Pat Dooley’s High Five (April 7th)

Earlier this week, I wrote a story for GatorsWire on Brenton Cox and Alex Brown. Cox wants to break Brown’s single-season sack record of 13 set in 1999.

Brown wants him to get it because that will mean good things for the Gators.

All Florida fans should hope for the same thing.

Today, The High Five looks at some other records we’d like to see broken this year.

Put them all together and it should be a very successful first season for Billy Napier.

Now, there are some that are unreachable unless we’re missing something. But here are the five:

 

1. Kickoff return touchdowns in a season

There was no emphasis on returning kickoffs under Dan Mullen. That staff just wanted the ball to start the offense.

The last kickoff return for a touchdown was in 2016 by Antonio Callaway against Missouri … and that was on an onside kick.

Napier wants special teams to get better. The record for kickoff returns to the house was set by Andre Debose in 2010 with two. We want three.

 

2. 100-yard receiving games in a season

The record is eight held by three great players – Jabar Gaffney, Travis McGriff and Carlos Alvarez.

This week, Xzavier Henderson said people were sleeping on the wide receiver room because it is going to be special. We’ll see.

Most Gator fans would be happy with a WR1 situation, where there was at the very least one guy to count on. There were zero last year.

 

3. 100-yard individual rushing yards in a season

Back in 1989 when Emmitt Smith was a junior, Florida had 10 100-yard rushing games. Emmitt had nine of them.

The consensus out of camp is that the running backs (when healthy) have been really good. Lorenzo Lingard and Demarkcus Bowman have the ability to have multiple 100-yard games and if Anthony Richardson can stay healthy and be the starter he could do it in any game.

Last year, Florida had four. Three of them were in the first two games. Richardson had two of them.

In the last five seasons, Florida has only had 12 players rush for more than 100 yards. That has to change.

 

4. Interceptions in a season

Keiwan Ratliff has the record with nine. That’s more than the entire Florida team in each of the last two years.

DBU? Come on.

Florida has a lot of talent in the secondary and it’s going to be about putting them in position to be successful. If any of these DBs gets to 10, well, it’s going to be a good year.

 

5. Blocked kicks

Hey, I’ve got this thing about how special teams need to improve. Four players share the season record with three each – Carlos Dunlap, Jacquez Green, Sam McCorkle and Tim Paulk.

Make special teams great again. Go block a dadgum kick. Four of them.