Slow no Moore

[TheTodd]

Carl Moore had bust written all over him. At least that’s what it looked like after a spring in which he looked like he was playing in slow motion. He struggled to run routes properly and when the plays were called in the huddle, he went to the line of scrimmage hoping and praying that what he remembered jived with the play that had just been called. That was then. This is now. The difference between then and now is what he says is "elementary school to college."

When Moore arrived at Florida, a highly touted junior college All-American wide receiver from California, he was expected to have an immediate impact. Even on a team that is loaded with talented, fast wide receivers, the expectations were high for this 6-4, 220-pounder whose big, strong hands make a football look like a grape when he grasps the ball. He made some catches, proving that if you get the ball anywhere close, he’ll haul it in. The problem was getting open. His routes weren’t fluid. He didn’t look like he knew where he was going most of the time and wherever it was he was going, he looked rather slow.

“During the spring I didn’t know anything,” said Moore, whose improvement in August has been dramatic. “I was just out there running. It was difficult because I was trying to do the right thing, and usually when you try to do the right thing and you’re thinking, you second guess yourself and you end up doing the wrong thing.”

If spring football accomplished one thing it was to emphasize to Moore that the distance between junior college and Division I football stretches wider than the Grand Canyon. He knew he had the talent to play at the next level. That was never an issue. It was always about the complicated offense he was running. He got to Florida in time to enroll in January and was immediately engrossed in strength and conditioning programs. After a 9-4 season in 2007, there was plenty of emphasis on toughening up a team that had way too many soft moments. Moore spent far more time doing mat drills and learning the names of all his new teammates than he did learning the playbook.

It showed when he got out on the field in March.

“One on one drills I did fine because I didn’t have to think and stuff like that,” he said.

The great players play on instinct. They learn the plays so well that what happens on the field is pure reaction. They don’t have to think what’s happening. They just know.

Moore didn’t know what he was doing, which in turn made him play at less than full speed.

“An athlete that’s thinking and instead of reacting looks slow and he was very slow,” said Coach Urban Meyer earlier in the week when he was asked to assess Moore’s spring practice.

When Moore broke the huddle to run an offensive play in the spring, he was a lost puppy. Some plays he knew. Some he didn’t. He was never sure on any play call whether this was a play he actually knew or one that he had no clue.

That was never a problem when Moore was in junior college in California. At Sierra Community College he caught 134 passes for 23 touchdowns in two seasons and he was the most highly regarded receiver in the junior college ranks. The pass routes weren’t complicated and the offense was pretty basic.

“It was more just win ... just beat your man,” he said. “Kind of like free offense a little bit and we only had like 12 plays so I didn’t have to worry about plays and sight adjusting and reading coverages.”

All that changed when he got to Gainesville. Florida’s playbook is 500-plus plays and at least half of them are pass plays. Wide receivers coach Billy Gonzales insists that his wide receivers know every pass play, every single route whether it’s on the outside or as a slot receiver. And it was more than just plays that he had to learn. He had to figure out how to read coverages and adjust routes. He had to learn to read quarterback and sideline signals. It was too much to learn in the 10 weeks he had before spring practice began.

Gonzales warned him before spring practice even began that he was in for some rough sledding.

“I knew my spring was going to be tough,” he said. “I didn’t know the offense was going to be that crazy.”

He was frustrated. He knew he was capable of doing everything a Florida wide receiver is asked to do. He knew he had the talent and he also knew he had the speed. He was playing slow because he wasn’t playing instinctively. That affected everything he was trying to do on the field.

Moore found a couple of sympathetic ears in Gonzales and teammate Louis Murphy, a senior wide receiver who has had to handle his share of tough times in his four years at the University of Florida.

Gonzales knew that Moore had way too much on his plate. He never lost confidence in his wide receiver and he kept on encouraging.

“Coach G knew how it was going to be during the spring,” said Moore.

Murphy, whose struggles on and off the field his freshman year at Florida have been well documented, never lost faith in Moore. He became Moore’s big brother, a second coach on the field and a life coach off the field. Having gone through eight months of working with Murphy on a day-to-day basis, Moore says that Murphy has a tremendous future in coaching someday.

Like Gonzales, Murphy was a constant source of encouragement, telling Moore, “Don’t worry, we were 100 times worse [when we got here]. We couldn’t even tell you a formation.”

When spring practice ended, Moore had done nothing to distinguish himself. The words “bust” and “wasted scholarship” were often mentioned in the same breath. Even Coach Urban Meyer wondered if he had made the right call in signing Moore to a scholarship.

“I told him I was crushed in spring,” said Meyer, who told Moore, “‘you weren’t very good.’”

Spring became summer and summer was spent with Murphy and quarterback Tim Tebow. Every day after the rest of the wide receivers went to the locker room to shower, Murphy, Moore and Tebow stayed after practice. This was the equivalent of Carl Moore’s college education in football. They took him from A to Z, teaching him the proper routes and how to read defenses and coverages. He learned that all he has to do is get to the right spot at the right time and the ball will be there. Every time.

“Murph is telling me how to run a route and what to do against certain kind of coverages and Tim is telling me where the ball is going to be,” he said.

As the summer progressed and his confidence grew, he found himself running routes faster than ever before. Suddenly, he felt like the same Carl Moore that was the top playmaker among junior college wide receivers for the past two seasons. He felt good about himself but he knew he had to prove it on the field. He wouldn’t know for sure that he was ready to be the player the Gators thought he was going to be until August practice began.

“I really didn’t know I had it until I got out there the first practice and I was out there and comfortable with everything,” he said. “I knew all the signals so when we did no huddle, I knew everything. After the first practice I knew I was comfortable with the offense.”

Comfort with the offense and familiarity with Tebow shows in the huddle. Moore dreaded going into the huddle in the spring. Tebow would call a play and he might as well have been speaking Swahili. Now Tebow doesn’t even have to speak because he and Moore are so in tune with each other no words are necessary.

“I learned all his little signs and stuff,” said Moore. “He’ll check me. I’ll go in the huddle and I can just tell. He’ll look at me and it’s like ‘I’m looking at you.’”

If all goes well in the fall, there will be a lot of those little signs and looks in the huddle. Slow no more, he runs fast, crisp routes and he’s always had the hands. Now it’s just a matter of getting out on the field and showing that the spring was merely a time of adjustment, a necessary bump on an otherwise very smooth road.

[annarborgator]

Great story.

[TheTodd]

Sounds like he's really put in the time and work to do what it takes to succeed at this level.