Through My Eyes (24 page)

I tried to do what he said, and so I went over to him and chest bumped him to try and see if that might work to snap me out of it, but I hit him too hard. And worse yet, I hit him in the mouth with my shoulder pads and chipped his tooth.

Now it was worse; we were like two little kids; he was mad at me even more now, walked away, and wouldn’t talk to me for the next ten minutes, while I tried to apologize, but I was still mad from the way that I was playing. If you knew what was going on—you could only laugh.

Finally he came over to me and apologized and said he loved me. I said the same thing to him. He smiled—you could see the chipped tooth. They checked out my knee, and no one was the wiser when they slipped a brace on it. First time that I’d ever worn one.

In the end, we won the game, and while I was still angry with myself, the win did help to calm me down some. But I knew that if I was going to be true to what I’d said that day after the Ole Miss game, I would have to be better.

We had a good week of practice preparing to host LSU in Gainesville, during which I worked in some rehab on my knee. Coach Meyer got his tooth taken care of. We had a good game plan, which wasn’t going to rely so much on my running. The Gator Walk— the walk from the buses through the crowd and into the stadium—was even more exciting than usual that day. I was amped all day before the game, and the atmosphere in the Swamp helped to keep me fired up all day.

On the third play of the game we were facing a third down with still ten yards to go. I think the play call was for a Far Strong Right Waggle Left Cross, in which Percy Harvin ran a deep crossing route across the middle of the field. The defensive back had pretty good coverage with inside position on Percy—between me and Percy—and so I tried to throw it over the top of the defender to Percy. The defensive back jumped, and as it went right over his hand, he tipped it just slightly and right into Percy’s arms, who made the catch and ran it in for the touchdown. Seventy yards. A perfect way to start the game.

From that point on, the whole game went well. They turned the ball over quite a bit, and we were able to take advantage of a lot of those giveaways and continue to execute flawlessly during the whole game. Percy and Jeff Demps each had a good game. Demps was definitely not playing like the freshman he was. From the standpoint of making good decisions and throwing accurate balls, making a lot of correct audible checks, I felt that was one of my better games in college. I still was able to make some plays with my speed and athletic ability, but, again, the coaches tried to limit that because of my hyperextended knee.

At the end of the day, I was still myself on the field, with the aid of a knee brace: I still scrambled for a touchdown and had some good runs, but I tried to stay in the pocket more than usual. We won the matchup of the last two national champions (we had won it all in 2006, and they won it in 2007), 51–21. That was a big win for us after losing to them the year before, especially since they still had some of those good players they’d won it all with as well as others they’d added. It kept us on track and added a lot of momentum and confidence to our promise to one another.

The LSU game demonstrated that we seemed to be growing together as a team. We were doing many more of the little things right. Fans weren’t getting my cell-phone number (always a plus). But perhaps most unexpected of all was the fact that my relationship with Coach Mullen began to change in many positive ways.

For my first two years, we’d gotten along, but it wasn’t particularly warm. For whatever reason, his comments and some of our conversations didn’t seem particularly open to matters of faith, which made it harder for us to find a connection. I’m not sure what changed going into my junior year. Maybe his faith changed, or maybe he saw my sincerity about my faith in a new light. Or maybe it was me and my attitude to the whole relationship. Maybe it was something altogether different, but he began spending time on the practice field before practice with some of the visitors who would come by to watch, and he began talking more about matters of faith. I guess God was continuing to work in our lives to grow us closer.

The week after LSU was our homecoming with the University of Kentucky, which turned out to be a special game. For our special teams, that is. We blocked their first two punts and scored after both, then scored again, and then blocked a field-goal attempt—and scored again. It was 28–0 at the end of the first quarter.

We were surprised that the score got away from them like it did. After all, we’d had the shoot-out with them just the year before. Once again, we were focused on winning every play, and we won most of them that day. I came out of the game in the second half, and Johnny Brantley finished the game at quarterback, throwing a touchdown to David Nelson, David’s first catch of the year. Final score, 63–5.

