because it was the least obvious. Florida looks down on teams from Mississippi. When was the last time they played well against MSU or Ole Miss? We had to kill their ballboy for them to actually come in focused. Plus, you had to know that Dan would want to beat them. Someone else can find the thread for me.
As far as our defense- I think a lot of people didn't realize how bad Torbush was because we had some decent outings, but that was because we had some talent. But he also limited the strengths of some of our guys while placing a lot of pressure scheme wise on some of our weaker players. Also, Croom recruited defensive players better than offensive players- see Chris Relf as a pro-style QB, the fact that most of our o-line minus Sherrod can only run block and suck at pass blocking and the fact that we have all freshmen and sophomores at WR and RB. That would have been Tray Rutland II.
So, while it makes sense that our defense is better, it is still a little surprising that they are this much better. I have to give Manny a lot of credit.