For ha guy with a reputation as an offensive innovator, Urban Meyer's best teams have consistently turned on killer defense. It was true of both of his Mountain West championship teams at Utah, and it was certainly true of his '06 championship team at Florida, which didn't accomplish anything offensively that Ron Zook's teams didn't accomplish.

It's certainly true of this year's edition of the Gators, too, which the Gainesville Sun duly notes is leaps and bounds ahead of where the same bunch of much-maligned, oft-torched pups were last year, before they developed a little bite, back when linebacker Brandon Spikes said he would go home "sick to [his] stomach, just watching third-down completion after third-down completion."

The Sun approaches the secondary's leap in a very proverbial, "Hey, these guys are actually making plays!" sort of way, but if you want to get more scientific about it:

The offense hasn't changed; it's just slightly down from last year, in fact, in rushing offense, passing offense, pass efficiency offense, yards per carry, yards per pass and sacks allowed. Last year's slightly better offense lost to the four best teams it played by a combined 25 points and finished in the Bowl Formerly Known as the Citrus. This year, a virtually identical offense has a clear path to the SEC championship, very likely the national championship, and is quite plausibly the best team in the country over the last month. The secondary is the difference.

For everyone who had the Gators No. 1 at the start of the season, this is exactly what was supposed to happen. Now if they can just not fumble three times in one again down the stretch ...