This week I made a video about Florida’s defense, primarily its run defense, and a few good throws from Kyle Trask. Run defense is basically half the ballgame when playing Kentucky, and Trask continued to make some stellar tosses — when he had the chance.
Defense
The first play from the Wildcats is as basic as spread-to-run philosophy gets. They put four receivers out wide, and UF responded with man coverage out there. As it’s going to be a run attempt, it turns an 11-on-11 football play into a 7-on-7 play.
The run is going right, and Brenton Cox is lined up on the left edge of the offense. The ‘Cats leave him unblocked, and a run fake from Terry Wilson holds him out there. Now it’s down to 6-on-6.
Because Shawn Davis is playing deep at almost 15 yards off the line of scrimmage, it’s 6-on-5 at the point of attack. As long as all five Kentucky linemen can get a hat on a hat, there will be no defenders left to tackle the sixth man who’s carrying the ball. Again: this is spread-to-run 101.
The left tackle and guard start by double teaming Kyree Campbell. Campbell isn’t able to hold his ground, so he ends up off balance. This lets the left guard get upfield to “block” Mohamoud Diabate. I use scare quotes there because he really more tackles Diabate, but there is no flag. UK gets all five blocks its needs, so Asim Rose doesn’t encounter a defender until Davis engages with him eight yards upfield.
The second play shows what happens when the defensive tackles are able to eat blocks, as they say. UF has five box defenders with Diabate coming from the slot area to negate Wilson. It appears to be 6-on-5, with five linemen and a running back for UK against five box defenders, so the Wildcats like their chances running.
The center and right guard double Tedarrell Slaton this time, and the center is supposed to get off that block to get James Houston. Campbell overpowers a single block from the left guard, closing up the space to his right between himself and Slaton. He creates congestion that prevents the center from getting to Houston.
Between Cox holding the edge against the left tackle and Campbell going to the offense’s right, there’s a massive hole for Houston to come downhill and get the stop. Two defensive linemen, Slaton and Campbell, occupied a combined three blockers. Because they do that, the numbers even up and allow the Gators to have a defender allocated for the running back this time.
The third clip is one where the numbers laterally make the difference. UF has four defenders to the offense’s left side and three to the right. UK checks into a new play, which ends up being a run to the right. Slaton is the DT on the offense’s right, and he knifes inward towards the middle. That motion makes it so the right guard doesn’t even have to bother chipping him initially and can go ahead to Houston at the next level. Alignment and the initial motion from the D-line enables Rose to run through a massive hole for a big gain.
Finally, I diagram the first Wildcat drive after the half. In it, you can see several adjustments UF made.
In the first half, UK did a lot of plays with jet sweep motion and a tight end pulling across the formation in the opposite direction. Florida would have a defender follow the jet receiver the whole way, which effectively takes that defender out of the play.
Kentucky employs this combo again on its first play, but instead of shadowing the jet man, Brad Stewart follows him a little before blitzing. Donovan Stiner rotates down on the other side of the formation to account for the jet sweep.
The pulling tight end sees Stewart coming free and picks him up. The TE would’ve blocked Ventrell Miller if not for Stewart, which means Miller now has a free path to the running back. He makes the tackle for a short gain.
Now on 2nd & 8, Florida doesn’t bother with having a deep safety. Davis, instead of starting 15 yards off the ball, lines up on the left edge of the defense in explicit run support. The Gators are begging Wilson to try to burn them deep, knowing he’s inaccurate far down the field. Davis getting the edge allows Zach Carter to exploit the soft spot between the left tackle and guard, and he and Davis blow up the run play.
Finally on 3rd & 9, Kentucky has to pass. You may have noticed a pattern of Kentucky’s left guard being susceptible, and someone on the Florida staff did too. They call for Marlon Dunlap to engage with him first before sending both Cox and Miller in his direction. He freezes in indecision after Dunlap leaves him, allowing Cox to get in Wilson’s face with a quickness. Wilson has to scramble and goes out of bounds for a short gain.
It’s rare that you can see that many adjustments just three plays into the third quarter, but we got it here. UF rotated instead of chasing jet action, started daring Wilson to beat them deep, and exploited a glaring personnel weakness all in those consecutive plays. UK had no counterpunch to these kinds of changes from the Gators, and their offense did little the rest of the way.
Offense
The plays I picked out from the offense show how well Trask is running the show.
The first one is a nice play design with three levels to the right. Kemore Gamble goes short, Kadarius Toney goes intermediate, and Trevon Grimes goes long. It puts UK’s zone defense in a bind, with the outside corner Kelvin Joseph needing to cover both Grimes deep and Toney after a cut out.
Joseph does a decent job of it, but Trask hits Toney with just enough time to allow him to catch and secure the ball before contact. The window was tight, but he hit it even while stepping up in the pocket to avoid pressure.
The second play shows the impact of Kyle Pitts when he’s on the field. Trask looks rightward where Pitts is initially, but UK has three defenders out that way trying to contain the big tight end. That attention means Toney has single coverage over the middle and Trask gets it there despite two defensive linemen in his face with hands up.
The third play is Jacob Copeland’s long catch up the left sideline. It’s possible from ESPN’s sky cam feed to watch Trask go through his progressions. He looks right first, but a linebacker has jammed Pitts and two DBs have Grimes. Trask moves on to the middle where Toney is breaking much like the prior play I highlighted, but the safety has better coverage.
The outside corner on the left was concerned about Toney as well, so he has his back to the sideline. Trask sees it and fires the ball to Copeland, his fourth read, who will box out the poorly placed defender. Toney’s threat opened the door for Copeland to get a big grab.
The final one is more about Pitts than Trask. In short, Pitts does a whip route — he first cuts in before whipping around to go outside — to get an easy touchdown catch. Guys as big as Pitts aren’t supposed to be able to do that. A smaller, shifty receiver like Toney is supposed to be the one doing whip routes. Turns out, so does the 6’6″, 246 lb tight end when that tight end is Kyle Pitts. That’s why he’ll be a very high draft pick.
I mentioned on the first of these two plays that Trask had to deal with pressure. Jean Delance was Florida’s equivalent of UK’s left guard, and Richard Gouraige had an uncharacteristically bad performance as well.
One of the main reasons why Mark Stoops has stabilized Kentucky as an annual bowl team is developing good line play on both sides of the ball, so the Gators were never going to be perfect in protection. But the line really had a hard time keeping guys out of Trask’s face and stunk up the place in run blocking.
The combination of Trask and his targets is at least top-three in the country. The ultimate ceiling for the offense will be determined by how much the line can improve from this performance.