that we needed for the tie was blocked. The score was 3130.
We got the ball back again with only a little bit of time left. Again, we felt like we could move the ball. We hit a few pa.s.ses, things seemed to be going great, but then we missed a couple of pa.s.ses. Then on a third-down play to the left that I pitched out on at the last second, I thought for certain we"d have the first down. Instead, we came up just short, and it was fourth and one from their thirty-two yard line.
It was the ballgame at that moment. Instead of trying a long field goal-it would have been a forty-nine-yard attempt-Coach called my number on a short yardage play, and Ole Miss made a great call. They slanted the defensive front right side of the line into our play call, blitzed the linebackers right into it, and blitzed the cornerback off the edge of the defense.
There might have been three or four times in my four years that I was stopped on a short-yardage play. Unfortunately, that was one of them.
To this day, I still don"t think that team should"ve beaten us or taken our undefeated season from us. And certainly not at home in the Swamp.
Some fluke things occurred that you have to attribute to our ineffective execution-like my fumbled handoff to Brandon. And Mississippi did a nice job taking advantage of the opportunities as they arose. But going into that game, we felt like we controlled our destiny, and we did, but when we arrived, we could tell that for whatever reasons we simply weren"t mentally or emotionally prepared-any of us. I can"t explain it, but I can tell you this: from my position and role on the team, I felt largely responsible for our falling short in the outcome.
Walking off the field, I couldn"t believe we"d lost. Our only stated goal from the coaches was to win the SEC East and play in the SEC Championship Game, but for us players . . . we also wanted an undefeated season, which had never happened at Florida. That was now gone-the end result of a game we should have won. We might still be able to win the SEC East, or even the National Championship, but we had a loss.
Coach Meyer"s comments to us afterward were positive, but I was struggling with the loss. The players got dressed.
I sat alone in my locker for about forty-five minutes, replaying the game over and over in my head. This wasn"t supposed to have happened. We had spent countless hours over the summer on our own, and then with the coaches in the August heat, to accomplish something that no Florida team had ever accomplished: a perfect season. Now, with an awful second half against a determined, opportunistic Ole Miss team, that undefeated season wasn"t going to happen.
Our Sports Information Department folks kept coming in to ask if I was ready to face the media. Coach Meyer sat right in front of me with his back to me and leaned back against my knee. We sat quietly for quite a while and barely spoke. I knew the media was waiting, but Zack Higbee knew what was going on and was buying extra time for me. I was still crying off and on, and when I thought that I"d finally pulled myself together enough to face the press, I broke down again. I sat there while Coach gave me a hug, doing his best to console me.
Frustrated doesn"t begin to capture how I felt, although that was part of it. I probably went through the five stages of grief a few times in that short period of time: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Initially in what must have been the denial and anger stages, I felt betrayed, that my teammates hadn"t risen to the level we needed. That we hadn"t brought a level of compet.i.tiveness, with a work ethic and game-day focus to match, to the contest that day.
The more I reflected on it, however, the feeling of betrayal faded. The problem lay with me, not them. They had all played hard, but it hadn"t been enough. The only thing I could ever control was me and my effort, and I decided that I had been the one who let us down. I took a few minutes to gather my thoughts, and then I got up and began to head out of the locker room with Coach Meyer and Zack to face the media.
In my mind I wasn"t going to make a big deal about this press conference. I simply felt embarra.s.sed and ashamed because I felt I"d personally let the Gator Nation down. I simply wanted to make a little apology to the fans and not make a big deal out of this press conference. So I thought about how I wanted to apologize for the lack of enough effort on my part and to promise that they would see a better effort from me for the rest of the year. Finally, when Coach had calmed me down enough to go to the press conference, my parents walked into the locker room and I got emotional again . . . so we had to start the process over while Zack updated the patiently awaiting questioners that it would just be . . . another . . . minute or two.
Finally I was all set, not that I wanted to face the press or anyone else after that particular game, mind you.
As I started to apologize, I started to get a bit emotional in my remarks, and then I got fired up, because that"s how I tend to get when I"m speaking. Very pa.s.sionate. What I said was from the heart; I had given it some thought in the locker room, but it was still pretty much off the cuff and right from the heart: To the fans and everybody in Gator Nation, I"m sorry. I"m extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season. That was my goal, something Florida has never done here.
I promise you one thing, a lot of good will come out of this. You will never see any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season. You will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season.
You will never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season. G.o.d bless.
