The team, he added, “needed to be more desperate.”

In that context, it is hard not to notice that Florida actually won the game in which Driskel left or that the caliber of Florida’s offensive players has slipped during Muschamp’s tenure, with only four being picked in the last three N.F.L. drafts.

Whether the program used the time afforded by those injuries — the lost season, the off-season of reflection — to improve in a long-term manner, the way Muschamp did as a player at Georgia, will be seen in the coming weeks.

The biggest change Muschamp made was to his offense.

Looking around the Southeastern Conference, Muschamp saw more spread and fast-paced offenses. Dallas Cowboys Coach Jason Garrett, who was the quarterbacks coach for the Dolphins the year Muschamp was there, explained to Muschamp that it was advantageous for college quarterbacks to run more plays from the shotgun — that it let them see the plays and that it was what they were used to, from high school and endless summer seven-on-sevens.

Muschamp tapped Kurt Roper, previously Duke’s offensive coordinator, to install such a system.

“Speed and space,” Roper, who earned his stripes as a quarterback whisperer, his most famous charge being Eli Manning at Mississippi, told his passers at a recent meeting. “Speed and space.”

Roper’s goal is to get the ball into the hands of players who can make defenders miss in the open field. The outcome, it is hoped, will be explosive plays, defined as runs of 10 or more yards and passes of 16 or more. Perhaps the most-used word at the meeting was “bubble” — a type of screen play for a speedy receiver.

It helps that Roper’s offenses are relatively simple. A play designed to be a handoff, for example, will include one receiver running a route for a bubble screen and another running a hitch; if the quarterback sees a cornerback or a safety cheating toward the run, he will throw a pass to one of the receivers without even calling an audible. From there, it is speed and space.