O&B Musings, 02/09/2021
By Will Miles
National Signing Day – Nothing has Changed
Nothing of consequence occurred on National Signing Day for the Gators. That means the Gators finished with the 13th ranked recruiting class in the country, and 5th best in the SEC.
That doesn’t mean that the Gators don’t have some good players in this class. Jason Marshall (more on him later) in particular is a stud who could end up starting day-one. But overall, when you look at the level of talent that Florida brought in compared to its main rivals (Alabama, LSU and Georgia), the Gators have the fourth best haul.
That’s not altogether bad. The Gators have gone 29-9 over the past three seasons, with two of those three featuring double-digit wins. Of course, those teams I cited above have gone 38-3 (Alabama), 31-7 (Georgia) and 30-8 (LSU). It’s also worth noting that in the round robin of those three since 2018, Alabama is 4-1 against Georgia and LSU, LSU is 2-2 against Georgia and Alabama, while Georgia is 0-4 against Bama and LSU.
Florida is 2-6, so better than the Bulldogs, but of course the Gators are 1-2 against Georgia in that span.
The reality is this. If Florida fans are okay with 10-win seasons and an occasional run at the SEC Championship, then Dan Mullen is recruiting at a high enough level to get that done. But if the expectation is competing consistently for the SEC Championship and National Championship – in the same way that Alabama and Georgia are always in the conversation – then recruiting isn’t at that level thus far.
If things were trending in a positive direction, it’d give me hope that another couple good seasons will get Mullen there. But the fact that every year is Groundhog Day and we get the exact same recruiting results means that perhaps we just need to reset our expectations to the first reality.
But….transfers!
It has always been a criticism of people like me who analyze Mullen’s recruiting that we don’t include transfers in these rankings. That is particularly true this year with the additions of former 5-star recruits Arik Gilbert and Demarkcus Bowman.
But 247Sports does put out a roster ranking every year that does include transfers, so we can use that as a proxy for where we think Florida will end up in 2021.
Despite never having a recruiting class rank higher than 9th, Mullen had the 7th most talented team in 2020 according to the 247 roster rankings. The three teams that I mentioned above – Georgia, Alabama and LSU – ranked 1st, 2nd and 6th, respectively.
Yes, Florida added three 5-stars to the roster if you include Bowman and Gilbert. But LSU added two (plus 16 4-stars), Georgia added four and Alabama added 7. What that means is that Florida is going to be essentially where it was last season, ranked 7th or 8th overall with almost equivalent talent to LSU and far behind Georgia and Alabama.
So yes, the transfers are a great addition. Yes, they make the team better. And yes, they close the talent gap that Florida is facing.
But let’s not pretend that they do a whole lot to move the needle when comparing the Gators to the teams it has to beat to win the SEC.
2022 Recruiting Class
So are things going to improve for 2022?
It’s really early in the process and Florida only has two commits (Syveion Ellis, WR ranked 291st overall and Francois Norton, SDE ranked 214th overall). There is still a year until things are finalized, but there’s really only nine months due to early signing day.
Ohio State already has 10 commits (3 5-stars). Georgia already has seven commits (2 5-stars). Even Florida State has five commits (1 5-star). That 5-star for the Seminoles is Travis Hunter out of Suwanee, Georgia. Suwanee is less than an hour from Athens, so for all the dysfunction in Tallahassee, Mike Norvell just plucked the fourth overall recruit out of Kirby Smart’s backyard.
Florida’s 247Sports average player rankings for each class under Dan Mullen has been remarkably similar. In 2018, that rating was 90.75. It was 90.56 in 2019, 90.74 in 2020 and is 90.20 for 2021.
Ellis and Norton have an average player rating of 91.03, or pretty much right where Mullen has been during his entire tenure. Basically, this level of recruiting is what you get from Dan Mullen at Florida.
Time will tell whether it’s good enough, but those who were waiting for him to improve recruiting once he showed success on the field have certainly been disappointed.
Stars Matter – NFL Edition
You may have seen posts prior to the Super Bowl this past week about the lack of high-level stars playing in the Super Bowl. I mean, Patrick Mahomes was a high 3-star prospect and is well on his way to the Hall of Fame just three seasons in as a starter.
What those posts failed to tell you when they cited the absolute number of players with various rankings in the games is that for comparisons of this sort, you have to look at percentages.
That’s because in any given year, there are about 3500 players ranked by the recruiting services and typically less than 1% (around 30) are given 5-star ratings, 9% (around 320) are given 4-star ratings while 51% (around 1800) are given 3-star ratings.
That means that in a given decade, there are around 300 5-star recruits total with an opportunity to play in the NFL. Compare that to 3-stars, which would include over 18,000 recruits total with an opportunity to play in the NFL.
If you look at the starters in the Super Bowl (as listed here along with star rankings by CBS), there were three out of 44 total starters, or 6.8%. By comparison, there were 13 3-stars, or 29.5%. It would seem that 3-stars are dominating the 5-stars.