It wasn"t long before they started playing my speech on ESPN SportsCenter. My family told me it was fine. It was good-it was me down deep inside. I do remember having a few of the reporters looking at me like I was crazy. My family and I got in the elevator to go to Coach Meyer"s office, and I was covered up in the back of the elevator, hiding, because I didn"t want to be noticed in public anymore that day.
One reporter in the front of the elevator turned to another writer next to him and said, "Holy cow. How about that? I know he"s for real, but I wonder how the public"s going to take that. I think the public will kill him for that."
Those were the first comments I heard, and I cringed listening to them.
By that night, however, the feedback I was getting was all positive. I think that people agreed with the reporter"s a.s.sessment: I was being sincere. I received a lot of calls and texts that night from people to say they appreciated it and they"re supporting me. I have always appreciated the Gator Nation; I certainly did that night. They came through again when I-and my teammates-seemed to need it most.
My comments weren"t all that big of a deal immediately afterward. I had apologized to Gator fans, and then I got more impa.s.sioned as I continued speaking. But then it started to take on a life of its own. I couldn"t go anywhere without seeing it posted somewhere or on a television screen.
I was uncomfortable watching shows where people were critiquing it. It wasn"t really meant to stand on its own for all time; it was simply an apology, and a heartfelt moment about having dedicated so much to a cause and then falling short. At some level people understood that, but I can"t say that for the next few days I enjoyed seeing it all that much.
The next day, Coach let me address the team. My comments to my teammates were similar but more intense and personal. In essence I told them I wasn"t asking them to do anything that I wasn"t also going to ask myself to do: simply, that I would be the hardest worker in the country the rest of the season and our team would be as well, if they were willing. Nothing was over. We still had a shot to go on and win and accomplish everything else we had set our sights on.
Coach Meyer changed our schedule from that point forward. In the past, we had always had a light day on Sunday and practice on Monday. He flipped it. We had an unbelievable, pa.s.sionate practice that Sunday. We could all tell that this was going to be a lot different. We also scheduled a worship service each Sunday afternoon for the team and family members who could attend.
Coach Meyer later told me that receiver David Nelson went to his office after that meeting and told him that he wanted to do whatever he could to get on every special team, play on the offense, and contribute to this team in any way he could.
David and I weren"t the only ones; that loss affected everyone in different ways. But in general, afterward, without it being said, I could see that there was a fire in everybody"s eyes and that things would definitely be different. The next few teams we played were going to have to suffer some wrath. It gave you the feeling that, whoever we were playing, it was as if they had said the wrong thing to your mom. It brought everybody together and created a level of unity I had not seen before. I felt, after that, that everyone was now united with one mission and one goal, not to win the conference or the next game, but rather to win the next play. Then the next. If someone stood in our way, he was going to be overcome-physically and through our preparation, execution, and pa.s.sion-and we were going to dominate our opponents every step of the game.
From that point forward, as a team, we weren"t thinking in terms of being a great offense or defense, but rather our focus was to exert our planning, ability, determination, and unified will on whoever stood before us-one play at a time. We were going to do what we wanted to do offensively and defensively, and woe to anyone who stood in our way.
As always, our signs in the locker room still read, Get to Atlanta. 47 days to Atlanta. Each day the sign was updated: 46 days to Atlanta . . .
We had a great week of practice to get ready for Arkansas on the road and started off the game that day in Fayetteville with a great first drive to quiet the crowd down a little. By halftime, we had a comfortable, if not overly impressive, 140 lead.
In the second half, leading 177, we called a play where we have one receiver run a post route (a route in which he angles toward the goalpost) and another run a wheel route (a route in which the receiver runs an out pattern toward the sideline, then curves the route further up field), Trick Right 50 Z Drive Bullet Alert Zero. (Who thinks up these names?) I dropped back and as I read the coverage, I should have thrown to the receiver running the post route down the middle, but I hesitated and tried to reset myself and throw to the receiver-Percy Harvin-running the wheel route. Not only did I throw it too late and behind Percy, and right into the hands of the Arkansas linebacker who made the interception, but I stepped back as I released the ball and somehow hyperextended my right knee.
By the time I got back to the sideline, I was hurting and furious with myself, and the coaches and everybody knew it. We got the ball back, and several plays later I hit Percy Harvin on a post for a touchdown. It might have been one of the hardest pa.s.ses I threw my whole life. I stuck it right on his chest, across the goal line-I probably needed to get my emotions in check a bit-but still Percy made the grab effortlessly, putting us ahead, 247.
