There was a lot of good and bad put down on film last Saturday as the Gators fell behind, came back, fell behind a lot, and then came back a lot against South Carolina. Here are the major takeaways I found from studying the game closely.
Making it easier for Franks
Feleipe Franks had one of his best games of the year. It always helps a quarterback when the run game is able to generate 390 yards (with sacks and fumble yardage taken out).
Franks was an important part of the run game, which was as physical as it’s been. The shorthanded and young Carolina defense helped that effect, but you saw it everywhere. The right side of the line has never looked so good while getting many yards up the field on nearly every run. Franks ran through guys. Kadarius Toney was even lowering his shoulder, part of a larger pattern with him that saw him do far and away his best and most physical blocking of his career.
With all that said, Dan Mullen still found some ways to make things easier on his quarterback. When possible, he used alignment and motion to give his signal caller easy reads.
One such play came early on a 3rd & 7. All five players are lined up wide against a single-high safety look, and Jordan Scarlett motions from right to left. That removes a defender from the right side where Lucas Krull and Trevon Grimes are doing double slants.
The safety comes up a little but not that much, showing that the deeper slant to Krull is going to be there if the tight end beats his man. He does, and it’s an easy first down.
By having Scarlett start right but motion left, it showed Franks exactly what the defense was going to do — man underneath a very deep safety — while also removing a potential underneath defender in the guy who was covering Scarlett.
Later on, Mullen would use a single slant from a twins set to good effect. Each time the Gamecocks were playing off the ball with that same single-high safety, likely trying to prevent big plays while protecting their lead. Doing so, however, created some easy throws for Franks.
In both cases, play action would draw the linebackers forward while the inside receiver would run horizontally to the sideline to draw his man that way. With the linebackers up and the other cover guy staying short to the outside, all it would take is the outside receiver to again beat his man inside. First Grimes and then Van Jefferson did so, and Franks had easy completions.
It’s not possible to make it this easy for the quarterback every time. However when Florida has targets who can beat the cover guys one-on-one and the defense is playing softer coverage, it is possible to use spacing to get receivers that open. Mullen saw what the defense was doing and took full advantage.
The Deebo Slant
Despite coming out on top, this game was one of Florida’s poorest tackling games of the year. It began on the first play of the game.
Gross. pic.twitter.com/sqqeDzRdka
— David Wunderlich (@Year2) November 13, 2018
Perhaps the biggest example of the bad tackling came on the quick middle slants to Deebo Samuel. Yes, slants plural, because the Gamecocks ran the play twice and similar things happened on each of them.
The first time came on the first play of Carolina’s second drive. Chauncey Gardner-Johnson is in coverage on Samuel four yards off the line. Samuel begins his slant three yards up the field as Gardner-Johnson drops back a little, so he gets the inside leverage. David Reese is the linebacker on that side, so he comes over to try to help.
Gardner-Johnson takes a swipe at the ball, but in doing so, he’s not making the tackle. Reese whiffs on Samuel as well, leaving only Donovan Stiner coming up from the safety spot to make the stop. He almost misses Samuel, but he does manage to barely get the tackle.
The second time the Gamecocks ran the play came midway through the third quarter. Stiner is lined up on Samuel — I have no idea why a safety would be lined up on the opponent’s best receiver, but whatever — and he’s even more off the line than Gardner-Johnson was because it’s 2nd & 13. The linebacker help this time is Vosean Joseph, but he misses Samuel by even more than Reese did.
The deep help is Jeawon Taylor, but he dives and misses. Stiner gets his shot much later than Gardner-Johnson did, but he likewise misses the tackle. Only CJ Henderson’s elite speed saves the play.
South Carolina did its scouting well and found plays that really worked. The Gator defense was not up to the task for a lot of the game.
Linebacker blues
The secondary did not have its best day with angles and tackling, but the non-buck linebackers had just a terrible time against the Gamecocks. Reese and Joseph have played a lot of snaps by now, so their strengths and weaknesses aren’t a mystery. South Carolina did lots of things to try to exploit those weaknesses.
We have both linebackers chasing a running back pattern to the flat, leaving the tight end wide open in the middle. We have zero of three linebackers covering the tight end in a goal line situation. We have neither linebacker covering the tight end seam in the red zone. On a single run play, we have Joseph pursuing too quickly and missing the tackle followed by Reese also missing the tackle because he lacks top-end closing speed.
If these things haven’t been fixed by now, I don’t know if they can be. They aren’t being coached to blow coverages, yet they routinely blow coverages. Joseph is able to resist overpursuing as we saw in his stellar performance against LSU, but he can’t do it consistently. Reese is usually in the right place but he just doesn’t have the extra gear of speed that Florida linebackers are generally known for.
I’d like to say that the three fourth quarter stops were marked by a turnaround in the linebacker play, but they weren’t. South Carolina simply didn’t do much to challenge the linebackers specifically, and it was the defensive line that did most of the work. The line stepping up combined with a couple of timely drops from Gamecock receivers is what really made the final frame shutout.
The good news is that the Gators have an outstanding set of linebackers committed in the 2019 class. The bad news is that they probably won’t be ready to beat out their elders next year. Unless James Houston and Ventrell Miller can steal the jobs, we’re probably in for another season of linebacking play that too often looks like this.