Any time something happens in Week 1 of the college football season that doesn’t conform to expectations, there is understandably a lot of focus on that thing.
For Florida last weekend, it was the play of the offense and DJ Lagway especially. I have said my piece about some of that — the 11 tackles for loss allowed, the -4 net receiving yards for Tre Wilson — but Lagway is far and away the team’s most important player. He looked rusty and had trouble completing long passes, and long passes were what got him noticed nationally last season.
For once in my life, I don’t want to focus too much on the offense. I would rather talk about the defense. The game played by the Gator defense didn’t match my expectations. It exceeded them. By a lot.
Yes, yes, quality of opponent. I know. UF has played some bad teams in the interim, but this was the first the an opponent of theirs finished with fewer than 100 total yards since North Texas finished with 53 in 2016. That’s almost a decade ago. That was back when Geoff Collins was coordinating a defense largely composed of Will Muschamp recruits.
Even when the Gators shut out opponents, including FCS opponents like Long Island, they still gave up some yardage. In 2019, UT-Martin gained 194 yards, Towson gained 248, and Vandy netted 128. The only opponent blanked since then, 2021 Vandy, nearly hit three bills at 287. Shutouts often can be a symptom of an overmatched opponent eschewing field goals and selling out on trying to get into the end zone. Or missing field goals. Or turning it over a lot. The offense and coaching staff do things to help the defense get to that shutout, is what I’m trying to say.
That wasn’t the case with the Sharks.
UF allowed 11 yards on the first two plays, as LIU had a chance to hit them with something they hadn’t seen. That was 13% of the team’s total yards for the entire night. The first down gained on the latter of those two plays was the last they’d get until the 4th quarter.
The chain-moving play in the 4th quarter was a 28-yard pass completion. That one snap composed one third of their total yards on the night.
The 28-yard pass was part of the sole drive the entire game in which Long Island had the ball for more than three plays. That’s right: one drive going for more than three plays out of 12 team drives, setting aside the series that ended the halves (and, for good measure, those were for one and three plays, respectively).
This was a level of dominance that UF hasn’t shown in, again, nearly a decade. Arguably the 2019 defense, if paired with a better offense like the Gators’ attack from the following year, could’ve been good enough to compete for titles. That one “maybe” aside, Florida hasn’t had a top tier unit since that ’16 campaign.
That’s why I am more interested in the defense this weekend than the offense. I think Lagway will improve as he gets more reps; he looked better in the second quarter than in the first already last weekend.
Was last weekend a sign of big things to come, or was it truly just that Long Island was that outmatched? With the information we have now, we can’t rule either of those (or anything in between) out yet. UF is, after all, merely second in the country in average yards per game allowed. BYU held FCS Portland State to just 51 yards, and A) no one thinks the Cougars are a title contender in the Big 12, much less a potential playoff team, and B) Portland State is likely a better team than Long Island.
USF makes for a good second data point before the brutally tough SEC schedule hits. Head coach Alex Golesh is aggressive, and if you ask Tennessee fans, they’ll pretty much all say that the Vols’ offense hasn’t been the same since he ascended from offensive coordinator there to the USF job. As an aside: they’re right, though how much was Golesh leaving and how much was coincident personnel changes and philosophy adjustments from Josh Heupel is an open question.
Their quarterback Byrum Brown is a real-deal, capital-P Problem for any Power 4 defense that thinks it’s going to beat a little ‘ol team from the American just by showing up. UF’s linebackers looked about as good as they have in a decade last weekend, and they will need to be the surest of sure tacklers when Brown takes off.
I don’t expect another shutout. I don’t expect another total yardage amount in the double-digits. You shouldn’t either. Especially not if Caleb Banks takes one more week to heal up ahead of conference play.
But I want to see another episode of dominance, adjusted to the opponent. I want to find out that last week wasn’t a mirage caused by playing a four-win FCS team. I want to see more D-linemen shedding blocks to plug run holes, more linebackers reliably taking ball carriers down on the first try, and, hallelujah, more aggressive run support from corners. I want to see multiple turnovers again. I want to see reasons for offenses to look at the Gators and feel fear more than anything else.
And yes, of course, I would like to see Lagway sling it around to all levels of the defense and come away with more than 300 yards passing. Heck, I’d take more than 250. I want that too. But I really, really want to find out if this defense is for real. It’s been an inexcusably long amount of time since UF had a defense worth worrying about by opposing offenses for an entire season. It’s long past time to get that fixed, and there were some tantalizing signs that we may be on the road to seeing it in 2025. This game against USF is a perfect way to show those signs were not a one-off.