By Will Miles
Basketball’s Mass Exodus
Following the Gators second round loss to Oral Roberts in the NCAA Tournament, all news has been bad news as various players have decided to leave the program.
First, it was Tre Mann (32 mpg) who expectedly declared for the NBA draft. Then it was Noah Locke (29.0 mpg) and Ques Glover (8.4 mpg) entering the transfer portal, followed shortly afterwards by Osayi Osifo (10.0 mpg). Even though he’s coming back, by the time Colin Castleton announced that he was going to explore NBA feedback while not hiring an agent, Florida fans were getting woozy from all the roster turnover. And as I was writing this, Omar Payne – who reported told Mike White that he’d be back in exit interviews – announced he was entering the transfer portal as well.
The loss of Mann is the big one. He was the Gators only real playmaker and could get his own shot. The team is going to struggle to replace that. Locke was a solid contributor, but he only averaged 2.7 more point per game than Scottie Lewis (while averaging less steals, assists and rebounds) and Lewis is viewed as a disappointment thus far.
What that means is that without any additions through the transfer portal, Florida essentially has four starters returning (Tyree Appleby, Anthony Duruji, Castleton and Lewis). But if Florida is losing multiple players to the transfer portal, they’re likely going to pick up a couple of players through the portal as well.
I harped all season on Florida’s defense – not the offense – being the reason that the Gators were so inconsistent. Eric Fawcett suggested the other day that Florida should target C.J. Felder from Boston College, a player who would bring much-needed rim protection for the Gators. Felder would be a welcome addition at power forward, but the Gators are still going to need a shot creator.
You hope maybe that will come from Lewis, who has the pedigree but hasn’t lived up to the billing just yet. If Lewis can take a step up and the team can add another scorer to replace Locke, we might end up seeing a much improved Gators team in 2022.
Nembhard to the Final Four
While the transfer portal gives, it also allows for laments. Such is the case as Andrew Nembhard helped Gonzaga advance to the Final Four on Tuesday night with a win over USC.
Nembhard has only scored 9.2 points per game this season for the Zags, two less than he did at Florida last season, but he has been asked to be a solid cog in an elite team rather than having to shoulder the burden that he did in Gainesville.
The problem isn’t that Nembhard has truly excelled this year. It’s that Florida was one more scorer away from being a team good enough to beat Oral Roberts and potentially even sneak into the Elite 8. Nembhard is also 6’5” and so would have been able to deliver defensive consistency that Florida’s shorter guards were not able to bring this season.
Still, it’s good to see Gators succeed, even if it’s somewhere other than Florida. I still lament what could have been with Cam Newton, but I’m glad he succeeded at Auburn. Nembhard feels more like the feeling I had when watching Jeff Driskel and Jacoby Brisset get away from the Muschamp offense to excel at Louisiana Tech and NC State.
It’s been a while since Gonzaga was a plucky underdog in the tournament. Mark Few has built them into a legitimate college basketball powerhouse, just without the championship to cement that status. We’ll see next week whether Nembhard is one of the keys to the Zags finally getting over the hump.
Gator Baseball swept by South Carolina
Florida is left licking its wounds after a three-game sweep at the hands of South Carolina.
It all started with a 14-inning marathon on Friday with two separate blown saves in the eighth and fourteenth innings. Then the offense went cold on Saturday in a 4-1 defeat and the pitching struggled again on Sunday in an 8-5 loss.
Jud Fabian is going to get some publicity after his weekend. The Gators star centerfielder went 0-13 with 11 strikeouts on the weekend, but he’s been carrying his weight all season so I’m not really all that concerned about a mini slump.
The place I’m concerned is the same place I’ve been concerned all season: the pitching. Tommy Mace and Jack Leftwich – starters who have been lights-out thus far in 2021 – both struggled. Mace gave up 4 runs in 4 innings on Friday and Leftwich gave up 3 runs in 4.2 innings. Hunter Barco then continued his up-and-down season with a bit of a down-note, giving up 4 runs in 5 IP. That’s a combined ERA of 7.50 for the starters, not exactly Cy Young quality.
Florida was great in 2020 prior to the pandemic shutdown because it’s pitchers were fantastic. Right now, the Gators would be significantly improved if the pitching could just be average. The good news is we know they can do it since these are the same guys who did it last year.
But at 16-8 (3-3 SEC), time is starting to run out to make adjustments.
Gator Softball sweeps LSU
Gator softball had an opposite kind of weekend, sweeping LSU in three straight at home. LSU came into the weekend ranked thirteenth in the country, and none of the games felt particularly close.
Elizabeth Hightower was the star again, throwing 14 innings over the weekend and only allowing three runs. It helped that the Gators jumped on the Tigers early, putting up 2 runs in the 3rd inning of game one, 4 runs in the 1st inning of game two and 3 more in the 1st inning of game three. Jumping on top made the games feels easy, even when Katie Chronister struggled (3.1 IP, 4 ER) in the second game.
