Addazio Has to Go

Steve Addazio is one of the worst offensive coordinators in college football, and he has no business being the offensive coordinator of our beloved Florida Gators.  Since Addazio took over for Dan Mullen in 2009, the Florida offense has gone down the drain.

In 2009, Addazio was able to hide how bad his offense was behind the great defense of the Gators, which kept them winning games.  Addazio took an offense with one of the greatest players in college football history, and an offense that was oozing with talent beyond that, and turned them into a mediocre offense that could not maintain a drive consistently.  The team lost Louis Murphy and Percy Harvin from 2008, but the massive dropoff in offensive production is much more a result of the switch from Mullen to Addazio than it is the downgrades at wide receiver.  Addazio sticks with his gameplan no matter how ineffective it is, often continuing to force HB dives with 110lb running backs and weak screen passes as the defense continues to eat them up, and refuses to try and stretch the field vertically when necessary.

In 2010, things appear not only to not have gotten any better, but actually to have gotten much worse.  Addazio’s offense put up 26 total yards in the first 3 quarters of the 2010 opener against Miami of Ohio, a team that was 1-11 last year.  It was truely one of, if not THE most embarrassing offense performance in the history of Florida football.  Addazio needs to go, yet somehow his ineptitude remains hidden to the media.  It is up to us to raise awareness to make a change in Gainesville, and save this season of Florida football before it is too late.

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67 Comments

  1. I couldn’t agree more with everything written on this site. Urban needs to deal with this ASAP. LET BRANTLEY THROW THE BALL….. DOWNFIELD!!!!!!!!!

    1. Henry,

      Come on man! See above, we had one of the best defenses in the country last year which led to the one loss. Also, if you remember their bad game was against Bama and when your D has a bad game, your O should be able to pick them up. Even with the greatest college football player in the country, we couldn’t compete offensively. Due to poor play calling, game execution, etc.

  2. Just so we’re clear: Florida goes 13-1 last year, wins the SEC East, and has a top 10 offense in scoring (10th), rushing (10th) and total offense/game (6th), and you want to *fire* the OC, who also happens to be the guy who kept our program from disintegrating during Coach Meyer’s leave of absence, and who has the full trust and confidence of the best coach in college football?

    Come on, man.

    1. Harrison – those numbers are misleading. 10th in rushing??? Primarily b/c TT. Take his yards out of the equation and then what??

      Saturday was pitiful. Nothing short of an abomination. Repeated sweep plays…an option play with Johnny Brantley? Seriously?? Wait til the SEC takes our head and puts it on a stake.

  3. I couldn’t agree more! His post-game interview was infuriating. He took no ownership of HIS offense, and their pitiful play. A strong coach would come out and say his team played like crap after that performance, not tip toe around trying to find something positive to say! I envisioned a Tebowesque “This will not happen again” kind of moment, but what I got was a deer in the headlights, “we haven’t even had a chance to look at the tape” comment. Come on! Was he not watching the same game we were. He should be ashamed, and Urban should make an example of him.

    1. I agree – Spurrier ALWAYS took ownership of the teams problems and losses…”we should’ve coached ’em up better…” Urban doesn’t do this enough either. They get paid millions – the kids get zero. MAN-UP!

  4. If you didn’t notice the number of plays that were called that were 1-2 yard passes or behind the line of scrimmage you are blind. This sideways offense is BS and we need to pass the ball DOWN THE FIELD. It seemed the whole first half he only took 2 long shots down the field. ENOUGH WITH THE SCREENS!!!! If Brantley is unwilling to take a hit…. WHY IS HE RUNNING THE OPTION (Save this for Burton if that’s the case). The Miami defense never kept their assignment to the QB and both went for the RB every time equaling another 1-2 yard gain / loss, typical of Addazio’s offensive plays. STOP THE SIDEWAYS PASSES AND RUNNING AND LET’S GO FORWARD…. with Addazio as the Offensive Line coach ONLY. This is the University of Florida and his play calling is UNACCEPTABLE. Time to hire a real Offensive Coordinator.

