Every Gator fan wants to know who will be the starting QB next season. It's by far the biggest question mark on the Florida football team.

The coaches are silent, neither QB really distinguished himself as a legitimate starter last year, so it appears to be dead even.

One thing that's for sure: whoever does get the starting job has full support from Will Muschamp, who has praised both throughout the spring. Muschamp says the Gators can win with either one.

My thoughts? If that's the case, pick one and move on. If you really feel you can win with either one, then just make up your mind. The two split reps with the first team offense, but it would benefit the starter to have 90% of the reps so he can really get accustomed to his fellow starters, rather than sort of have the hang of it. A starter must be picked by mid summer.

The other option is rotating QB's, which is really not an option but an absolute last resort. We've seen that before, and even with a much better offense than we had in 2010, it still is not a good sign. Only somebody who's lucky enough to have a football bounce like a tennis ball can pull that off, specifically Les Miles.

Both have their strengths; Driskel is really fast and a good runner, more like a Tebow type (but certainly not Tebow's level) and has a good arm while Brissett has good mobility and a great arm. Both can make smart decisions, and both can read defenses. There are slight differences, but no major ones.

Unless one goes a long way to separate himself in the summer, if they're really dead even, then do whatever you want to pick one. Use any of Steve Addazio's play-calling methods; have them play rock paper scissors, pick one of their two names out of a hat, use a magic 8 ball, ask jeeves or do eenie-meenie-minie-mo. I don't care. Muschamp, you really need to just pick one by mid-summer and ride him all the way. The extra practice with the first team will pay off.

See what happens.

I seriously doubt there is a single Gator fan in existence that does not remember the fake field goal by LSU last year to save the game for the Tigers and seal a win in the Swamp.

That was one of the games that Steve Addazio got plenty of help from his defense and special teams and still lost. Of course, if the offense functions at all then there's a 50-something next to Florida's name on the scoreboard and there's nothing to worry about, but still, had the football not bounced like a basketball on Derek Helton's pitch to Josh Jasper the Gators would have won.

But forget that for a minute. There were obvious deficiencies that were concealed a year ago until Alabama exposed them, and instead of getting together to discuss the issues and how to solve them, Urban Meyer took a Tylenol for his chest pains and took a nap, and the rest of the coaches followed the leader. The rest of them, that is, but Addazio.

Steve Addazio isolated himself in his room and worked on a number of things in his free time. They included writing invitations to linebackers for free trips through the A-gap tunnel and into the backfield, drawing up more creative ways to throw 3 yard hitch routes, and how to turn one of your most explosive players (Trey Burton) into a QB despite his obvious inability to throw the ball.

This coaching staff is nothing like this, as they are all hard workers who follow Will Muschamp's (and, I guess, Nick Saban's) example of not leaving the office until the problem appears fixed. Then, it gets tested out in practice and if there are still problems, get right back in there and work on them some more until it's fixed for real.

So forget working on fake posters with phony quotes from Jarrett Lee. Forget stomping on the eye of the Tiger or telling your band to spell out "Geaux Heauxme You Heauxmeauxs" or anything silly like that. Don't even think about doing the Gator Chomp after a score. Just play football. Work on your issues.

This is what I want to see in Baton Rouge:

Better blocking

The blocking was simply horrendous against Alabama. Horrendous as in Steve Addazio horrendous. Maybe even worse. It's got be reversed against a nasty Tiger defense that will harass Jeff Driskel 24/7. If Florida wants any chance whatsoever, they have to block a decillion times better than they did last week. This will free up Rainey and Demps, who were grounded a week ago completely, which should open up one on one matchups for Driskel to exploit and slowly gain comfortability as Florida's QB.

More pressure

Not only did AJ McCarron have all day to throw, not only did Trent Richardson take handoffs and have enough time to play eenie-meenie-minie-moe over which gap to rumble through, the Gators often sent a heavy number of defenders and produced ZERO pressure. The Gators absolutely cannot allow Jarrett Lee any time to throw, because he can hurt Florida deep. And if Michael Ford or Spencer Ware get comfortable running up the gut... game over.

Driskel slowly worked in

Warm him up with soft, easy tosses to Rainey and Demps on screen plays, and if LSU covers them to start with, toss an easy hitch route to Burton or Jordan Reed. Slowly get him acclimated with being a Florida QB, and eventually begin to exploit those one on one mismatches that Charlie Weis is so fond of.

Great special teams

It was special teams that ultimately doomed the Gators last year, despite Andre Debose returning a kick for a TD. It could doom Florida once again if they aren't very careful of Lesprechaun Miles and his bag of tricks.

