The first rule of spring games is not to take too much from spring games.
You never know what the head coach is trying to get out of the thing. It is, after all, a practice. A public exhibition too, of course, but also a practice. If Coach wants to work on a few specific things instead of putting on a good show, then tough. Billy Napier is nothing if not a meticulous planner, so you’d better believe he decided ahead of time what would and wouldn’t be going on in the Swamp on Thursday night.
There are also situations where hitting and tackling are curtailed, especially anything around the quarterback. The projected starters on the offensive line weren’t all there, and early enrollee center Roderick Kearney had trouble with snaps all night. Any individual player could merely have a rough outing that’s not representative of their overall play.
And, of course, it’s the team playing itself. A bad play for the offense can often can happen because it was a good one for the defense and vice versa.
So with all of the caveats out of the way, the 2023 Orange and Blue Game did not instill much confidence in the prospects for the offense. There are reasons for that though, and because of those reasons, the unit can’t come out of the game with anything but a grade of Incomplete.
For starters, both quarterbacks spoke after the game about how limited the playbook for the game was. Jack Miller even said — with a wide grin, so perhaps a little exaggerated — that the offense available wasn’t even pages (plural) long and likened it to Day 1 install.
Napier comes from the Saban school of information management, where you don’t make anything public unless there’s a reason for it. Everyone knows that the offense will have to change with Graham Mertz and Miller as the top two options behind center instead of Anthony Richardson. Napier presumably would prefer not to tip his hand with a road game at Utah first up on the slate, so he gave the Utes no clues.
There also was the plague of the “muddy pocket”. This Napier-ism is just a shorthand for saying the pocket wasn’t clean, and it certainly wasn’t on a lot of occasions.
It felt like there was someone in the quarterback’s face about 0.2 seconds after the snap on most passing plays, which goes back to the offensive line health issue. Kingsley Eguakun was not in pads, and Micah Mazzccua has a long offseason of post-surgery rehab. And, of course, there was always going to be an adjustment period with four starters gone and multiple transfers plus true freshman Knijeah Harris in the mix to replace some of them.
Another reason why the pocket was so muddy is that Florida has a lot more depth on the defensive line than it’s had since probably 2019. I don’t know if there’s any player who’s as good as Gervon Dexter was, but the unit as a whole is in its best shape in a while. They took good advantage of the shortcomings on the other side of the ball.
Plus, new co-DC Austin Armstrong called a considerably more aggressive defense than we’ve seen in a while. The quarterbacks were fleeing the pocket due to pressures and blitzes, and they were not often finding guys open after they began scrambling because the coverage was finally fairly tight.
Normally, defenses in spring games don’t get to do as many things as Armstrong’s unit did. Perhaps that was Napier’s intended message to the fans from this game, that the defense is going to be back. That side of the ball has been a big problem for three years running, so some kind of hope over there would be nice.
Between the beat-up line, the generous touch-sack rules, and the DC’s green light to pressure the heck out of the other side, the deck was stacked against the offense. The quarterbacks did a decent job of extending plays, especially Miller. Not Richardson or Emory Jones-good, but they both look faster than Kyle Trask and more nimble than Feleipe Franks. They might’ve been able to make a few more plays in a more realistic scenario where they’re not whistled down because a defender got within two feet of them.
Add it all up, and the offense never had a chance to shine. The playbook was nerfed, the line was well below potential, and the new DC was off the leash and calling things you never normally see in the Orange and Blue Game.
That doesn’t mean the offense gets a complete pass for the game. Execution was not up to par, and Napier and Mertz both said as much after the game. Napier noted that it’s been better in practice, though none of us have any way to back that up since most portions of the practices were closed to the media.
You also can see raw physical talent in the spring regardless of the setup. Here I’m thinking about things like Franks’s impressive arm or Kadarius Toney’s ridiculous elusiveness.
We didn’t really see anything like that out of the two main quarterbacks. Neither has a cannon of an arm. Miller said afterward that he thinks he’s faster than last year, and I would agree from what I saw, but I’m not sure it’s not enough of an improvement to really affect how defenses would play him.
Mertz isn’t as fast as Miller, and his ball placement was not precise. More practice with the receivers may help there, but it’s something to monitor.
Ultimately, though, the signal callers were running for their lives and being whistled down after a defender’s fingers brushed them too often to get a true picture of where they’re at. I can’t rule out either becoming an above average SEC quarterback after this game, but I don’t leave it with the optimism I had about Richardson following the 2022 Orange and Blue Game either. They just don’t have the tools to generate that level of excitement.
Napier was asked afterward about adding another quarterback to the roster, and he reconfirmed his stance from weeks ago that yes, he’d like another. UF will be active in the spring portal period, and in an ideal scenario, the Gators will get real help at more positions than just quarterback.
As we now settle into the longest part of the offseason, questions remain. Questions about the scheme, the personnel, the overall philosophy in regards to offense.
The Orange and Blue Game didn’t answer any of those questions, but based on the proceedings and postgame comments, it probably was never meant to. It appears much more likely that it was meant to be a showcase for the defense, and on that account, it largely succeeded.