We had now played three games after the Ole Miss game and had won all three handily. Clearly, our focus was good. We didn’t set out to score that many against Kentucky, but the score really unraveled. We have never set out to embarrass an opponent—well, in all honesty, we may very well have thought about doing that as we prepared for the next opponent during the week following that Kentucky game.

I was probably more nervous about the 2008 Georgia game than I had been in any other game that year. While I wanted to win every game, that feeling before Georgia was particularly intense. I was focused on winning to atone for the embarrassing loss of the year before and make it up to the entire Florida fan base and our team. More than anything, I wanted to win it for Coach Meyer, because I knew how hurt he had been the year before when Georgia had embarrassed us—from their goal-line antics after their first score to the result—and how Coach had taken that. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. Not to him, not to our team, not to Gator fans.

All week the players and coaches were asking Coach Meyer what we were going to do for payback. Over and over, he was asked, and every time he said the same thing: “Nothing.” After all, Georgia was really good, with Matthew Stafford, Knowshon Moreno, and others, and they were ranked number eight in the country. We just needed to find a way to win, not worry about payback.

It started close. We took a 7–0 lead, then after they kicked a field goal, they tried an onside kick, which we recovered. We took it in for a touchdown and were up 14–3. The game continued in that fashion, with us winning every aspect. We played with focus and passion. We were more physical and simply outplayed them. A couple of our defensive players came off the field saying they thought some of the Georgia offensive guys were ready for the game to end. It appeared that some of them were physically intimidated.

In the middle of the fourth quarter, we were beating them badly. Coach Meyer came up to me and said, “Timmy, I had a dream this week. I dreamt that we were beating Georgia just like we are, you were in at quarterback, you dropped back, took the ball, and threw it into a sea of red-and-black dressed fans.” I’m telling you, he really wasn’t sleeping well over the prior Georgia game.

“Sweet. Let’s do it!” I said.

Coach Meyer laughed. He wasn’t going to do it, and he knew that before he told me about his dream. But he knew I would want to—and would—do it for him. Cooler heads prevailed—his. After a few minutes, we did hatch a different plan that didn’t involve anything illegal or to cheat the game or to make us look bad . . . or that might have started a brawl. We simply played within the rules and used our time-outs.

We were ahead 49–10, with very little time left in the game. I had already taken a curtain call, as Coach had taken me out a little bit before that. I usually didn’t like doing something like that, but I was more than happy to do it this time, because I was still so fired up—it was Georgia—and it gave me a chance to run straight to our fans in the corner of the field and celebrate with them.

I was pretty emotional, which fired up the fans even more. The stadium, while ordinarily half orange and blue and half red and black, was now mostly orange, blue, and teal (the color of all the empty seats of the Georgia fans who left with the score insurmountably in our favor).

It was one of the most exciting times of my life. Period. There we were, in Jacksonville where I grew up. Georgia had embarrassed us the previous year, but on this day we had physically and in every other respect beaten them up. We were mentally more prepared, emotionally more invested, and obviously wanted it more than they did. All we heard about during the whole off-season was that Georgia was the number one team in the country, they had the best quarterback in the country, their running back, Knowshon Moreno, was going to be up for the Heisman, and so on.

So, up 39 points, we called all our time-outs in the last minute of the game just to extend the time, allowing us all to savor the moment. We were playing well, and it was hard to imagine that we’d actually lost a game. It still sat out there like an open wound that kept driving us to try and dominate every team, every individual, that we played. We didn’t know how the year would finish, but one game at a time, we were staking our claim to being the best team in the country.

The next weekend we played in Nashville against Vanderbilt, and it just felt like football weather. It was early November and we were on a roll.

We were also sporting new uniforms—all white with long white socks. The best uniforms we ever had, in my opinion. On the opening drive we got the ball and drove right down the field, and then I threw a touchdown pass to Louis Murphy in the corner of the end zone. It was over from that point on. I probably had my best, most consistent game as a Gator that day.