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It's a business. The Gators have issues that need fixing. This is a business trip to Baton Rouge, and if the business part goes well, then the fun can begin.

As Caleb Sturgis's field goal split the uprights to increase the Gators' lead to 10-3, the Swamp was going crazy.

So was I.

But in a different fashion.

I was screaming at the TV, here we go again, not being able to convert touchdowns in the red zone. And I knew the Gators had to play a perfect game in order to beat Alabama, which was gone the instant they had to bring in Sturgis.

What I didn't know is just how bad it would be.

Simply put, the Gators are not there yet.

Where to start? The red zone issues were sad, true, but there was a lot more to Florida's worst home loss since 2002. And shockingly, it wasn't penalties, either. No, those disappeared, and hats off to Muschamp for that. But there was a new, equally embarrassing issue.

The Gators got manhandled in the trenches like I've never seen before, on both sides of the line of scrimmage.

Last week, Kentucky the drug got us Gator fans high, saying stupid things like watch out Alabama. I was admittedly among them. But the effects of drugs does eventually wear off and people who took them fall back to earth. And last night we got a scary sight of how real our team is- how really inept we are up front.

My deepest thoughts go out to Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps. They are two of the most explosive players in Gators history, who will have to watch both their junior and senior seasons as the Gators rebuild. They didn't have great games last night, but then they had nowhere to go. Rainey did break off a nice run, but that was the lone highlight for the two of them combined.

Seriously, I wondered at times if the Gators were even trying. It's understandable when you're down 38-10, but it was 24-10 for the entire third quarter, and there was absolutely no push then. In fact, aside from a few select plays in the first quarter, there was no push at all.

The real shame is John Brantley. Just when he showed that maybe he can be a legitimate QB, he got injured. Why? Oh, right, because he was under more pressure than a Middle Eastern president. His secret service did a horrible job blocking for him, and that's what led to his 48 yard TD pass to Courtney Upshaw.

OK, so you get it the blocking was bad, the front 7 was bad, what else?

That's all that needs to go wrong, because when you can't tackle an opposing running back, the doors to play-action are kicked open, now the defense is really scrambling, it sets up the one on one mismatches that Charlie Weis is so fond of but Dan Quinn is not, and so on. Now combine that with not being able to block... your running game has been powered off... meaning your QB, despite having those sacred one on one matchups, CANNOT GET RID OF THE BALL, meaning sacks and turnovers are just bound to happen, and maybe injuries as well. And that's exactly what happened.

This is an issue that needs to get better quick, because if it doesn't, it will become the Gators' achilles heel. It's also an issue that hides the rest of your team. Alabama never knew how good Rainey and Demps were, because they never got in space. Three beautiful passes aside, John Brantley never had a chance to prove how good he really is. Had the line been a lot more dominant, he might have thrown for 500 yards- who knows?

But let's keep things in perspective. This was Alabama, a team that now controls its own destiny to the BCS Championship and was in the talk since the preseason. Because of the messed up world the Gators live in, they do too- not for the BCS Title (not that you give up on that) but for an SEC East Title with a loss next week at LSU.

At this point, I'm almost conceding another ugly loss next week in Death Valley. I honestly couldn't care less about the final score, as long as it's not disgusting like last night. Because Georgia and South Carolina both have a loss, the Gators can lose next week and then run the table, meaning all three teams would now have two losses but Florida would have the tiebreaker over both of them.

And if Florida can somehow pull the shocker next week? Incredibly, they control their own destiny to the national championship. A victory in the house of the best team in the nation should put them back in the top 15, and if they run the table as other teams go down one by one, they're almost certain to be in the top 5 come the SEC Championship. A win against the West champion (probably Alabama) would prove that it was just a fluke last night. Think about that- 12-1 in the SEC, with Alabama, LSU and Auburn from the West in your schedule, and getting payback shows that you're hot at the right time.

Is that going to happen? Probably not.

But please remember that teams do get better as the season goes on, remember that Will Muschamp and Mickey Marotti do not take too kindly for such foolishness as losing this badly in the Swamp. If any coach can get this team back on the right track, it's Nick Saban. Or any of his disciples.

And before you groan and say that's not going to happen in one week, please remember that LSU has a history of losing big games at home to Florida. See 2003, as the most recent example, although Steve Spurrier also went 5-1 there. In fact, until Urban Meyer's arrival, Florida had lost just two games there since 1979- which was the year the Gators had a perfect record (the wrong kind of perfect).