Still, I was so angry and mad at myself that I turned and walked off the field. I could see Coach Meyer watching me with a look of combined frustration and disappointment, because he could see my angry att.i.tude. He was looking at me with his hands in the air, as if he was trying to pump up the Florida fans who had made the trip to Fayetteville. But as he did it, he was mouthing stuff to me like, "Let"s go!" and, "Get excited!"
I tried to do what he said, and so I went over to him and chest b.u.mped him to try and see if that might work to snap me out of it, but I hit him too hard. And worse yet, I hit him in the mouth with my shoulder pads and chipped his tooth.
Now it was worse; we were like two little kids; he was mad at me even more now, walked away, and wouldn"t talk to me for the next ten minutes, while I tried to apologize, but I was still mad from the way that I was playing. If you knew what was going on-you could only laugh.
Finally he came over to me and apologized and said he loved me. I said the same thing to him. He smiled-you could see the chipped tooth. They checked out my knee, and no one was the wiser when they slipped a brace on it. First time that I"d ever worn one.
In the end, we won the game, and while I was still angry with myself, the win did help to calm me down some. But I knew that if I was going to be true to what I"d said that day after the Ole Miss game, I would have to be better.
We had a good week of practice preparing to host LSU in Gainesville, during which I worked in some rehab on my knee. Coach Meyer got his tooth taken care of. We had a good game plan, which wasn"t going to rely so much on my running. The Gator Walk- the walk from the buses through the crowd and into the stadium-was even more exciting than usual that day. I was amped all day before the game, and the atmosphere in the Swamp helped to keep me fired up all day.
On the third play of the game we were facing a third down with still ten yards to go. I think the play call was for a Far Strong Right Waggle Left Cross, in which Percy Harvin ran a deep crossing route across the middle of the field. The defensive back had pretty good coverage with inside position on Percy-between me and Percy-and so I tried to throw it over the top of the defender to Percy. The defensive back jumped, and as it went right over his hand, he tipped it just slightly and right into Percy"s arms, who made the catch and ran it in for the touchdown. Seventy yards. A perfect way to start the game.
From that point on, the whole game went well. They turned the ball over quite a bit, and we were able to take advantage of a lot of those giveaways and continue to execute flawlessly during the whole game. Percy and Jeff Demps each had a good game. Demps was definitely not playing like the freshman he was. From the standpoint of making good decisions and throwing accurate b.a.l.l.s, making a lot of correct audible checks, I felt that was one of my better games in college. I still was able to make some plays with my speed and athletic ability, but, again, the coaches tried to limit that because of my hyperextended knee.
At the end of the day, I was still myself on the field, with the aid of a knee brace: I still scrambled for a touchdown and had some good runs, but I tried to stay in the pocket more than usual. We won the matchup of the last two national champions (we had won it all in 2006, and they won it in 2007), 5121. That was a big win for us after losing to them the year before, especially since they still had some of those good players they"d won it all with as well as others they"d added. It kept us on track and added a lot of momentum and confidence to our promise to one another.
The LSU game demonstrated that we seemed to be growing together as a team. We were doing many more of the little things right. Fans weren"t getting my cell-phone number (always a plus). But perhaps most unexpected of all was the fact that my relationship with Coach Mullen began to change in many positive ways.
For my first two years, we"d gotten along, but it wasn"t particularly warm. For whatever reason, his comments and some of our conversations didn"t seem particularly open to matters of faith, which made it harder for us to find a connection. I"m not sure what changed going into my junior year. Maybe his faith changed, or maybe he saw my sincerity about my faith in a new light. Or maybe it was me and my att.i.tude to the whole relationship. Maybe it was something altogether different, but he began spending time on the practice field before practice with some of the visitors who would come by to watch, and he began talking more about matters of faith. I guess G.o.d was continuing to work in our lives to grow us closer.
The week after LSU was our homecoming with the University of Kentucky, which turned out to be a special game. For our special teams, that is. We blocked their first two punts and scored after both, then scored again, and then blocked a field-goal attempt-and scored again. It was 280 at the end of the first quarter.
We were surprised that the score got away from them like it did. After all, we"d had the shoot-out with them just the year before. Once again, we were focused on winning every play, and we won most of them that day. I came out of the game in the second half, and Johnny Brantley finished the game at quarterback, throwing a touchdown to David Nelson, David"s first catch of the year. Final score, 635.
