If the Gators are going to maintain or take a step forward from last year’s 8-5 record, they have to improve on offense. They figure to do so with DJ Lagway as the unquestioned starter, a quality veteran offensive line, and a loaded running back and wide receiver corps.
Just as important is maintaining and improving on defense as well. The full-season stats don’t quite tell the entire story since the staff didn’t simplify the defense until a third of the regular season had passed, but you can still pick out where the improvement really did and didn’t come from.
The main difference could be boiled down to this: the 2023 defense was a hard but brittle unit, while the 2024 defense bent but seldom broke.
I will cite a few stats here about defensive efficiency and explosiveness pulled from Game On Paper. Efficiency is based on success rate, while explosiveness is based on expected points added (EPA) per play adjusted for things like opponent quality and garbage time. If you aren’t familiar with those and don’t care to learn right now, just look at the national ranks.
Here is UF’s performance in these since 2020, the first year of the recent run of struggles on that side of the ball.
| Season | SR | Rank | Adj. EPA/Play | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 43.3% | 83 | 0.08 | 100 |
| 2021 | 40.6% | 64 | -0.07 | 29 |
| 2022 | 42.2% | 96 | 0.05 | 98 |
| 2023 | 38.4% | 32 | 0.06 | 107 |
| 2024 | 42.0% | 87 | -0.01 | 62 |
The ’23 defense was easily the best of these defenses in success rate. On a down-by-down basis, it did pretty well. However, it was also the worst at EPA per play allowed. When something went bad, it went really bad.
The ’24 defense wasn’t that good on a down-by-down basis, but it improved a lot in stopping explosiveness. It’s a valid option if you know you don’t have a crushing defense: drag things out for a while and eventually the 18 to 22-year-olds on the other side will make some mistakes.
The LSU game might be the best example of it working out. The Tigers’ drive chart includes:
- 13 plays, 41 yards, FG miss: On the 11th snap of the series, LSU false started on 2nd & 8 and soon after missed the field goal
- 12 plays, 47 yards, FG: On the tenth snap of the series, Garrett Nussmeier took an eight-yard sack on 2nd & 10 and couldn’t get anything back on 3rd down
- 15 plays, 62 yards, FG: On the 14th snap of the series, the Tigers commit offensive pass interference and can’t convert on the ensuing 3rd & 24
- 15 plays, 54 yards, FG: On the 12th snap of the series, LSU false started again and couldn’t manage more than five yards thereafter
- 12 plays, 37 yards, Downs: On the 11th snap of the series, Nussmeier took another sack and couldn’t convert the ensuing 4th & 12
Uses of this strategy don’t all work out as clearly as it did here, but that’s the advantage of bend-but-don’t-break. A pro offense will probably break you sooner or later. Most college offenses, even good ones like LSU’s from a year ago, have enough variability that you do have the option to try to avoid the big play and wait for them to hurt themselves with miscues.
Another way to clarify things is looking at the long play data from cfbstats.com. The percentage of plays in which UF allowed 10+ yards dropped from 23% in 2023 to 19.6% in 2024, and the share of those that went for 20+ dropped from 8.0% to 7.4%. Those rates went in the right direction, but they’re not eye-popping.
Well, the percentage of plays that went for 30+ yards got cut in half from 5.1% of total plays in ’23 to just 2.4% in ’24. Plays that went for 40+ dropped from 3.4% of the total to 0.9% of the total. That may not sound like much, but it’s the difference between expecting about two 40+ plays allowed per game to one allowed about every other game (these rates account for differences in defensive plays per game between ’23 and ’24).
Or, take some drive data from Brian Fremeau. In 2022 and 2023, UF ranked 110th and 106th nationally in percentage of drives to end in either a touchdown or field goal attempt. In 2024, the Gators improved to 58th. That’s not a field position artifact either, as the defense’s average starting field positions in 2023 and 2024 were all of half a yard apart.
You can chalk some of that up to turnover margin, but only to a point. Florida was terrible at generating turnovers in 2023, gaining just seven on the season. That went all the way up to 25 in 2024, but the Gators gained 22 turnovers in 2022. I don’t have the breakdown on how many of those were special teams gained versus defense gained, but special teams isn’t a big enough number to make up for these large of differences. Billy Napier’s first defense showed that a team can generate a good number of turnovers and still have a rather bad time of preventing teams from getting scoring opportunities.
UF will need to play for quicker ends to opponent drives in 2025 versus 2024, though. The Gators don’t have near the quality depth in the middle of the defensive line after losing Cam Jackson and Desmond Watson to graduation and D’Antre Robinson to transfer. Florida wasn’t willing to shell out enough in NIL to land a defensive tackle in the portal until it got just one in the spring period, and then the only 2025 signee at the nose position is off the team following an arrest. The numbers are down, and the rotation will be shorter.
The Gators are well positioned to create more havoc with a deep DE/edge group and the best inside linebacker crew in some time. They could be just fine so long as Caleb Banks and Jamari Lyons stay healthy.
Even if none of the big men in the middle miss time, they all have limited quality snaps before they get tired. Napier has played with the knobs on offense before to slow things down to have the defense play fewer snaps, but that risks offensive rhythm and removes tempo from the toolbox. Getting to fourth down faster on defense has to be a priority.
The top key to the 2025 season is DJ Lagway staying healthy, but right up there with it is building on the defensive progress from a season ago. The improvements were real, though not across the board. There were sacrifices made to efficiency in order to give up fewer big plays. This time around, the Gators must improve on the efficiency to get opponents off the field faster without falling back down on allowing explosive plays.