But you have to compare these numbers compared to the available talent pool. Out of the 300 5-star recruits available to draft over the past decade, 3 made Super Bowl LV (1%). Out of the 18,000 3-star recruits available to draft over the past decade, 13 made Super Bowl LV (0.07%).
Super Bowl LV is just one data point, so you don’t want to make any broad generalizations about stars from this one game. But even so, the argument that others were making that stars don’t matter is wrong even with this one data point. Based on the total number of recruits, a 5-star recruit was almost 14-times more likely to be a starter than a 3-star recruit.
I dislike having this argument because it devalues what those 3-star recruits have achieved. They have risen to the top of their profession and beaten amazing statistical odds. Those that claim the rankings don’t matter are minimizing the odds they have overcome.
We shouldn’t be surprised to see Leonard Fournette in the Super Bowl. We should be for Jason Pierre-Paul. Pierre-Paul should be lauded for pushing himself to get that far.
Expectations for 2021
The Gators host Alabama in the third week of the season. Then they have to go to Baton Rouge to play an LSU team with equivalent talent. Finally, there’s the annual showdown with Georgia in Jacksonville, this time hopefully with a full contingent of fans.
They’re going to do all of this with a really young defense and a QB starting for the first time.
Florida is going to be a significant underdog in those three games. And if they get through the gauntlet, the Tide are going to be waiting on the other side of an SEC East crown for a rematch where Florida likely would be an underdog again.
I’m not sure you can find a recent SEC Champion that has been an underdog in four games. Even if you assume that each of those games is a 50/50 proposition and that the Gators have a 100% chance of winning every other game, there’s only a 6% chance that Florida goes undefeated. More likely, the Gators chances are even lower than that given Alabama’s dominance.
I guess the point is that 2020 wasn’t just Florida’s shot because of all of the experience coming back with Trask, Pitts and Co. It was Florida’s shot because the Gators only had to face LSU and Ole Miss cross conference while Georgia got Alabama and Auburn. That Alabama loss became important after Florida dropped games to Texas A&M and LSU and wound up in a tie with the Bulldogs.
That means that our expectations for 2021 should be that it is a rebuilding year. A huge loss to Alabama will be disappointing for sure, but a loss to the Tide does not mean Florida isn’t improving. It just means that the Gators program isn’t where the Tide’s is in terms of being able to reload after losing significant amounts of talent.
Even with a win over Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl, a 9-3 year would have been disappointing in 2020, especially given the way the loss to LSU happened. But 9-3 in 2021 should be celebrated.
Emory Jones strengths
Given those as my expectations, Florida’s ability to meet them is going to rely solely on Emory Jones.
Jones takes over for Kyle Trask, who was rated by the media as the fourth best player in the country. I doubt Jones will be able to rise to that level, but he does have significant strengths going for him.
In his three seasons in Gainesville, Jones has rushed for 514 yards on 92 carries. He was particularly effective in 2020, as he averaged 6.8 yards per rush on 32 carries, really impressive because the opposing defense knew he was running the ball and because the Gators offensive line wasn’t really known for getting a strong push.
The average per rush for QBs in 2020 was 2.65. That does include sack yardage, which Jones certainly didn’t have to worry about for his role thus far. But even if you assume that drags his average down to 5.0 yards per rush, he’s still a major weapon in the running game.
Florida fans surely remember Tim Tebow’s four years in Gainesville and how every fourth down was a sure conversion. That was because of Tebow’s brute strength and ability to power through given the extra blocker you gain by running the QB.
Just imagine the possibilities for Mullen on third and fourth-down and short with Jones as his QB. If you’re averaging 5 yards per pop, you can run it on third-and-7 and set up makeable fourth downs. The defense can’t sell out for the pass on third-and-3.
And even if the defense does guess right and gets Jones cornered, he has shown the ability to get away for a positive gain. I don’t think we should undersell this ability. Jones isn’t just a running QB.
He’s an elite runner.
Emory Jones areas for improvement
I think lots of people will point to Jones and immediately point towards accuracy as the place he needs to improve the most. That’s because he only completed 56.3% of his passes in 2020 and Trask was such an accurate passer.
But the reason Trask went from “Kyle Trask, solid starter” to “Kyle Trask, Heisman candidate” had nothing to do with accuracy. Trask completed 67% of his passes in 2019 and 69% of his passes in 2020. The place where he improves was how he threw downfield, improving his yards per attempt from 8.3 in 2019 to 9.8 in 2020. Averaging almost 10 yards per pass with a 69% completion percentage is elite.
In aggregate, Jones has actually shown pretty good accuracy thus far. The 56% completion from 2020 was in only 32 attempts. If we look at his 86 total throws in three seasons in Gainesville and we see that Jones has completed 64% of his throws. Not too bad.
But he has only averaged 7.1 yards per attempt thus far (the NCAA average in 2020 was 7.7). Because he’s such a weapon on the ground, I don’t think Jones has to get anywhere near the 10 yards per attempt of Trask to make the offense go. But he’s going to have to get to 8.5 if the Gators are going to have an offense like last year.