We had now played three games after the Ole Miss game and had won all three handily. Clearly, our focus was good. We didn"t set out to score that many against Kentucky, but the score really unraveled. We have never set out to embarra.s.s an opponent-well, in all honesty, we may very well have thought about doing that as we prepared for the next opponent during the week following that Kentucky game.
I was probably more nervous about the 2008 Georgia game than I had been in any other game that year. While I wanted to win every game, that feeling before Georgia was particularly intense. I was focused on winning to atone for the embarra.s.sing loss of the year before and make it up to the entire Florida fan base and our team. More than anything, I wanted to win it for Coach Meyer, because I knew how hurt he had been the year before when Georgia had embarra.s.sed us-from their goal-line antics after their first score to the result-and how Coach had taken that. I wasn"t going to let that happen again. Not to him, not to our team, not to Gator fans.
All week the players and coaches were asking Coach Meyer what we were going to do for payback. Over and over, he was asked, and every time he said the same thing: "Nothing." After all, Georgia was really good, with Matthew Stafford, Knowshon Moreno, and others, and they were ranked number eight in the country. We just needed to find a way to win, not worry about payback.
It started close. We took a 70 lead, then after they kicked a field goal, they tried an onside kick, which we recovered. We took it in for a touchdown and were up 143. The game continued in that fashion, with us winning every aspect. We played with focus and pa.s.sion. We were more physical and simply outplayed them. A couple of our defensive players came off the field saying they thought some of the Georgia offensive guys were ready for the game to end. It appeared that some of them were physically intimidated.
In the middle of the fourth quarter, we were beating them badly. Coach Meyer came up to me and said, "Timmy, I had a dream this week. I dreamt that we were beating Georgia just like we are, you were in at quarterback, you dropped back, took the ball, and threw it into a sea of red-and-black dressed fans." I"m telling you, he really wasn"t sleeping well over the prior Georgia game.
"Sweet. Let"s do it!" I said.
Coach Meyer laughed. He wasn"t going to do it, and he knew that before he told me about his dream. But he knew I would want to-and would-do it for him. Cooler heads prevailed-his. After a few minutes, we did hatch a different plan that didn"t involve anything illegal or to cheat the game or to make us look bad . . . or that might have started a brawl. We simply played within the rules and used our time-outs.
We were ahead 4910, with very little time left in the game. I had already taken a curtain call, as Coach had taken me out a little bit before that. I usually didn"t like doing something like that, but I was more than happy to do it this time, because I was still so fired up-it was Georgia-and it gave me a chance to run straight to our fans in the corner of the field and celebrate with them.
I was pretty emotional, which fired up the fans even more. The stadium, while ordinarily half orange and blue and half red and black, was now mostly orange, blue, and teal (the color of all the empty seats of the Georgia fans who left with the score insurmountably in our favor).
It was one of the most exciting times of my life. Period. There we were, in Jacksonville where I grew up. Georgia had embarra.s.sed us the previous year, but on this day we had physically and in every other respect beaten them up. We were mentally more prepared, emotionally more invested, and obviously wanted it more than they did. All we heard about during the whole off-season was that Georgia was the number one team in the country, they had the best quarterback in the country, their running back, Knowshon Moreno, was going to be up for the Heisman, and so on.
So, up 39 points, we called all our time-outs in the last minute of the game just to extend the time, allowing us all to savor the moment. We were playing well, and it was hard to imagine that we"d actually lost a game. It still sat out there like an open wound that kept driving us to try and dominate every team, every individual, that we played. We didn"t know how the year would finish, but one game at a time, we were staking our claim to being the best team in the country.
The next weekend we played in Nashville against Vanderbilt, and it just felt like football weather. It was early November and we were on a roll.
We were also sporting new uniforms-all white with long white socks. The best uniforms we ever had, in my opinion. On the opening drive we got the ball and drove right down the field, and then I threw a touchdown pa.s.s to Louis Murphy in the corner of the end zone. It was over from that point on. I probably had my best, most consistent game as a Gator that day.
We were scoring like crazy, but somehow, Percy Harvin hadn"t scored, even though he had scored in every game in 2008 leading up to this one, so in the second half, Coach Meyer put Percy in at quarterback, and he ran three times from the one yard line, while I was split out at receiver. On the third play, they ruled that he fumbled even though we thought he had scored. I was disappointed-I was hoping for at least one game in which we scored on every possession. By now you shouldn"t be surprised by that.
