While most of the national media's eyes were on the quarterback competition between Georgia Tech transfer Aaron Philo and Tramell Jones Jr., new Florida Gators head coach Jon Sumrall was taking notes on the offensive line during the team's recent scrimmage.
Saturday was an opportunity for Sumrall and his staff to see how the front five had made progress since the spring. The offensive line was a worry for Sumrall during spring practice.
When speaking to reporters on Monday, Sumrall said he liked what he saw from his interior offensive line but said Florida needed to get better play out of its offensive tackles.
“The interior probably played cleaner and better all training camp, maybe," Sumrall said, via gatornation.com. "On the interior O-line, I feel pretty comfortable with who we are and what we are. Tackle is the biggest question."
The Florida offense struggled on short-yardage downs. Sumrall noted that he was frustrated with the way his running offense looked during the scrimmage.
“I think we gotta improve,” Sumrall said. “If it’s third-and-1 and fourth-and-1, we should never get stopped. We gotta get better there. That first drive, I was absolutely freaking pissed. Like just to be honest. If it’s fourth-and-1, that should be 100% conversion for us.
"We didn’t get the first drive. That started our ones off negatively. I was frustrated with that. I thought at times we ran it well. I thought our defense did a good job stressing us too."
The offensive line needs to get a better push to help their running backs, but Sumrall argued that the entire running backs room needs to find a way to get a yard in those types of situations.
The Gators still have a few weeks for their offensive line to improve before the start of the season against FAU in Week 1. With a new quarterback under center, the running game needs to be able to carry the offense until Philo or Jones are ready to lead the offense in pressure situations.
Given Sumrall's comments on Monday, the Gators offensive line is still a question mark with less than three weeks before the start of the season.
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