No plays off: Jon Sumrall’s Loaf Report demands accountability from Gators
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GAINESVILLE — Coach Jon Sumrall and his Florida staff are watching — every practice, every snap, every step.
Take a play off and everyone will find out. The “Loaf Report” spares no one.
Each day after spring practice, players find out who committed the cardinal sin under the Gators’ new regime: Failing to execute an assignment — or worse, taking a play off.
“The first thing I’m going to look at is how hard is this guy playing,” outside receivers coach Marcus Davis said. “You playing this snap with 100 percent effort? All the other stuff, that’s what you’ve got a coach for.
“A coach should never coach attitude and effort — you should do that.”
Across a two-hour practice featuring dozens upon dozens of plays, even the best players suffer a misstep, a mental lapse or let off the gas for a moment.
Tailback and 1,000-yard rusher Jadan Baugh makes it a point to avoid the report. Yet he’s succeeded in only three of 10 spring practices.
“I just know that every day I go into it, I approach it as I don’t want no loafs” he said. “So if I do get one, I’m upset about it.”
Baugh’s mindset is exactly the point of the Loaf Report.
“The biggest thing is — and we tell our guys all the time — the great players, the elite players, want to be held to a high standard,” said passing game coordinator Trent McKnight, who coaches inside receivers. “I don’t coach Jadan Baugh, but he wants to be held to a high standard.”
Offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner opens team meetings hammering home expectations, Loaf Report in hand.
“The first thing Buster shows is that in the unit meeting where the whole offense is getting together,” McKnight said. “So not only are you held accountable within your position room, but it’s also accountability within the entire offense.”
Naturally, the politicking begins.
“There’ll be a few like, ‘Hey, where did I get the two loafs at?’” McKnight said. “We put it in the system. They’re able to see comments within the system, so they see where it is.”
Some loafs are subtle.
“If I didn’t get the ball, and he threw it, if I don’t go chase the ball, that’s a loaf,” Baugh said.
Others are more obvious.
Late in a recent practice, Baugh whiffed on a blitzing defender after stopping cold three periods earlier, earning an unwelcome spot on the next day’s report.
“Coach was just on my head about it, because they know I can do it,” Baugh said. “That’s just on me as it’s going later into the practice. That’s what I’m working on, having a lot more endurance and being more in shape at the end of the practice.
“Because at the end of the game, that’s where those little things come into play.”
The tendency to let the little things slip grows as the pace and workload intensify.
Take last Saturday’s scrimmage, when few Gators escaped the next day’s report.
“There’s some extended drives. Whereas in practice, you get four or five plays, sometimes those drives go seven or eight,” McKnight explained. “Somebody could get three in a row at the end of it because they’re tired. But that’s what a real game is going to be.”
The Loaf Report — part of the daily production chart — is one of Sumrall’s tools for building a mentally tough, disciplined team.
There are pats on the back, too for players who execute at an elite level.
“You get an extreme effort play,” safeties coach Chris Collins said. “Now, we grade that really hard. It’s got to be out of the realm of normal in a football play. We want to make sure we’re rewarding that extreme effort in our room, and also making sure they understand, ‘Hey when I don’t give the minimal standard effort, I get dinged for that.’”
No Gator wants to get dinged and have everyone find out. But if a player loafs, he’s going to get caught — and called out.
“We definitely keep a good track of the loafs,” Davis said. “Because we are playing for the University of Florida. You’ve got to have something about you when you’re wearing this logo.”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com
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