When we got back to the sideline, Percy told me he"d had enough of goal-line plays at quarterback, that he couldn"t believe the collisions on every play. He usually got the ball out in s.p.a.ce and was able to use his tremendous speed to gain an advantage. He knew it was violent, trying to rush the ball up the middle, especially at the goal line with twenty-two guys packed into a small s.p.a.ce, but it still caught him off guard.
As for the game, after I had a hand in five touchdowns, Coach took me out. Johnny Brantley played the fourth quarter. We clinched the SEC East and a trip to the SEC Championship Game with a 4214 win that cold night in Nashville.
And Percy did finally get his touchdown in that Vandy game.
In the weeks since the Ole Miss game, we"d stepped up our play in every way. We had one more game where it seemed like we were still figuring it all out as a team-Arkansas. It was the next game after Ole Miss. In the latter part of that Arkansas game, however, things all seemed to begin to click for a lot of guys, and all of a sudden we were on a roll. We were simply dispatching our opponents.
South Carolina was next, and ranked in the top twenty-five, they had a good defense, so we needed to be careful to maintain the same level of preparation and intensity. I went through my usual weekly preparation for cla.s.ses, meetings, and film work. Every free hour that I had, I headed down to the coaches" offices, often sitting in the offensive staff meetings as the coaches discussed the plans for the game. The more I knew about a given game plan, the better I felt, and this week wasn"t any different.
I had done that throughout my time at Florida, meeting individually with Coach Meyer and my position coach and attending whatever game-planning meetings I could. I felt it was important for me to not only understand what the coaches wanted to do in a particular situation, but why as well. Plus, the more I was around to hear their thinking and watch film, the better prepared I would be for whatever might happen on Sat.u.r.day.
I owed that to myself and my teammates. If I was going to lead the way I wanted to lead, I needed to be as ready as possible. Therefore, whenever I could fit it in between cla.s.ses, studying, and tutoring sessions, I did.
On film, we saw that South Carolina ran a lot of different stunts on defense, using only three down linemen. They had Marvin Sapp, a linebacker I grew up playing with at the Lakesh.o.r.e Athletic a.s.sociation"s Pop Warner football league in Jacksonville.
Before the game, someone told me that it was the first time a coach who had won a Heisman was facing a player who had won one, and if we hadn"t been about to kick off, I might have reflected on that more. That Coach Spurrier and I both won it at the University of Florida was pretty special, but I didn"t have time to think about it at that moment.
As it was, we remembered our last close call with South Carolina in Gainesville during the National Championship season of 2006 and knew we needed to stay focused. Instead, we started rather slowly on offense. Our defense scored our first touchdown on an interception return by Brandon Spikes, and Ahmad Black gave us good field position with an interception of his own on South Carolina"s next possession.
Ahmad was having a terrific year, and I was happy for him. He had a mind-set that I could relate to. Throughout my life, my brothers and I have always been football junkies-we love watching it and love playing it. Even now, when we end up at home, we"ll head out into the yard and play-except that we finally quit playing tackle a couple of years ago. I"ve never viewed playing football as a job, like some others I"ve known through the years did, and so everything I did-playing the game, practice, workouts, study-all emanated from my love for the game.
Ahmad and the Pouncey brothers, Maurkice and Mike, seemed to share our love of playing. They"d play anywhere, with anyone. The Pounceys, in fact, were terrific receivers and quarterbacks in pickup games despite their size, which made them naturals to play on the offensive line. There it is again: "playing position by body stereotype." Oh, well.
We fumbled twice in the first half but still led, 283, at the half-time break. As always with South Carolina, it was a physical game. I know Coach Spurrier has a reputation with the fans for having pa.s.sing, finesse teams, but his teams always. .h.i.t. Hard.
We played better in the second half, and like the rest of our games during that stretch, it wasn"t close.
We had one more tune-up, which resulted in a win over The Citadel, and then we faced FSU again. This time, it was in Tallaha.s.see-my Braveheart game. I really appreciated the similarities as that"s my favorite movie. A pouring rain soaked the field, and I got garnet paint on my uniform and face early in the game. It ended up looking like blood, but that was where the parallels between me and William Wallace ended. On that day, we were the ones doing the slaughtering.
We scored early and often, and as in other Florida State games, I was looking to make contact with someone on each of my runs. Early on I ran over their safety, helping to set the tone for our approach to the rest of the game. Our guys didn"t need any help, however. Percy scored again, and I threw three touchdown pa.s.ses and ran for another. I even recovered a fumble.