On a 4th and 4 Utah punt attempt in the second quarter, Florida was called for an equipment violation penalty for having two #3’s on the field at the same time, giving Utah five yards and a first down. The Utes would find the endzone on this drive to extend their lead to 14-3.
“We go safe. Jason’s out there, we are supposed to get him off, and we just didn’t communicate,” Florida’s head coach Billy Napier said postgame. “We are in punt safe, we’ve got to communicate better, there’s no question. That’s another thing that we control that we didn’t do the right way.”
“I think that we had a really, really unique situation in the game that required us to have three personnel groups ready to go” Napier said during Monday’s press conference. “Also we’ve got third down grouping in defense on the field. We have a rush team because we’re in the tweener area between kicker, field goal team out, or their punter runs on the field, right? That was one that I think we’ll be working on the future that caused some issues.”
Napier tells the media that the in-game error has nothing to do with the way Florida runs their Special Teams unit, which finds its leadership from GameChanger Coordinator Chris Couch.
“It was a very specific error,” Napier said on Monday. “It has nothing to do with what we do year-round. It was a very specific mistake within the game. It has nothing to do with infrastructure or job description or assignments. It’s just one very specific mistake, one that we will learn from going forward, much like we do every week we make mistakes. We adjust and adapt. So I think it uncovered something that’s a challenging situation, one that we’ll work on in the future.”
Defensive back Jason Marshall, one of the #3’s on the field, agreed with Napier’s sentiment on a lack of communication.
“It was just lack of communication. I didn’t know he was going to be out there at that time,” Marshall said during Monday’s press conference. “We’re going to fix that for the future.”
“It kind of sucks. We stopped them, then we got the penalty, turned around, had to go back out there,” Marshall added. “It was like a sudden change. That just gained momentum from them.”
Even though Florida had plenty of Special Teams mistakes, there was some positive takeaways from the unit.
“We had some miscues in the game,” Napier said. “There’s no doubt we missed a field goal. We shank a punt. We had the penalty from a personnel standpoint. But I do think we did some good things in the game, as well. The things that have nothing to do with the opponent are the things that we need to correct.”
The Gators’ coverage team excelled against Utah, holding punt returner Mycah Pittman to just five yards on three attempts, an average of 1.7 yards per return with a long of six yards.
Utah’s kick returner Sione Vaki gained just 16 yards on his lone kickoff return.
Ja’Markis Weston led the way for the Gators’ coverage team, collecting two solo tackles while working to a Special Teams grade of 86.7, the highest figure in the unit.