It’s always hard to believe, but once Week 3 is in the rearview mirror, a quarter of Florida football’s games are already done. It’s a small enough set of games that things can still change from now until the end of the year, but some things just are what they are at this point.
With the clarity that actual game action provides, here are some of the ways that the preseason expectations compare to the reality on the field so far.
Expectation: Feleipe Franks will show improvement and take his place among the top quarterbacks in the SEC.
Reality: He was on track until he went down.
Franks completed 54.6% of his passes in 2017 and 58.4% in 2018. This year he was at 76.1% before he dislocated his ankle. The sample size issues come in play here since he lit up an FCS team and both Miami (FL) and Kentucky turned over most if not all starters in their secondaries. With that caveat in place, he’d never surpassed 72% completions in a game but went 25-27 (92.6%) against Tennessee-Martin. He completed 63% on the Hurricanes and 70.6% on the Wildcats.
Kadarius Toney’s 66-yard screen pass touchdown inflated Franks’s yards per attempt in Week 0, but Franks’s 9.4 per pass in that game was actually his lowest on the year. He was at 10.0 against UTM and 10.2 against Kentucky.
The three interceptions are more than you’d like to see, but one of them came when a pass sailed on him. That’ll happen to a strong-armed quarterback. The other two came with him trying to be a hero when taking a sack (against UM) or throwing it away (against UK) would’ve been the right choice. As Dan Mullen says, it’s hard to coach that out of a competitor.
We’ll never know what Franks would’ve done against Auburn, LSU, or Georgia, but he continued his excellent play from the end of 2018 in the beginning of 2019. Those two hero picks aside, it’s hard to ask for more than what he did.
Expectation: Florida’s starting five on the offensive line is fine but watch out if there are injuries.
Reality: Florida’s starting five on the offensive line is definitely not fine.
The expectation line above is straight from the coaches’ mouths. John Hevesy even said, “I think we have as much potential (as last season), if not more”.
I’ll be the first to admit that I bought what the coaches were selling. Why wouldn’t I? They’re at practice everyday and know football far better than I do.
I was willing to give the line a pass in the first game against a tough Miami front, but they didn’t clean up the details against UTM and it was a comedy of errors at times against Kentucky.
Jean Delance stepped on Chris Bleich’s foot, forcing Lamical Perine to have to push the pulling Bleich out of his way. Delance and Bleich both whiffed on their blocks on Franks’s fumble. Brett Heggie clobbered Delance on a pull, allowing the defensive lineman Delance had been blocking to get a hand on Franks and slow him down on a quarterback draw. Everyone on the line let UK linemen get low leverage on them, as Nick Buchanan did here.
The tight ends haven’t helped the line enough either. For instance when both a lineman and a tight end pull, far too often they both block the same defender and leave someone unblocked around the edge.
It feels a little like 2017, where optimistic coaches’ statements in the preseason about the line do not line up with what we see on the field. It’s not as bad, since Jim McElwain called his line the strength of the team while Hevesy merely said he felt good about his starting five. Perhaps ominously, he also said, “I have no choice but to (feel good)” about those starters.
Expectation: Florida has two of the best cornerbacks in the country.
Reality: For now, Florida has zero of the best cornerbacks in the country.
CJ Henderson didn’t have his best game against Miami. He did have a good pass breakup in the end zone to force a field goal try, but he extended one long play by going for a strip instead of the tackle and another one by diving at the ball carrier’s feet instead of wrapping up. We’ve seen enough to think he’d improve from there, but he’s presently out hurt. Dan Mullen said Henderson is close to coming back but will still miss practice this week. We’ll see if he plays or sits against Tennessee.
Marco Wilson also had an iffy game against the Hurricanes, but I like many was willing to chalk it up to rust. He still wasn’t up to what a lot of people envisioned — an elite corner who might be a first or second round NFL Draft pick next year — against Kentucky.
Sure he struggled with Ahmad Wagner, but he’s essentially someone the size of Cam Newton playing wideout. The best defense against him is the offensive coordinator perpetually forgetting to call plays for him (and it’s surprisingly effective). More concerning is him camping out several yards in front of the first down line on 3rd & 21 and more poor tackling effort.
It’s not all bad
There is a strong pessimistic tone to this piece because Florida has not fulfilled some of the loftier preseason expectations. Franks may have done it at least, but now he’s done for the year.
The wide receiving corps has been just as good as advertised, and the rushing defense has been tight. Aside from a couple of busted plays against Miami and a handful of Kavosiey Smoke carries, there has been no room for opponents to move the ball on the ground.
Guys like Henderson and Amari Burney coming back from injury will help. UK picked on Gator linebackers through the air, and Burney was supposed to help with that. He will be able to again starting this week.
Florida already was down to the mid-70s in eligible scholarship players who aren’t out for the year before the season began, and then guys like Toney, Henderson, and Burney went down. They’ll at least be back, unlike Franks. UF had no margin of error going into this season, and now they’re in the red.
If the offensive line issues can get sorted out, and Mullen is still talking like he thinks they can be, then a lot is back on the table for this season. Wilson getting back to his pre-injury form would help a lot too. However, injuries and misplaced expectations have lowered the ceiling of this season until something is proven otherwise.