But the story to me is still Hightower. She now is 12-1 with a 1.07 ERA in 84.2 IP. Her 69 strikeouts (0.8 K/IP) are relatively low for a softball ace (Katie Barnhill was at 1.25 K/IP in 2019), which may mean she’ll be more susceptible to high-level competition as the tournament starts.
That was actually my worry after seeing Hightower struggle in a relief appearance in the loss to UCF in the middle of the week. But to shut down the 13th ranked team in the country in two straight starts puts some of those concerns to rest and at 24-3, Tim Walton looks to have this team maintaining its intensity as it waits for the postseason to arrive.
T.J. Moore Transfers
T.J. Moore was a 4-star recruit out of Charlotte, NC in the 2017 recruiting class. That was the last class that Jim McElwain put together for the Gators and so with Moore seeing limited playing time and this not being the staff he originally agreed to play for, the announcement that he’s transferring is not a huge surprise.
I suppose this can be looked at as a positive (Mullen/Hevesy’s young guys are pushing out older guys) or a negative (the offensive line wasn’t great last year and now Florida only has 12 scholarship linemen) depending on your perspective. I tend to think of it as the latter, as Moore had a chance to see the field in 2019 on special teams and then his role was reduced in 2020. That suggests to me that snaps were being taken away by competition.
Regardless, we should take a minute to thank Moore. He came a long way from home to join Gator Nation and stayed through the coaching transition. I think sometimes we focus on the guys who make big leaps (like Kadarius Toney or Kyle Trask) because of a coaching transition but forget about all the people who have to buy-in to more supporting roles to make that happen.
The reality is that Moore – while not a household name at left tackle like I’m sure he wishes he was – gave Florida valuable snaps the last two seasons, seasons that helped put the program back on the map as a national power that can at least compete with Georgia and Alabama.
Where can the OL get better?
I keep getting questions from fans who want to know when Florida’s offensive line is going to get better. I’ve got to be honest, I’m not sure how to answer that question.
The reason I’m not sure is that the advanced OL stats that I look at (via Football Outsiders) says that the Gators were pretty good up-front in 2020. The stat I tend to watch is opportunity rate, which FO defines as “the percentage of carries (when four yards are available) that gain at least four yards, i.e. the percentage of carries in which the line does its job.” The Gators ranked 46th in the country in that stat.
Now, 46th in the country isn’t great shakes. But the Gators also ranked 12th in Power Success Rate, which is a measure of short-yardage and goal-line offensive line play. These two stats just don’t really mesh with what we saw on the field, does it?
Except, I think it may.
The goal of a stat like opportunity rate is to try and separate offensive line play from running back play. In other words, if Florida’s line is doing a good job on 50.2% of the Gators carries and the running game isn’t moving, then some of the responsibility for the lack of a running game has to fall back on the backs. From everything we’re hearing from camp, that problem may have been solved with Lorenzo Lingard and Demarkcus Bowman.
The other thing to consider is that advanced stats don’t always show up on the field immediately. Florida’s 2019 offensive line ranked 125th in opportunity rate, indicating that the 2020 OL was world’s better, even if it didn’t show up as obvious on film. That’s a huge jump, and one that if repeated is going to have Florida with an offensive line in 2021 that is the strength of the team.
Savage leaps?
The only way that happens is if the offensive line makes full use of the hell they are about to be put through by strength and conditioning coach, Nick Savage.
Savage’s workouts are notoriously brutal, and Florida seemed to benefit from that in 2018 and 2019 as the Gators had several fourth quarter comebacks and were never outplayed late. That completely swapped in 2020 as the Gators were finally able to get on top of opponents quickly in 2020 because of its elite offense, but then struggled to put opponents away in the fourth quarter, culminating in the late losses to Texas A&M and LSU.
I know people are going to look at the OL and want to see that as the major area for development, but for me, it’s the defensive line.
Brenton Cox has a ton of explosion, but he was out of position a lot against the running game because he was just too small to do what they were asking of him, especially when they had him as a true defensive end. Zach Carter was able to bull rush opponents, but I didn’t see the explosive move to the outside that will turn him into an elite pass rusher at any point last season. Gervon Dexter showed some flashes, but wasn’t really big enough to be a true force up-front as he was learning.
And transfers Antonio Valentino and Daquan Newkirk are being added to the mix, but that still seems like a really thin defensive line depth chart that with a couple of injuries is going to have guys playing out of position and young guys with little experience playing in big-time SEC games.
So yes, I think bulking up the offensive line is important. But making sure the defensive line is ready to sustain a full SEC schedule of punishment should really be Savage’s number one goal.
Florida pro day
Florida’s pro day is March 31 and is going to be broadcast live on NFL Network at 11am. This is your last chance to see Kyle Trask, Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney as members of the Gators as they prepare for the NFL Draft.
