GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we recap week one of fall camp for the Florida Gators.

Andrew and Nick de la Torre go position by position to break down who is doing well for the Gators and what the position battles to watch.

Andrew and Nick talk about the quarterback battle and who they think is leading the charge right now.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, about a week now into fall camp, give or take a day here. You had the first open practice on Saturday. Gators will scrimmage on Monday night. We’re taping this on Sunday, so when you guys are listening to it, tonight they’ll be scrimmaging. A lot of people, a lot of coaches, will say the first scrimmage is one of the biggest scrimmages of camp, because they want to kind of see how guys have developed from the spring game, how they’ve taken everything in. Just really how they’re going to handle that pressure cooker situation in Scrimmage 1. We’ll get onto that when that happens.

Nick, just what were your first impressions of practice on Saturday?

Nick:                         Well, we were the envy of all the other sports writers, because we got the entire practice open. I mean, our boy Trey, up in Knoxville, was like, what? You got the whole thing? Unfortunately, for us, I think it’s going to be one of the last open practices we have for the rest of the fall, with about three weeks left till the first game. It was nice to be out there for the whole thing. You get to see eleven-on-eleven. You get to see seven-on-seven. We got to see actual football stuff. Normally we get stretching and individual drills. I do love the Gator drill and seeing some intensity to start practice to begin. That’s better than basketball any day.

It was nice to be out there for the whole thing. We’ll have a bunch to talk about. I guess, we can break it down position by position, or however you want to break it down, because there’s a lot to talk about, being out there for three hours.

Andrew:                 I think that the open practice is good from the standpoint of Mullen, whether he or anyone else wants to admit it, is still trying to get the fan optimism back.

Nick:                         Absolutely.

Andrew:                 The excitement back. Listen, the excitement is there for the most part.

Nick:                         I feel like it hasn’t been a rollercoaster. It was just like one dip, because when you start everything is so positive. Mullen could have walked up to your house and thrown a brick through your window, and you’d be like, that was good form. Nothing he did was bad. He couldn’t do anything wrong. Then recruiting kind of took a little slow period. Georgia was getting whoever they wanted, and there was all this other stuff going. I think that’s when people started to doubt them a little bit, but then after Friday Night Lights it kind of got better.

Andrew:                 Right. I think that’s the thing, recruiting definitely hurts the on-field momentum, and then on-field momentum hurts the off the field in recruiting. It all goes hand in hand, for sure. Again, I think that the recruiting is going to fix itself. I don’t see that being an issue later in the period, as you get to December and January. I’m with you.

Listen, at the end of the day, Mullen’s press conference, and, Nick, you’re going to have to jot my mind here a little bit, was it Wednesday or Monday when he said the quarterback play wasn’t up to par with him? Whatever day it was last week, when that comment came out, I instantly saw Gator fans throwing things, saying, here we go again. Again, it’s one of those things. I’m going to use this analogy a little bit, and maybe I shouldn’t, but it’s like in a relationship where everyone says they build up brownie points for when something bad happens. In a way,