Can he do it? 8.5 yards per throw doesn’t sound like much, but there were only 20 QBs who averaged more in 2020.
Why did I settle on 8.5? Well, Liberty’s Malik Willis averaged 6.7 yards per rush and 8.5 yards per pass last year. The Liberty offense scored 38.2 points per game with Willis as the main attraction.
If Jones can replicate Willis’ numbers, fans aren’t going to see much of a drop-off in the Florida offense in 2021.
Marshall Law
The secondary was so bad in 2020 that there is an expectation that 5-star cornerback recruit Jason Marshall is going to step right in and start opposite Kaiir Elam.
That certainly makes sense given the Gators struggles last year. But there is also a fairly significant history of true freshman starting for the Gators at corner, not all of them successful.
The most recent star was C.J. Henderson, who stepped right in with a pick-six in 2017 against Michigan and another against Tennessee a few weeks later. He was ready to be drafted after 2018 and only stayed in 2019 because he was too young to declare for the draft.
If that’s the path Marshall takes in 2021, the Gators defense is going to improve dramatically.
We’ve seen that fairly often in Gainesville. You probably remember Janoris Jenkins coming in opposite Joe Haden in 2008 as a big reason the Gators won the title. But I think we should be cautious about those expectations for Marshall.
Remember that Haden started in 2007 and really struggled as Tebow won the Heisman but the Gators defense couldn’t stop anyone. And while Henderson showed flashes in 2007, the Gators defense gave up an atrocious 8.0 yards per attempt.
Perhaps adding Marshall to Elam will be like adding Jenkins to Haden. Hitting on two elite corners might be enough to make some of us Grantham doubters eat some crow.
But Mullen and Grantham haven’t really shown a propensity to play guys early. Even Elam wasn’t really a mainstay on the defense until the end of 2019. He certainly could have helped things against LSU when Joe Burrow was torching the Gators.
But the reality is that if Florida is going to exceed expectations, Marshall starting is a must. Yes, the Gators have talented corners who could conceivably step up. But none of them is a potential first-round NFL talent like Marshall.
Notre Dame on the schedule
It was announced this week that Florida is going to play Notre Dame in a home-and-home series in 2031 and 2032. While this isn’t a home-and-home with “National Champion” UCF, consider me impressed that Florida is 1) scheduling one of the big boys of College Football and 2) going to play in November in Indiana.
Of course, the chances that Brian Kelly and Dan Mullen are the coaches of the Irish and Gators at that point is pretty remote. Neither of them seems to really like recruiting all that much, and as much flak as Mullen has taken for the three game losing streak to end 2020, Kelly has to be getting tired of the joke that Notre Dame becomes every time they have to play someone decent in a bowl game that the Irish have no business being in.
But the reality is that there is no bigger draw to ratings than the Irish. They are independent because they have their own football TV contract. The fact that the Gators are going to get this kind of exposure is a big deal, particularly with the name, image and likeness changes on the College Football horizon.
So good for Scott Stricklin for scheduling these kinds of games. He’s recognized that fans no longer want to see cupcakes in the Swamp. But you’d better bet that I’m going to consider planning a trip to Gainesville so my son can say he saw the Gators play the Irish in the Swamp.
College Football is becoming more and more the haves and have-nots. The fact that Florida can schedule these types of games ensures they remain in the list of haves.
Mike White falls flat again
I’ve written two weeks in a row about Gator basketball and their point differential suggesting the team just wasn’t good enough for a deep March run.
The minute I submitted the first write-up, the Gators immediately ripped off four straight wins, two over ranked Tennessee and West Virginia. The win over Tennessee was by 26 points and really impressive. But the win over Georgia was just 8 points, the win over Vanderbilt just 7 and the win over West Virginia just 5.
A win is a win, but the point of looking at those differentials is to point out that the six-point loss to South Carolina a week ago isn’t a surprise given the Gators overall point differential. A 10-5 team with a point differential around 6-7 points is going to be maddeningly inconsistent. So the win against Tennessee was always going to be offset by a dud somewhere along the way because that’s who this Gators team is.
I wish I could say it was different. I wish Mike White hadn’t had to deal with Covid canceling the season last year and then Keyontae Johnson’s collapse this year. But the reality is that there just hasn’t been any marked improvement in point differential in his tenure at Florida.
Just like fans were concerned about the football team’s two touchdown victories against Vanderbilt and Tennessee, fans should take the same view of basketball. A team with tournament aspirations has to beat bad teams by 15-20 points. The Gators only have four wins that fit that category, and one was against Stetson.
The ‘05-‘06 and ‘06-‘07 teams won their games by an average of 14.8 and 17.2 points per game, respectively. The ’13-14 team won its games by around 12 points and the ’16-17 team that White led to the Elite-8 won its games by 11.4.
This team is at 6.4, or half as good as that ’16-17 team. That sounds about right.