Florida got an easy win over Eastern Washington on Sunday. I don’t think anyone should be too upset at much of went on. You’re never going to have a perfect game, especially in the first year under a new coach who wasn’t an inside continuity hire.
Yes, it was annoying that EWU was able to chew up half of the first quarter on a single drive. That wasn’t cool, and it’s not a great sign for Florida’s defense that it couldn’t put a stop to the Eagles’ opening game script. If they could pre-write something to move the ball on UF’s defense, then so could anyone else on the schedule. It’s true that UF used the game as a glorified practice, getting a lot of guys some decent film that isn’t against teammates, but the opening pair of drives (the second went 57 yards) is not when they do that.
But also, Eastern Washington isn’t a bad FCS program either. They routinely go to the playoffs. They have a ton of continuity at the top too, with head coach Aaron Best having been head coach there for six years. He was also offensive coordinator for the nine seasons before that. Eight of Best’s 20 losses as a head coach have been to either FBS teams or perennial power North Dakota State, and six of the remaining 12 were to playoff teams.
I don’t know if EWU’s got a vintage team this year necessarily after a 1-3 start, but those losses were to Oregon, Florida, and the No. 4 FCS team at present Montana State.
On that topic, I have seen some folks making a big deal about Florida allowing more yards to EWU than Montana State did. The Gators gave up 411 yards to the Eagles, while the Bobcats only allowed 349.
Your immediate guess is correct: the MSU game was closer. Montana State eked out a 38-35 win, and it had to score a touchdown with under four minutes to go to take the final lead. That’s another point in favor of EWU not being dreadful, by the way.
Florida also allowed drives of 75 and 71 yards at the end after having emptied the benches on defense. EWU had 265 yards before those two series. I promise I’m not going to spend this entire newsletter caping for Eastern Washington, but that performance for the Gator defense is ultimately fine. Not great. Not even good. It was fine. It’ll do.
I will say, it has been nice after the last two games not to hear people campaigning for Billy Napier to hire an offensive coordinator. I laid it out after the South Florida game: it was too early to judge the Napier regime as a whole, but it was already time to start making some adjustments. We saw him make those adjustments against Tennessee, and the offense was a heck of a lot better. That success continued on over the weekend.
One thing that did not get better after the South Florida game was special teams. It has not been good all season, and it continued not being good against Eastern Washington. The one kickoff return attempt did not get to the 25, and the team had a field goal blocked.
Florida is basically tied with Vanderbilt for second to last in the SEC in kickoff returns. Only Auburn, which is playing out the string of a zombie coaching regime, is worse. Despite the futility, Florida keeps at it. They have at least done fewer of them lately, but it’s not getting any better.
To a certain extent, it is not surprising that special teams are struggling this season. Dan Mullen strangely did not invest in special teams all that much despite learning from one of the biggest special teams proponents in Urban Meyer. There wasn’t a lot of institutional memory on how to do it well when Napier walked in the door.
That said, Napier also did not hire a special teams coach. He hired his special teams analyst from his final season at Louisiana to be the new “GameChangers” analyst. To the extent that special teams has changed the game, it too often has been for the worst.
There at least was a certain honesty in the way Mullen treated his special teams. He apparently didn’t think much of it, but also he didn’t try to do that much with it. Napier has been trying to gain advantages with special teams, but it just isn’t working that much. The final onside kick against Tennessee was a high point, but the attempt before it was terrible and had no chance of succeeding.
I have seen plenty of fans around the country complaining about the lack of special teams coaches. Nebraska fans complained about it for years with Scott Frost, watching close loss after close loss include bad special teams outcomes. He finally hired one for this year, but it was too little, too late. Kentucky apparently has not had a dedicated special teams coach at all under Mark Stoops, and they lost the Ole Miss game over the weekend in large part due to bad special teams play.
Napier does not have an offensive coordinator because he wants to have two offensive line coaches. That is fair as far as it goes. However, I have not seen a good explanation as to why he does not have a special teams coach. Simply having an analyst has not been good enough so far this year. Maybe they will get better over time, but if they don’t, this will definitely be an area for him to re-examine this winter.
If you want to know where the staff may need some changes, the two letters you’re looking for are not OC. They’re ST.