  5. You are blind. You forget we had Tebow last year and a hell of a defense as well. I don’t care if he was there for Meyer or not (good for him, nice guy) it doesn’t make him a good offensive coordinator, he is incapable of being a good offensive coordinator. End of story.

    1. Great teams stay great because they’re proactive. You’d think an FSU fan would have learned that after waiting far too long to react to Jeff Bowden dragging that team down into the mud.

      Addazio is our Jeff Bowden. Let’s be smart and not sit on it like FSU did.

      1. yeah if duke would have been “proactive”, then coach k would have been gone after year 3. many other examples in sports where teams stick with their guy and go on to greatness.

        1. This is true but we aren’t talking about our HEAD coach we are talking about an assistant coach. I mean Addazio wasn’t in control of the Gators when they won ANY of their National Championships and everyone is right about Tim Tebow. Demps isn’t Tim Tebow and can’t be running up the middle (especially on a hurt foot). I mean come on jdawg. The EXACT same thing happened with Alabama last year. We can’t continue playing out game HOPING the other team makes a mistake like we’ve been playing. When you score only 6 points against a VERY inexperienced secondary you have a problem. Not only that if you don’t give your defense a chance to rest how do you expect them to cover great wide receivers and contain great runningbacks?

          1. My sentiments exactly George!! Addazio’s playcalling is draw in the dirt schoolyard bullshit to say the least. Tebow,Hernandez and Maurkice Pouncy were the main reasons why the Florida offense was able to do what it even did last year. Although they’ve been pretty much one dimensional since Addazio took over, those guys made his offense look better than it actually was. Last year against Alabama his elementary playcalling was exposed and was to partly blame for the loss, along with the bad tackling on defense. He’s got to go or else Gator Nation is doomed for future mediocrity.

  6. No offensive coordinator in the country could prepare you for the beat down awaiting you in Tuscaloosa. Yes you might have some talented players, but Steve Addazzio shouldn’t have to revert back to spring practice and re-teach a SENIOR how to snap the friggin’ ball.

    Just like a Gator to blame it on one person and to overlook the team’s effort.

    I bet you are never wrong, either.

    1. Excuse me, but that SENIOR is part of Addazio’s responsibility…the offensive line! If you ask me, Pouncey should shift back over to where he was if he can’t snap the ball by now. He’s had enough time and chances. I don’t think high school coaches would’ve put up with it this long – put another body in there. I’m sure he’s a great guy, but he’s not getting his job done and making it harder on the QB to do his job. Myer definitely has his favorites (as do most coaches) and if Pouncey is one of those, he’ll get all year to get it figured out so he can make the big money in the NFL as a center.

  7. @Team Jackson

    If you actually watched the game and understood even a little about the game of football you would understand. But given that you’re just some Bama alum/student who could’ve cared less about football when Shula was around and only jumped on the bandwagon to this whole football game when your guys started winning, I guess we shouldn’t expect that out of you, huh?

  8. @Billy Ball

    It’s irrelevant if Team Jackson is on a bandwagon or not. That’s not the point being made. Florida is still going to get slaughtered in Tuscaloosa. And against South Carolina. And Georgia. Y’all might beat LSU though.

  9. The thing that bothers me the most, is he still called option running plays..If we’re playing a SEC defense, they know Brantley is no threat to run the ball, and will take his head off, ending our season….scrap the offense Tebow ran, and run plays suited to Brantley

    1. ^^ Thank you. How many times did we hear about running an offense suited to our ‘personnel’?? Where the hell is that offense??

  10. @13Bama

    No one here is arguing that we would lose to all those teams right now. The exception we took to Team Jackson’s post is that he said we were foolish to blame it all on one guy. Anyone who understands football can see that if we could change that one guy, things would be completely different. We have the offensive talent and then some, we just need someone to use it properly.

    If Addazio was OC of any of those teams trying to run this offense, their offense would suck just as badly as ours did on Saturday.

