After Florida’s win over Texas A&M, I gave Billy Napier the moniker of “the Fireman” for having put out so many fires burning around the program on and off the field. For exactly one more game, it looked prescient as UF smoked some chicken on Senior Day.
And then the Gators lost to Vanderbilt. So, you know, nothing is forever.
There are a lot of micro reasons why Florida dropped its last two games of the season. There were specific instances here and there where a Gator or two made mistakes, or a Commodore or Seminole made a terrific play. Flip a few things, and the outcomes could’ve been different.
On a bigger level, though, UF stumbled down the stretch because some of those fires Napier had put out reignited.
Take penalties, a fire that had been put out so early in the season I didn’t find it worth mentioning in the Fireman piece. The Gators have traditionally been bad at accumulating too many flags, though they actually did quite well in that department across 2019-20. They fell back to near the bottom of the SEC in 2021, however.
Florida had been good about not racking up too many penalties since Game 1 this year. Even when they got ten of them against Tennessee, they were for all of 47 yards. Same with A&M: ten flags, but only 39 yards.
The Gators had seven penalties for 50 yards in their last good game against South Carolina. The next week in Nashville they had the same count of seven, but they went for 80 yards. Then against FSU, they were up to ten penalties for 91 yards. I know all the complaints about the officiating in that game, but a lot of that was about what flags weren’t thrown on FSU, and those are the numbers.
Now we can just run down my list of fires. The first was the return game, which was a real negative for almost the first half of the season. Trevor Etienne did have a good kickoff return early against FSU that set up Ricky Pearsall’s 52-yard touchdown grab. It was almost a number-for-number repeat of a great Etienne return and long Justin Shorter touchdown against LSU. However, Jason Marshall muffing a punt also gifted Vanderbilt a score.
Next was Anthony Richardson’s poor Games 2 and 3, the depths of which he did not reach in Games 11 and 12. The fire stayed out in that sense, and he even threw for 400 yards on the Commodores. However, nearly half of those 400 yards (197) came in the fourth quarter alone as Vandy was nursing a lead. All three Florida punts and the one turnover on downs came following incompletions.
Then AR only completed a third of his passes against FSU, going 9-for-27. He still got 198 yards out of those nine completions, so there were some big plays in there. Some of his tosses were also on target and just got broken up by good defensive plays. Still, his run of six incompletions and a sack in the first three drives of the third quarter really stalled the offense and gave FSU the chance to take control for good.
Next up was turnovers. The Gators went three straight games without them against LSU, Georgia, and Texas A&M, and then the one lost fumble against South Carolina came at the very end of a blowout. That’s good.
Then they had two against Vanderbilt. It’s hard to get completely upset about the interception. It was a completely fluky play where a defender made an absurdly athletic catch about an inch off the ground. You know what? Good for him.
Richardson should’ve just taken the sack instead of flinging it off balance while being tackled, though. There also isn’t any real sympathy for the fumbled punt, though, as Marshall was trying to catch it over his shoulder with his eyes in the sun just outside the end zone. On Day 1 of punt return practice, every returner even on the high school level is told to just let that one go.
Then Richardson’s pick against FSU was one of the just plain bad throws he had early in the year but had gotten away from later. Jonathan Odom maybe could’ve given him a little more help, but it basically went right to the defender. Fortunately the Seminoles missed their ensuing field goal try.
Poor third quarter play was the next issue that seemed to have maybe been addressed after A&M. As with all of these, it was for one more week but no longer. Vandy outscored the Gators 14-6 in the third quarter to extend its eight-point halftime lead to 16, and as mentioned before, Florida State took over the game in the third by going on a 17-0 run.
Very cautiously, I suggested that maybe some third down issues were starting to be solved following the win in College Station. Right on cue, South Carolina managed just 3-of-11 conversions. Then the Gator defense went to its bad old pattern by giving up 50% (7-of-14) to the Commodores and 56% (9-of-16) to the Seminoles.
It’s reductive to say that Florida would’ve won both games had it simply not backslid on these elements of the game. It is less so regarding the Vanderbilt loss given the talent disparity between the teams. The FSU loss is not so clear since the Seminoles are a bit better of a team than UF by a lot of metrics and are in the third year of a rebuild instead of the first. If the game flow was different, Mike Norvell and staff may have made different decisions that still result in an FSU win.
But it would’ve been a lot easier on UF had they kept up their advances in all of these aspects. I can’t psychoanalyze the team to guess why things went in reverse, other than to say that it’s hard for first-year teams to find consistency. Expecting four good games in a row to close may have been asking too much when previously they hadn’t had a streak of good or bad play longer than two games.
Better consistency is always something you look for in the second year of a coaching regime. Had Napier been able to find it early, the end of the season easily could’ve looked a lot different. Instead, the hope for a strong finish disappeared as bad old habits returned.