We’re still Alphabeticalizing, but this needs mentioning: Spikes has been suspended for the first half of the Vandy game by Meyer. Commence overreaction in both directions, please.

41-17. The balletic maestro of the eye gouge says you may have your ball back now.

Photo credit: The Alligator.

That leg! That charm! That musical Biblical name! The boys from Gainesville have found an electric new presence, a thunder-legged Legolas lasering long field goals lethally into the nets of Dixie’s toodly-oodliest of football gin joints. No, his name ain’t Ca-LEG, though you certainly think it could be from the way he uses it!

No, it’s CALEB, a moniker sure to be used as the first name of choice for a thousand bouncing babes across the Sunshine State, since the St. Augustine Striker has the state buzzing with the latest fad in Florida football, THE THREE POINT SKIDOO or THREE THE FOOTSKI WAY, a real hoo-dilly more commonly known in the ol’ rule book as “the field goal.”

Sturgis made double sure that the next time he puts on the old glad rags and gets a wiggle on at his local juice joint he’ll be crawling in Shebas by kicking THREE THREE POINT SKIDOOs tonight versus Mississippi State. What say you, nifty gypsy?

Sturgis, the St. Augustine Striker: “I’m glad I can help. I kick them when we can’t score from the five yard line.”

THAT’S RIGHT, YOU BIG SIX. It’s the craze that’s sweeping Florida football, daddy-o, and from the looks of it you’ll have plenty more chances to THREE POINT SKIDOO your way into being Florida’s most copacetic Heisman nominee this year. Dames: “He’s the bees’ knees!” Fellas: “He’s quite a fella!” Offensive coordinator Steve Addazio: HURRRRRRRRRNNNNGGGGGHHHH WHERE’S MAH THINKIN’ STICK HURGGGNNNNNGHHHH

From here at EDSBS Weekly: You’re the bees knees’, Caleb, and your crazy three-point dance has doing the lindy hop trying to keep up! GET HOT, GONE DADDY!!!

Florida’s offense has reduced us to Jazz Age jibberish. We don’t know what’s going on, either, unless the idea was to feature Caleb Sturgis in this year’s offense exclusively.

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Pick one. What could go wrong?

Give Urban Meyer a pile of thumbtacks, and the man makes thumbtack salad and chomps down down on it happily.

“We’re game-planning as if there’s a chance Tim could play, and there’s a chance he won’t play,” Meyer said Wednesday morning. “And that’s going to be pretty much the response until the foot hits the ball.”

Ah, Belichick-y. Belichikian. Belichickois. Take the adjective form of your choice, but leveraging the two gameplans and forcing John Chavis to divide his attentions between two divergent strategies certainly salvages some good from the shitty situation of having your star battering-ram/quarterback as a question mark just three days before the most important game on the schedule. New defensive coordinator John Chavis is 4-11 versus Florida; Urban Meyer is 0-2 in Baton Rouge. SOME FORM OF GEOGRAPHICALLY DETERMINED FAIL MUST GIVE HERE.

Methods: proposed techniques for protecting Tim Tebow if/when he plays on Saturday. Assumed: that he will play on Saturday.

Run, run, run, run, run. Florida might go even more run-forward than they’ve been to this point, and that says a lot. Florida’s run/pass balance is 175/98 for 2009, and with a quarterback coming off a head injury the urge to get the ball out of Tebow’s hands and into someone else’s with great speed will be imperative. One might even see the long-rumored I-formation surface from the playbook at last. (Gasp!)

Do that. A lot.

Le WildGatorCatHogRebelBone Florida has no shortage of speedsters to plug into the various roles required to run whatever you would call Florida’s variation on the Wildcat: CB Joe Haden, RB Chris Rainey, RB/Human Jet Jeff Demps, RB Emmanuel Moody, and even WR Deonte Thompson could all fill spots in a direct snap, no-pass single wing formation to take impact-heavy run snaps away from Tim Tebow and lean on Florida’s formidable run game.

An innovative nine lineman set. Leaving one eligible receiver in the set and thus protecting Tebow while simplifying his options. Technically legal, though inadvisable unless that one receiver is Aaron Hernandez. If he’s out there you’ll be fine with just one if you throw it high and long enough.