  11. Please don’t can him until after the Bulls game.
    Go Bulls We just might be able to pull the upset.
    Bulls 23 – Gators 21 GO BULLS

  12. ESPN even veiled their blame of Addazio yesterday. They said something along the lines of, “Let’s look back at the Gators against Miami University today. After Putting up one of their worst showings in recent history, the Gators squeaked by with a win. I think this is attributable to their offense. Now Lou [Hotlz], you can blame their center [Pouncey], but I think this is a continuing thing. Even Since Dan Mullen left in 2008, their offense just hasn’t been up to par. They have got to address this, or this will be a rough season for the Gators.”

    Again, this is a paraphrase, and I don’t have a DVR to have taped this, or else I would have posted it all over the internet.

  13. I must iterate that this is Meyer’s team. If he doesn’t do something about this situation, he will be doing a lot more crying like he did with the first Bama defeat. He put too much on this guy’s plate to begin with and feels obligated to him now since he helped keep the team together after his “retirement”. He was Addazio’s biggest apologist last year when the Tim dinked and dunked every game except Cincinnati. In fact, I thought maybe somebody else was calling the plays in that game.

  14. I’m rooting for Addazio, but I don’t think he can get it done. You can tell he is an offensive line coach. Most of the time, they don’t make good offensive coordinators. Unfortunately it is too late to make any substantial changes. That’s what spring and summer practice is for. If we are ready by now, we’ll have to tough it out this season and pray for a change at the end of it.

  15. Bottom line, it doesn’t matter what anyone writes on here. It’s not going to make any difference. The decision is not up to any of you. Sounds to me like somebody wants to make an attack because, what…we lost a game? No, that’s right, we won Saturday! I’ll admit the boys didn’t play as well as usual, but it’s the first game. Give’em a break! To go to the lengths of creating a website just to attack somebody is pretty low.

    1. Not True: If there are boosters on this site it is absolutely up to them (See Jeff Bowden’s massive payout from the Boosters at FSU in exchange for his resignation) That situation also started the same way with firejeffbowden.com. I believe fireronzook.com was also a very popular website. While it’s not the way I would presonally go about taking action, it certainly is a way of getting your voice out there.

  16. Most of yall on here are complete idiots and don’t have much of a understanding about football. When you play an lesser opponent early in the season you generally run a vanilla type offense. If the player execution would have been up to par we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Besides if they fire him now during the season I believe that would be even more harmful to this team than keeping him. So all of you who are standing on the edge of the cliff ready to jump do it already so us real fans can watch the rest of the season in peace.

    1. Hmmmm. We are the idiots? Did I miss something or did Florida “unveil” this great offense that you seem to be thinking of against Alabama? The only idiots are Steve Addazzio, Urban Meyer and anyone who would sit here and defend their incompetence after watching the last season and a half of Gator football.

  17. This website is dumb. You’re bringing unwanted, negative attention to UF and know little about football.

  18. Florida needs to get rid of Addazio. Last Saturday’s offensive performance was the worst ive seen in all of my years of watching Gator Football. Maybe being upset by USF on Saturday will wake Urban up and allow him to realize he needs to make some changes for us to get back to 400+ yds of offensive production per game. The Gators have more talent than any program in College Football. There is no reason why the game vs. Miami of Ohio should have even been competitive past the first quarter. Let’s make some changes-GO GATORS!!!

  19. Look, Florida played like horsesh1t last Saturday, but one crap game isn’t worth making a “Fire Steve Addazio.com” page yet. Now, if they have the same sh1t go on all season, then at the end I’d consider making a change, but it’s still too early.

    1. 31-6. And even if they are lucky enought to get by the rest of the opponents (because of their great defense and pretty favorable schedule), they will get demolished again by Alabama in the SEC Championship. Idiot!

  20. I will post something Henry although I haven’t up til now. True, we had a much better game (2nd half) than against Miami but many of our points came off of turnovers created by the defense. Brantley looked better as did Pouncey. 13-1 last year 2-0 this year, it looks good and things are still going well but I think even you can agree that there is some concern with the drop off in offense in the past year and the play calling seems a bit vanilla. This won’t continue to work so Steve needs to open up the play book a bit. if not, then he can go back to caoching the o-line and heading up recruiting that he is done awesome with.