We were scoring like crazy, but somehow, Percy Harvin hadn’t scored, even though he had scored in every game in 2008 leading up to this one, so in the second half, Coach Meyer put Percy in at quarterback, and he ran three times from the one yard line, while I was split out at receiver. On the third play, they ruled that he fumbled even though we thought he had scored. I was disappointed—I was hoping for at least one game in which we scored on every possession. By now you shouldn’t be surprised by that.

When we got back to the sideline, Percy told me he’d had enough of goal-line plays at quarterback, that he couldn’t believe the collisions on every play. He usually got the ball out in space and was able to use his tremendous speed to gain an advantage. He knew it was violent, trying to rush the ball up the middle, especially at the goal line with twenty-two guys packed into a small space, but it still caught him off guard.

As for the game, after I had a hand in five touchdowns, Coach took me out. Johnny Brantley played the fourth quarter. We clinched the SEC East and a trip to the SEC Championship Game with a 42–14 win that cold night in Nashville.

And Percy did finally get his touchdown in that Vandy game.

In the weeks since the Ole Miss game, we’d stepped up our play in every way. We had one more game where it seemed like we were still figuring it all out as a team—Arkansas. It was the next game after Ole Miss. In the latter part of that Arkansas game, however, things all seemed to begin to click for a lot of guys, and all of a sudden we were on a roll. We were simply dispatching our opponents.

South Carolina was next, and ranked in the top twenty-five, they had a good defense, so we needed to be careful to maintain the same level of preparation and intensity. I went through my usual weekly preparation for classes, meetings, and film work. Every free hour that I had, I headed down to the coaches’ offices, often sitting in the offensive staff meetings as the coaches discussed the plans for the game. The more I knew about a given game plan, the better I felt, and this week wasn’t any different.

I had done that throughout my time at Florida, meeting individually with Coach Meyer and my position coach and attending whatever game-planning meetings I could. I felt it was important for me to not only understand what the coaches wanted to do in a particular situation, but
why
as well. Plus, the more I was around to hear their thinking and watch film, the better prepared I would be for whatever might happen on Saturday.

I owed that to myself and my teammates. If I was going to lead the way I wanted to lead, I needed to be as ready as possible. Therefore, whenever I could fit it in between classes, studying, and tutoring sessions, I did.

On film, we saw that South Carolina ran a lot of different stunts on defense, using only three down linemen. They had Marvin Sapp, a linebacker I grew up playing with at the Lakeshore Athletic Association’s Pop Warner football league in Jacksonville.

Before the game, someone told me that it was the first time a coach who had won a Heisman was facing a player who had won one, and if we hadn’t been about to kick off, I might have reflected on that more. That Coach Spurrier and I both won it at the University of Florida was pretty special, but I didn’t have time to think about it at that moment.

As it was, we remembered our last close call with South Carolina in Gainesville during the National Championship season of 2006 and knew we needed to stay focused. Instead, we started rather slowly on offense. Our defense scored our first touchdown on an interception return by Brandon Spikes, and Ahmad Black gave us good field position with an interception of his own on South Carolina’s next possession.

Ahmad was having a terrific year, and I was happy for him. He had a mind-set that I could relate to. Throughout my life, my brothers and I have always been football junkies—we love watching it and love playing it. Even now, when we end up at home, we’ll head out into the yard and play—except that we finally quit playing tackle a couple of years ago. I’ve never viewed playing football as a job, like some others I’ve known through the years did, and so everything I did—playing the game, practice, workouts, study—all emanated from my love for the game.

Ahmad and the Pouncey brothers, Maurkice and Mike, seemed to share our love of playing. They’d play anywhere, with anyone. The Pounceys, in fact, were terrific receivers and quarterbacks in pickup games despite their size, which made them naturals to play on the offensive line. There it is again: “playing position by body stereotype.” Oh, well.