The Tigers also have a history of putting on choke jobs at home. See Tennessee 2010, where the Vols gift wrapped LSU a win that they had earned, Troy 2008, where LSU trailed 31-3 late in the third quarter until they woke up, calmed down, and took advantage of a few missed opportunities by Troy to close it out and won.

And then there was the Florida game in 2003, when LSU inexplicably did nothing right at all, and lost 19-7.

So, weird things do happen in Death Valley.

Can next week provide another one?

More importantly: can the Gators take a big step forward?

That will depend on the play of the offensive and defensive lines... and the QB.

Through little fault of his own, and this is hard to say, but it's time to bench Brantley even if he's fully healthy. We're going to have a hard enough time next year replacing Rainey and Demps, but to add a QB transition to that is just going to be impossible to do, and next year is the year I expect Florida to be back in the national championship hunt. I'd been saying ever since Tebow left, three years and we're back in the hunt. I'm not saying we have to win it or be a bust, just make a serious run at it. Our chances increase if we make the switch to Driskel now, as he's going to take his lumps sometime or another, why not be now, when we're clearly rebuilding?

Doing this would be kissing our BCS dreams of this year goodbye, but that's OK. I'm not that impatient. I just feel so bad for Brantley, after starting out with what looked like it would be his best game ever end with a serious injury. And I feel just as bad for Rainey and Demps, and even Deonte Thompson, for watching us rebuild for the second straight year.

Our goals for the season have obviously been lowered, but they're still pretty respectable: sweep the three SEC East teams and split the next two games against the West teams. I don't think Furman will be much of a problem, and then beat FSU. Then, if Brantley's healthy, I would play him in the bowl game as a thank you for being loyal, because Driskel will have already had the better part of an SEC season to take his lumps (although I'd still like to win the bowl game so if he's doing terrible then I would bench him before the game gets out of hand).

Doing all this will mean the Gators won 10 games, something even an underachieving team can be proud of, the SEC East, which is always our goal every year, Driskel will be ready for next year and Brantley will have played one last time for the team he loves. And let's all be honest here, there's nothing sweeter than watching a loyal senior clinch your bowl win. Raise your hand if Ahmad Black was not the perfect man to seal the Outback Bowl victory.

I thought so.

So all is not lost. The Gators do have their work cut out for them, but if they improve enough quick enough, the SEC East is theirs.

And if they improve tons by next week, and stay there the rest of the season, from the top ranked team's house through an SEC Championship Game? The BCS Championship is theirs.

As I sat down to write an article about the Orange and Blue game I had trouble figuring out what the general gist of it was going to be.  The problem was, we really learned very little.

The first problem was that it just seemed to fly by.  The whole thing lasted less than two hours including halftime.  But the real issue was the offensive line injuries.  As a result, we saw a lot of backup linemen, many of them tired from having to play both ways, get pushed around all afternoon long.  It's hard to evaluate an offense when the line is getting pushed around like that.

We've now seen the "new look" Gators offense.  It wasn't really anything new or revolutionary on a football-wide scale, and was a pretty prototypical pro style offense, which I'm sure is enough for most Gator fans tired of the spread after last year.

John Brantley looks like his same old self, or at least the same one we saw last year.  Maybe slightly more comfortable out there, but an alarming number of his passes still sailed or were knocked down at the line.  Again, it's difficult to evaluate it too much with the pass rush in his face all game long, so maybe he gets a bit of a pass on that front, but there certainly wasn't much to prove to us that he has turned things around yet.  Some of the passes he missed, and missed badly, were just inexcusable.

Tyler Murphy really stole the show from Brantley, and "stealing the show" in this case merely took a mediocre performance.  My major complaint with Murphy was his inability (or unwillingness) to put some touch on his passes and take some heat off of it.

Aside from the new offense, the other thing that most Gators fans were excited to see was freshman sensation Jeff Driskel.  Driskel certainly looked like a true freshman out there, but in all I liked what I saw of him.  Unlike Murphy, he demonstrated not only some good zip on his passes, but also the ability to float it over the top when necessary.

The real winner of the orange and blue game was neither orange nor blue, but rather the defense as a whole.  Yet again though, it's difficult to be sure how much of that was the easy win they got in the trenches against the tired, battered offensive line.  There were definitely several plays where the secondary let receivers get way too open, way too far downfield.

I don't think anyone believes that the Orange and Blue game lived up to the expectations this year, but it's a long offseason, and there's a lot of work that will still be done before the 2011 season kicks off.

I know that sounds a little difficult to understand, so let me clarify that: In order to be a successful football player at Florida, you need to do two things.