Max protection. Typically Florida loves to go empty set on third down, the same set resulting in the blown protection yielding the sack, the subsequent knee–>head meetup, and the most Illustrious Heismanesque Concussion of the Year not involving Jim Brown and a woman. If Tebow is in the game, your chances of seeing max protection are very, very good, most likely using the H-back and TE to buffer protections on blitzes. And make no mistake: LSU will blitz Tebow if he plays. The empty backfield won’t appear in sets with Tebow much, we’re guessing, and if they do they’ll be motioned into one-back sets

Red No-Contact Jersey. There would be an illegal procedure penalty on the first down of the game, but conditioning is a hard thing to break. Urban myth: red angers defensive linemen. Untrue, since the waving and taunting motions of the quarterback are what actually attract them, not the color.

Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass. On the other hand, another way to protect Tebow might be counter-intuitive: passing like crazy to start. If you can go Texas Tech on LSU–who most likely expects the run-first strategy from Florida–you can get the ball out of Tebow’s hands and away before any harm befalls him. Until Taylor Potts’ concussion last week, Texas Tech’s qbs under Leach had avoided missing any real injury time at all thanks to schemes designed to read and react instantly to defenses. Scott Loeffler certainly has a few routes he can crib from the TT playbook in keeping Tebow squeaky clean and intact if he plays, routes designed to get the ball out, keep the Baby Rhino upright, and keep Florida’s offense humming away one humble nibble at a time against an exploitable LSU defense. (See: Mississippi State’s 374 yards against them.)

This is all dependent on Tebow getting the ball off quickly….one of the factors contributing to this situation to begin with along with a blown protection, a very random collision with a teammate, and an excellent play by a Kentucky defender. If he can’t make the read quickly and get the ball out, then the pass-first approach would really be the total madness skeptics accuse Mike Leach’s very sane logic of being.

Bubble-wrap. It would distract defenders, too, and leave them manically popping bubbles while ballcarriers run untackled up field.

#22 Michigan at Michigan State

Holly: Rich Rodriguez IS White Goodman IN Dodgeball. Say, did you know Sparty’s chestplate contains actual kevlar? Nice moves, although it won’t save them. RichRod is a smug, entitled bastard, but shoo-law does he have a lot of projectiles in his smug, entitled arsenal. Sometimes the lovable losers win, and sometimes they get their front teeth broken at the gym. (And sometimes the losers ain’t all that lovable. Dantonio, you never call.)

Orson: Michigan State IS Khan IN Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. Khan had to have a “XX Years XXX Days XX Hours” clock in his bunker on Ceti Alpha V. You know this to be true, just as you know we could have just as easily cast Dantonio as the flower pot falling from the sky in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the reincarnated object killed again and again by Arthur Dent’s unending carelessness. Khan, though, has the right ring in terms of attitude. Michigan State is all effort and survival, but ultimately the lack of experience in three-dimensional combat that Rich Rodriguez’s offense has will doom the Spartans (though like the Enterprise in the film, Michigan will suffer significant damage due to lack of shields.)

Clemson @ Maryland

Orson: Maryland IS Mickey Rourke IN The Wrestler. The last chance we’re giving Maryland to prove it is not just a old broken down piece of meat whose best days are behind them. Unfortunately, the comeback has to happen against Clemson, who isn’t exactly Jon Cena in his prime, but who is certainly at least a Dolph Ziggler unwilling to take the dive for an aging former star working on replacement parts. Maryland is giving up 38 points a game, and the chances they have someone who can keep up with Jacoby Ford and CJ Spller are exactly hell now in neverleven.

Holly: Ralph Friedgen IS Jason IN Jason X: The One Where He’s In Space And Shit. Mother of god, Maryland just will not die. (more…)

Kentucky is this week’s fox, as the Duke of Wellington used to describe the opponent just prior a battle. He had his vanquished foes wrapped in foie gras and cooked in puff pastry after their defeat. He was a serious man.

Beautiful ladies of Kentucky cheer on the team from atop their gorgeous steeds. That came out sounding more salacious than we wanted it to, actually.

The Fox has the following advantages of terrain, behavior, and natural ability. This is a road game, but not like a “Frodo-stepping-into-Mordor” road game. Kentucky is an underrated game environment by definition, largely because no one bothers to rate it in the first place, and because the locals come to the game to socialize, are quite friendly and generous with their bourbon, and do not flinch when you bring a horse into the stadium. (more…)

Urban Meyer joins us for a quick interview.

Orson: Coach Meyer?

EDSBS: Thanks for joining us Coach Meyer. We want to start with a simple question: given the lackluster performance in the Tennessee game and the resulting ennui in the week after the game, and the shortcomings at receiver, and the mild panic over the offense’s lack of production… (more…)

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