  21. @Henry Harrison

    31 points but 17 of them came off of drives that we started deep in USF territory thanks to turnovers or kick returns. Outside of that we had the one big run from Demps and one actual scoring drive (57 yards on 13 plays) against a crappy team. A mediocre performance is much better than last week’s worst performance of all-time, but it’s still not going to get the job done going forward. If we were playing Alabama we would’ve been down by four scores at halftime.

  22. Second and 11 and we call a delay draw only to be followed up by a Pouncey special????? F’ing Addazio back to action. I swear he is a hemorrhoid in the ass of UF

  23. 4th and inches, lets put our smallest back in and run a HB dive………have you heard of the freaking QB sneak Adazzio???????? I am really coming to my breaking point with this team. This is not even fun to watch anymore.

  24. Another masterful game winning play calling extravaganza! Demps with 26 carries as though he were Trent Richardson. Unbelievable. Supposedly, Brantley is a great passer and three quarters of the plays were runs. Meyer seemed to be happy as a clam with this offensive cluster ….! He was worried about moving Pouncey to guard where he belongs — he was afraid FL would look like the Keystone Kops. If UF plays anything like this at Bama they will be annihilated.

  25. I’m all for demoting Steve back to coaching only the O-line but I believe I read in the off-season that all of the offensive position coaches including Urban are involved in the development of the game plan. So it may not all be Steve’s fault for the types of plays that are called. It seems to me that associating the “spread” with a Meyer coached team was not accurate and it was actually Mullen that made that system work. Unfortunately, it was Meyer who decided to promote an O-line coach to run his team’s offense after Mullen’s departure and it appears that our scheme has been shifting to a more conservative approach ever since. Toss sweeps, dives, power I, etc…. I think I’m going to be sick.

  26. I agree and disagree with this. I think Addazio should be relieved of his duties as OC and replaced by Scot Loeffler or Brian White. We do need to take advantage of the speed advantage and Brantley’s ability to throw the ball downfield. However, Addazio is a valuable assistant who held the recruiting class together while Meyer was on his leave of absence. Addazio is a good O-Line coach and a very good recruiter, but he should not be in charge of calling plays.

  27. Wow, I thought that this website was a joke but its really not..
    1st off to all the ignorant FSU, USF, BAMA and any other fans go to your teams forum and criticize your own kind.

    2nd I am speechless to see the comment on how all these teams will beat us.. if you know anything about football any team can win.. rankings don’t matter , People use it to their advantage and then at seasons end when their team isnt playing for the BCS championship they blast it

    3rd Addazio took over in 2009.. and you guys are criticizing him. Our offensive stats were great.. Look at who we lost from 2008.. PERCY HARVIN who everytime touched the ball seemed like we got a first down

    4th With the SEC championship in ATL last year Bama vs Fla.. its simple.. our team got outplayed.. our defense didn’t tackle and that was the bigger problem that game our defense not our offense because we had been shaky on offense up to that point anyway..

    I know that it is easy to blame the coaches, but we have the best coach in the nation in Urban Meyer and he wouldnt promote addazio if he didn’t believe in him. We had the number 1 recruting class this year also so obviously ball players have faith in addazio.. Remember the kids are the ones out on the field playing the ball and a coach can’t control mistakes from the players

    BTW BAMA fans… your coach is on some kind of stimulant drugs and everybody in the world can tell

  28. Gator Nation 561–

    If you know anything about Gator football: Steve Addazio took over in 2010. Tim Tebow was the offensive coordinator last year running a Dan Mullen instituted offense.

    Addazio was the WR coach and with Percy Harvin and Louis Murphey on your squad it is easy to look good. The Tennessee debacle solidified it in my mind–HE NEEDS TO GO! Against Kentucky last week there was a little improvement however Addazio has not shown that he deserves a big time position at a big time school.