Two steps. Thats what it takes to succeed at Florida on offense- you need to play at least two different positions.

Tim Tebow, the best college football player of all time (I'll defend that to anybody who wants to argue) played five positions.

Quarterback, running back, wildcat QB, co-offensive coordinator and cheerleader.

We all know that Tebow was a QB by position. We also know that he was a powerful runner, and let's face it- Florida basically ran the Wildcat with Tebow for four years because he was a threat to run for big chunks of yardage, only difference was, Tebow could throw like a real quarterback, I don't especially care what Deonte Strangegloves Thompson said.

He was also a huge part of planning- he met with Mullen at least once and sometimes twice a day, and for all the fist pumps, Gator Chomps and raising his arms, he's a cheerleader.

And we apparently just signed another Tebow type player- Jeff Driskel.

But it wasn't just Tebow. Percy Harvin, Brandon James, Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps all played both running back and receiver during their time at Florida, and James returned 95% of punts and kicks.

Aaron Hernandez and Cornelius Ingram played tight end and some wide receiver in some packages created to throw off opponents, and Riley Cooper was a receiver by position but did a significant amount of blocking, more than you might expect from a receiver.

Louis Murphy and Andre Caldwell played both wideout and slot receiver, two similar yet distinguishably different positions, and they had fine careers.

All of those players had pretty damned good careers, didn't they?

Now look at players who only played one position in recent years. Kestahn Moore, Emmanuel Moody, Carl Moore, David Nelson, DeShawn Wynn, Chris Leak, etc.

They all had good careers at Florida, sure, but were any of them really great?

No.

So where is this headed?

Well, I'm not exactly sure why that is, in fact, I would think that the opposite is true for offensive players- when you do more, your production drops. And it is true for everybody else- Chas Henry was forced to kick field goals, and didn't do especially well at it and his punting dropped a little bit. Oh and he won the Ray Guy Award. Our good buddy Steve Addazio, was actually a great offensive line coach but could he call an effective drive to save his life? No. I'm not defending Addazio, he's a moron, but he had too much on his plate and he was no longer useful to us (though he was extremely helpful to opponents).

The bottom line- the really good players that Florida hauls in are freaks of nature, and who recruited them? Mainly Meyer- and if Muschamp is half the recruiter that he has shown himself to be this far, he'll keep it up.

Muschamp will hopefully do that for defense, too- numerous guys who played for him were linebackers/defensive linemen, or linebackers/safeties. I hear everything is bigger in Texas- including the number of recruits.

With Muschamp's ties in Texas, and UF being the flagship university of the state of Florida, Muschamp can select pretty much anybody he wants- and he'll probably want guys that can play two positions.

Oh, and I hear that Weis guy isn't a half bad recruiter, either.

I've said this from the moment Will Muschamp was hired. He's got to put together a good coaching staff before he worries about recruiting.

But many Gator fans don't seem to get that.

I'm not calling names, because that's for morons like Maurice Jones Drew, but there were a bunch of comments and even a few emails to me regarding "Florida being screwed" over the past couple hours.

Some were fair complaints, like about Tim Jernigan.

Others were completely unreasonable.

No matter what the complaint, you guys were right. Today's signing day absolutely sucked.

And that's just fine and dandy with me.

In what many- including me- consider to be a horrible recruiting year, the Gators hauled in the best QB in the nation, PAUSE.

Best QB in the nation.

We've got the best offensive mind in the nation... yeah, now that connection's clicking....

BOOM!

No, not the one who's coaching the defense.

That's right, we've got two booms going!!!

Well, actually, a lot more, at least according to the Gainesville Police Department who received complaints all the way from Tallahassee of sonic booms coming from the stadium on Saturdays in the fall. Rumor has it that they're going to interrogate Jeff Demps first regarding this issue. Chris Rainey is supposedly paying the GPD a visit next.

Is this easing you?

Good.

Because it should.

Because Florida is in no real danger.

Because in one of the worst recruiting years in recent memory, Florida's still hauled in the top QB, 5 other top 10 players in their positions and what's probably going to remain a top 10 ESPN Class.

Mark my words, though, if this happens again next year, then the alarm bell goes off. If Muschamp takes the beach house he shares with Jimbo Fisher (imagine that- what do they do here, winner of the UF-FSU game gets the beach house? {I'll go deeper into this in a later article.}) in exchange for all of the top recruits in Florida, then the Gators are in serious trouble.

But with the way Muschamp recruits, that won't happen.

Florida's fine.

Just wait and see, the Gators will be fine.