I know. I’ll get to it. Let’s cover some other things first real quick.
The Gator defense isn’t good enough to beat Alabama. It’s just not. They’d need to field a defense the caliber we saw from the Muschamp and Collins days to pull it off, and the latter had the former’s defensive recruiting as a tailwind. This year’s unit is just not there.
Kaiir Elam and maybe Jadarrius Perkins are the only defensive backs on the current team who might start on one of those units. Trey Dean is close and would get some rotation work. Rashad Torrence would make the two-deep. But no one at the corner spot opposite Elam would sniff the field, and Tre’Vez Johnson seems like a bad fit for the Star position. He might fare better at pure safety.
The last Gator linebacker to be trustworthy in pass coverage signed for Muschamp. Ty’Ron Hopper has a chance to get there some day to my eye. It’s too late for Ventrell Miller, Amari Burney is limited in his effectiveness, and Mohamoud Diabate really should be rushing the passer.
The defensive front is good, but it lacks some of the unfairly good ends and tackles that teams of old had. Zachary Carter is there, but it’s hard to point to anyone who’s on that precipice. Khris Bogle and Brenton Cox are better pass rushers than run stoppers, and the tackle transfers looked best early on but didn’t sustain a high level throughout.
I can’t rule out a Florida win over the Tide, because bigger upsets have happened before. However before we even say a single word about the offense, the defense probably isn’t good enough to force enough stops to give the overall team a good chance at winning.
Second, the offense has worked well a lot of the time. The Gators only have five punts in two games, and only the game-opening one against USF came with a lead of less than 21 points. They do have three turnovers on downs, but two of them came inside the opponent’s 5-yard-line and the third was inside the Bulls’ 40.
UF has 23 drives on the year so far, excluding clock-killing series at the ends of halves. Of them, 11 have resulted in touchdowns and two others died within feet of the goal line. Punch that pair in and UF is averaging 45.5 points per game at about four points per drive.
Five punts in 23 drives isn’t too bad, especially with four coming when the game wasn’t in doubt. I’d guess, given how much the coaches have been rotating so far, that backup offensive linemen being in the game was a factor in a few of those. Four turnovers in 23 drives is bad though, and that’s where we get to the big issue.
Emory Jones has thrown four interceptions, all of them pretty bad. Jones himself called one of his picks against USF “a terrible decision” in the postgame press conference. They’re the sort of thing you give a first or second-year player some grace for. A fourth-year player shouldn’t be making those throws, even if it’s in his first extended action running the full offense.
On top of those four, he’s thrown two more almost-interceptions. FAU dropped a pick-six when Jones didn’t loft a wheel route to Malik Davis, and USF very nearly intercepted him throwing into quadruple coverage in the end zone. The latter was en route to one of those turnovers on downs inside the opponent’s 5-yard line; the other turnover on downs came when Jones misunderstood the play call (an implausible QB sneak on 4th & Goal from the 4) and didn’t stop to double check on it.
The Gators are doing well on three of the Five Factors of Winning. Efficiency? They move the ball up and down the field well and rarely stall out when the starters are all in. Explosiveness? They averaged about seven yards per play against FAU and just under ten a play against USF. Field position? Thanks to generating some turnovers and a handful of good special teams plays, they’re fine here too.
But the other two factors are Finishing Drives and Turnovers, and those are a problem with Jones specifically. He personally either partially or entirely accounted for six drives dying, and that’s not assessing his play on any of the punt drives. If he was snake bit with some of those picks coming from bad receiver routes or tip drills, it’d be one thing. Instead, he’s throwing the ball directly to defenders three times a game.
It’s hard to believe for as outsized as his contributions have been, but Anthony Richardson has only 11 pass attempts and 11 rushes to his name this year. He’s had plenty of handoffs, some on read plays, and at least one throw negated by penalty. Still, he really hasn’t played that much, and most of his action in Game 1 was in garbage time.
I truly think we’re seeing him do things that the vast, vast majority of players can’t do. He looks like a less-polished 2010 Cam Newton, which is phenomenal to say. It suggests he’s a year away from just being 2010 Cam, and that was arguably the most dominant quarterback campaign ever.
We don’t know what he’d look like in extended action. What I do know is that he’s not come close to turning it over so far. That has to count for something, since you can’t expect to beat the Alabamas and Georgias of the world while coughing it up multiple times a game.
Richardson is presently averaging an absurd 21.23 yards per play. The closest guy to him is Boston College QB Phil Jurkovec at 11.70, almost all of that coming from him lighting up FCS Colgate in Week 1 before getting hurt early against UMass.
That kind of rate can only come from the small sample size of having 22 stat-generating plays to your name. It will come down in the future as he runs for four yards to convert 3rd & 3, or receivers drop passes, or we actually find out there are some kinds of plays integral to the offense that he doesn’t do well at yet. We don’t know what those are because he keeps generating 70+ yard touchdowns or throwing for 40-yard completions or scrambling for 18 yards when a pass rusher gets a shot at him.
Again: on his average rush or pass, UF moves the ball more than a fifth of the entire field.
No, it won’t last, but no one does this. No one. It could be that a defense like Alabama’s will show that he’s human after all, but as long as he doesn’t start turning the ball over like Jones does — about one of every eight throws Emory has to his name are either picks or hit defenders in the hands — you just have to find out how far he can carry the team.
As I write this early on Sunday afternoon, there’s been no official word on Richardson’s status. Some outlets reported he got an MRI last night, and the rumor mill says he has a hamstring strain but not a tear. If that’s true, then he could be able to fully go against the Tide if his recovery progresses well through the week.
I’m sure Mullen doesn’t want to throw Richardson to the crimson wolves this weekend out of concern for his confidence if it goes poorly. However, Richardson looks 20 times more confident when handing off several times on Drive 3 than Jones has at almost any point this season. I don’t know these guys, but from the outside it doesn’t look like much of a risk if Richardson is physically ready.
Florida probably can’t beat Alabama because of the defense, regardless of what the offense does. But if there’s any world in which the Gators pull the upset, it’s one in which the ball bounces the right way for that defense and the offense plays a flawless game with no turnovers. Based on two weeks of games, I can’t imagine Jones getting the majority of snaps and not turning it over. And putting all that together, you know what the conclusion becomes.