    I was a member of FireRonZook.com and look what that got us in case you cannot remember–Urban Meyer. The bitch needs to go he’s inexperienced and undeserving. I pray that we donot embarass ourselves this weekend…

  29. Urban….I beg of you…. please replace Addazio! Pretty is as pretty does!! Addazio has all the ingredients he needs and more…but he has no idea how to bake the cake. Gator nation deserves better than this!!!

  30. This is ridiculous. Let’s dissect Addazio’s play calling shall we? 1st and 10 dive (with the smallest player on the field), 2nd and 8 dive (with the smallest player on the field AGAIN), 3rd and 8 (because they aren’t stupid enough to fall for it AGAIN) it is an obvious passing down but Brantley doesn’t have the experience passing so it’s just that much more difficult because Bama is sending the house. I mean this isn’t fair for our defense. Our defense holds one of the highest scoring teams in the nation to a mere 6 points and the offense can’t even put 7 points on the board. Hmm I wonder WHY we can’t put points on the bored… oh that’s because we have to run a “Tebow jump pass” on FOURTH and 1. Are you kidding me? So we can run dives all game except when we only have one yard to go. I mean come on I could call a better game then that and I promise you we would’ve had at least one touchdown if not more!

  31. The coaches on the Alabama sideline were signaling “Jump Pass” … they knew what we were doing every play I bet. I like how if we complete a first down pass… very next play NO MATTER WHAT…. is a dive up the middle. 5 times in a row I counted.

    Usually it goes 1st down Run 2nd Down Run 3rd down pass… PUNT or Repeat if we get the 1st down. Brantley is TOO SLOW to be running the option too… why did we keep doing that … goodness.

    BRANTLEY IS NOT A THREAT TO RUN THE BALL…. so the option type hand offs are DUMB and take longer… .just hand it off normal.

  32. Truthfully, Steve Addazio needs to be demoted. I don’t care if he’s in charge just of the o-line or he stays on as an assistant because he’s very enthusiastic about the program. But he can’t be the play caller on offense. I agree with the original post: he was kinda able to hide how bad he was because Tebow was there. However, even with Tebow, that offense was never what it could’ve been. That offense could’ve put some serious beatdowns if they had been coached properly. Now, as for these 2010 Gators, I saw from the first game against Miami (Oh), that as soon as we faced a truly tough team we were going to crumble. Our offense is just not good. It may have many good resources, but they’re not being properly coached or used. I still can’t understand why Pouncey is still snapping the ball. HE CAN’T DO IT. IT’S BEEN 5 GAMES IN A ROW and he doesn’t get the hang of it. We don’t have Ingram or Richardson kind of backs. That was obvious. These guys bulldoze their way in, like Tebow did. Our backs are small and quick, so why not play to their strengths? Brantley is not getting nearly the practice he needs throwing the ball… that’s why when he has to throw, he’s not accurate or he commits dumb mistakes. I agree. Addazio must go.

  33. Just came over to this site for first time. And I gotta say that I comepletely agree with everything here.

    I love it!

  34. I agree completely with the predictable run up the middle dive play. We do that play over and over and over and it hardly ever has a good result. Stop running up the damn middle with the fastest guy in college football! He should be running to the outside, reverse to him, screen, anything but running up the middle! He is too small to break many tackles. Only guy we should ever run up the middle is Moody he can at least break a tackle or two. This running up the middle shit is really irritating me. I say we get rid of Addazio his plays are just too predictable. I can predict almost every play in the game… Come on even Bama predicted the jump pass thats just sad.

  35. The HB dive is one thing, but the audible to the HB dive play is just as mind-numbing. Everyone knows by now that a UF QB checking a play down the line of scrimmage is checking to a HB dive. Tebow did it last year, Brantley does it this year. Two different QBs with two different skill sets making the same decision tells me it’s the coaching, not the players.

    They (HB dives) take too long to develop, the HB doesn’t get the momentum going (has to wait on the ball), and by the time he gets the ball a good DL (like Bama) has already started to penetrate the line of scrimmage.

