Graham Mertz is second to only Kyle Trask among Florida’s post-Tebow quarterbacks

I’d imagine a lot of Florida fans would like to move past the 2023 season entirely, if they haven’t already. Before you completely toss the campaign down the memory hole, I first want to fully appreciate the season that Graham Mertz had as UF’s starting quarterback.

The Gators have been blessed with many successful passers over the years: Steve Spurrier, John Reaves, Wayne Peace, Kerwin Bell, Shane Matthews, Danny Wuerffel, Rex Grossman, Chris Leak, Tim Tebow, and more. It’s a distinguished list.

The well suddenly ran dry after Tebow’s career ended, with some bad coaching hires, imperfect recruiting, and some just plain bad luck to blame. Only one passer has added his name to the list of Gator Greats since 2010: Kyle Trask, who was ready from the jump when injury pressed him into duty in 2019 before becoming a Heisman finalist in 2020.

Mertz has not joined that fraternity just yet, but his season at the helm firmly established him as the second-best signal caller of the post-Tebow era, and I’m not sure it’s even close. I looked at all of the Florida quarterbacks who appeared in at least nine games and attempted at least 15 passes per game since Timmy Heisman graduated. There are only two names you’ll see in every top five list to come, Trask and Mertz.

Let’s start with something basic: passing yards. You shouldn’t judge a quarterback on total passing yards, but also you can’t really be a top quarterback without accumulating a lot of them. If you’re not, then at best the run game and defense are covering for you.

If Mertz had played the full 12 games, he almost certainly would’ve had only the second 3,000-yard passing season since 2010. And actually, only the second since Tebow’s Heisman year of 2007 since his passing yardage dipped below that mark in the two seasons after. It is worth noting that Trask himself would’ve surpassed the 3,000 threshold had he started from Week 1 in ’19, so he was held back too.

Mertz also comes out second in yards per game. His team was behind more often than Trask’s 2019 squad, so that could explain some of that.

Regardless, Mertz’s raw production is comparable to Trask’s first season starting despite not having near as many good targets to throw to. Trask had Van Jefferson, Freddie Swain, Kyle Pitts, Trevon Grimes, Tyrie Cleveland, Josh Hammond, a young Jacob Copeland, Lamical Perine, and, when healthy, Kadarius Toney to target. Mertz had Ricky Pearsall and Tre Wilson, and then there was a steep drop off to a mix of Arlis Boardingham, Kahleil Jackson, the two running backs, and Hayden Hansen.

If you look at yards per attempt, Mertz is in a logjam with several other guys. His throwing a lot of short stuff throughout the season pushed his level here lower than it could’ve been, but the reason he still graded out okay was…

He led the pack in completion percentage. Not every UF quarterback over the last baker’s dozen years had the touch to complete short things reliably, but Mertz did. The high level here also shows his ability to throw a catchable ball since, as previously mentioned, his group of targets wasn’t the greatest the team’s ever had.

When we look at touchdown rate — the percentage of throws to find the end zone — it’s more about offensive design than personal performance. UF was nearly even in rushing and passing TDs in 2023, with 21 on the ground to go with Mertz’s 20 through the air (no other QB had a touchdown pass). Other teams simply had more long ball threats to throw to, or passed more near the end zone. To be fair, Mertz wasn’t all that accurate on passes past the intermediate range, so the lower rate here is not all on play design and selection.

But even as I bog down in explanations here, Mertz still is about tied with Jones for fourth in this span. Nine other passers had rates anywhere from 0.3 percentage points (Richardson, 2022) to 2.9 percentage points (Brantley, 2010) lower than Mertz’s figure here.

Much to his credit, Mertz took very good care of the ball. Only one his three picks was more his fault than not, and all three came on tipped balls. For a team with such thin margins thanks to a suspect defense, the Gators really needed this kind of performance from its quarterback.

Again, a preponderance of short throws makes it easier to keep the pick rate down, but the ball was almost never in danger no matter where Mertz threw it.

Passing efficiency has fallen out of style in recent years for some reasons I do and don’t know, but I still like to use it as a back-of-the-napkin sketch for overall performance. The formula is more reliant on yards per attempt than would be ideal, but even with that impediment, Mertz still about ties with 2019 Trask for the second-best mark in this era.

If I could sum it up, I would say that Mertz and ’19 Trask had about even performances. There were areas where one had an edge over the other, but I think they about even out. They both played essentially somewhere between 10.5 and 11 games, and Trask threw just four more passes that season than Mertz did last year.

This is not to say that Mertz is about to have a breakout like Trask did in his final season. Maybe Wilson can make for a good Toney facsimile, but there’s certainly no 2020 Pitts on the roster for next year. Mertz will have an unusually high amount of experience thanks to his covid waiver, so maybe that can close the gap some.

Regardless, I’m not talking about the future. I’m here to make sure everyone appreciates that Mertz really did have a terrific season in 2023. Only Trask has surpassed it since Tebow left, and even then, only in one of his two starting years. Another season like it, and Mertz can take his place among the better players to sling it around the Swamp.