I’m not sure that any of the players have a whole lot to gain. Pitts is a top-10 pick and we’re really just debating about who takes him and whether he can make it up into the top-5. I suspect if he puts up a lightning 40-time, that might make his stock rise, but it’s hard to rise much more when you’re coming off of a solid season on film.
I’m really interested to see how Toney does in the workouts. I suspect he’s going to have a relatively slow 40-time for a receiver but will have elite times in the shuffles that require change of direction. The question I’d have as an NFL coach is how quickly I think he can pick-up some of the route trees the NFL is going to want him to run from the slot, as well as gauge whether he’s big and strong enough to avoid injury. I don’t think anybody doubts Toney will be electric. The question is can he be electric often enough to justify a first round draft pick.
As for Trask, he’s the one who I think probably has the most at risk. We know he’ll be underwhelming in the physical tests, and throwing against air negates the thing that makes him special: the ability to diagnose what the defense is doing pre-snap. He’s going to excel when they get him on the whiteboard to diagnose what’s coming.
That means what scouts are probably trying to determine is whether his physical limitations will limit him to being a quality back-up or if he has a future as a starter in the league. That’s probably the difference between being picked in the 2nd or 3rd round and being picked in the 6th or 7th.
Best spots for Trask?
That did get me thinking about the best team for Trask to go to in the NFL given his skill set and temperament. I think the answer is Washington.
The ‘Football Team’ has struggled to find a QB even when winning Super Bowls. Doug Williams only started 14 games for Washington despite winning a title in his four seasons there. Mark Rypien was Cinderella in 1991 as Joe Gibbs got another title, but turned back into a pumpkin the following season and was never the same.
The defense was just the fourth best in the league in 2020 and has room to grow with Chase Young terrorizing QBs on the outside and the rest of the defensive line being former first round picks. The offense was 25th and had Washington fans convincing themselves that perhaps Tayler Heinicke really might be a long-term solution at QB.
It’s telling that Dwayne Haskins – released before last season even ended – might not be the biggest bust at QB for Washington in recent history. Yes, he was gone really quickly. But Tennessee’s Heath Shuler was the 3rd overall pick in 1994 and finished with 15 TDs and 33 INTs.
Trask is definitely better than Haskins. He has a different skill set, but I think he’s better than Heineke too. He does tend to throw the ball up for grabs every once in a while, but Washington would have the defense to help offset some of those mistakes that he makes as a youngster.
The disadvantage to not being drafted high is the money is a lot worse. But the advantage is hopefully you get to go to a team that’s a better fit for your game and can put you in a position to succeed earlier while the game still hasn’t slowed down yet.
I think Washington might be that place for Trask.
Mac Jones going…..3rd?
Pro days are also a fun time to think about why we would ignore everything that’s been put on film to ogle over guys running or throwing routes against air. I was reminded of that again this past week when video of BYU QB Zach Wilson started going viral on twitter as he made an impressive looking throw across his body during his pro-day workout.
Jeff George had perhaps the best arm I’ve ever seen for a QB. Jamarcus Russell could have made the throw that Wilson made on that tape. Neither of those guys were more than average pros – and Russell was a huge bust – because it turns out that arm strength and being able to make the spectacular throw is incredibly overrated.
Yes, the fact that Aaron Rodgers can make throws we don’t see other QBs make does make him unique. But I would submit that his ability to make the right read and avoid interceptions is what made him so successful in 2020.
That brings me back to the scuttle where it appears that Alabama QB Mac Jones may get drafted by San Francisco after the 49ers traded up with the Dolphins to the third pick in the draft. I know it surprises a lot of people that Jones is that coveted because he doesn’t flash the “wow” factor that you get from Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields or Wilson. But Jones was the best QB in the country last year from an efficiency standpoint and it wasn’t particularly close.
I know the criticisms. Anybody could stand behind that offensive line with those weapons and do what Jones did. Except, the Alabama offense was good but still stoppable with Tua Tagovailoa at QB and absolutely unstoppable with Jones at the helm. That continued after star WR Jaylen Waddle went down.
And I think back to the backbreaking TD pass to Najeh Harris at the end of the first half in the SEC Championship Game. Harris ran out to the sideline and then ducked back inside as the Gators linebacker rushed out to cover him, opening up a crease to get to the end zone. The amount of anticipation needed to make that throw, as well as the amount of time Harris and Jones had to have worked on that to build chemistry, is why San Francisco is interested.
That right there tells me Jones is going to put the time in to learn a complex offense and that he’ll spend time on the practice field developing chemistry with his receivers, which is what a football rat like Kyle Shanahan has to be salivating over.
Will his lack of elite physical skills hold him back? Maybe.
But as I mentioned earlier, guys with elite physical skills don’t always pan out either.