    Very frusrating. Need to Fire No Dazzle O!

  36. the truth is this offense has not been the same since Dan Mullen left. One person said typical gators one loss and hit the panic button, this has been going on like I said since dan mullen left. It’s like they are trying to put a square peg in a round hole. I thought brantley was supposed to be a better passer than Tebow. I thought we had all this talent at reciever. I believe in this teams offensive talent but the way they are being used is a joke. You saw the alabama coaches telling their players watch for the jump pass. I can script florida’s first five plays. Dive, shovel pass, pass, punt, tackle. Tebow and the d last year hid a lot of the flaws in the play calling. People wondered why tebows numbers went down cause the only person who could stop the fl offense was addazio. last thing i have a friend who is a scout and he said addazio tried to have scouts banned because scouts gave phil troutwein a low draft grade. where is troutwein now?

  37. The Alabama defensive back quote in this week’s issue of SI
    regarding our option play when Brantley is at the helm, summed it up rather succinctly, “When “he” (Brantley) runs the option, we know he is not going to run.” And he is absolutely correct. No mystery there.

  38. This goes way beyond Steve Addazio, although he should be let go. I’m inditing the whole program Alabama was stronger, more physical and had much much more game awareness. They man handled us on the offensive and defensive line and completely out coached us. The talent levels for Fla and Ala are equal regardless of what has been said. Unfortunately it looks like Alabama players are being coached up to meet they’re potential while our players are looking average at best.

  39. Now that UF lost to LSU I am waiting for some more fans to come in here and continue to defend Addazio. At the beginning of the season I heard all these predictions about 4,000 yard passing seasons for John Brantley and tonight we witnessed another gut-wrench performance. He had 153 yards, right at his 150 yard per game average (an average that includes games against powerhouses such as USF, Miami of Ohio and Tennessee). At that rate he won’t break 2,000, much less 4,000. The Florida offense has regressed since the day he took over. They are predictable, they do not play to their athlete’s strenghts, they never stretch the field and they don’t adjust. If they don’t make some major changes Florida could end up losing at least two more games. Come in here and tell me I’m wrong about ANY of this.

  40. I totally agree. Brantley needs to pass and he needs to get Pouncey off of center. He is not his brother. The running up the middle on first down is driving me crazy. What is up with this guy.

  41. MEYER NEEDS TO TAKE ACTION AS A HEAD COACH & FIRE ADDAZIO,HE IS NOT AN OFFENSIVE COORD. HE IS IN OVER HIS HEAD & LOOKS LOST AS HE STUDIES HIS HIS LIST OF PLAYS. THEN WHEN THE OFFENSE COMES OFF THE FIELD HE SITS ON HIS CHAIR FACING HIS LINEMEN WITH NOTHING TO SAY.? MEYER NEEDS GO OVER & LISTEN IN ON WHAT HE IS SAYING IF ANYTHING. UNIV. OF FLA. IS NOT CONN.
    HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL. WHEN MY WIFE CAN TELL ME WHAT THE PLAY IS,YOU KNOW THE OTHER TEAM’S DEF. COORD. KNOWS WHAT WE ARE ABOUT TO DO. IT IS SAD BECAUSE WE HAVE THE BEST TALENT ON THE FIELD & ADDAZIO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT.

  42. Demps may be back for Miss St. Unfortunately, they telegraph that the ball is going to him by lining him up behind the line and then right before the play he drops back next to Brantley. It’s a handoff to Demps every time he does that.

    Did Jeff Bowden shave his head and change his name?

  43. It’s ridiculous that my wife, who knows nothing about football, asks me “why do they keep running it up the middle where the other team is.” The worst was watching the D coordinator for ‘bama tell his defense the jump pass was coming right before we did it. Or the announcers telling everybody that LSU was gonna fake the field goal at the end.

  44. I’ve been reading the posts on here. Anybody convinced yet? This is horrible. We are the worst 1st half team in football. Last year, we were arguably the best overall team in college football. This year, maybe top 80.

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