TCU's OU experience might have helped Florida

TCU might have been a major help in how Florida's defense attacked an Oklahoma offense that had scored 60 or more points in five consecutive games entering the BCS National Championship.

Before Thursday night's game, Gators coach Urban Meyer said in a news conference that there was more to decoding OU's offense than watching it on videotape.

"You don’t understand you have substitution limitations because of tempo, you have the fatigue factor and you have the chaos factor where you like to line up", Meyer said. "The positive is we’ve had three weeks to prepare and we’ve been operating at a very high level of chaos on defense trying to get lined up and be ready to go. They create a lot of plays because teams are misaligned.

"TCU is a perfect example. They were playing their tails off and even the coach, Gary Patterson, made a comment he screwed them up because he was talking when the play was snapped. We have to get lined up and get ready to go. That’s a problem."

Maybe that warning was why you didn't see Florida looking at the sidelines a lot while the Sooners went through their play selection at the line of scrimmage.

Patterson publicly flogged himself after the Oklahoma game, saying "I didn’t get some guys lined up in time. When I stopped being a 'guru,’ we played better."

The Horned Frogs, in fact, held the Sooners to 116 yards and one touchdown in the second half of the game Sept. 27 in Norman. And that was with Sam Bradford playing into the final minutes. OU, however, led 28-3 at halftime, burning the Frogs on the very kind of vertical strikes that the Gators were able to avoid, or dodge, Thursday night.