PDs Postulations – Thoughts on the Florida Gators & ECU game

Well, well, where to begin, where to begin. So many things to discuss. In honor of former Commissioner Mike Slive, who has been battling prostate cancer throughout his career, the SEC designated this game its “Prostate Cancer Awareness Game” for the Florida Gators football team. I can guarantee you that Gator fans did not need that reminder – watching this game made them very aware of their prostate, rest assured. Given that we all suffered various pains from all over the anatomical radar screen Saturday, I think I will start by making perhaps the most unexpected observation (it certainly surprised me): after re-watching the game to focus on the matchups, successes and breakdowns, I must say that the Gators did not perform nearly as poorly as it appeared when watching it live.

When the game concluded I surmised that the team has a multitude of things to fix to prevent this season from being a complete disaster. After watching the film in detail however, my takeaway is far less fatalistic. I still see that the team has a multitude of things to fix, but we are closer to being a competitive SEC team than we are to being an 0-8 last place SEC disaster.

Without the heat and brain boil of the game time anxiety, I saw that the contest broke down to these main elements:

  • The defense generally played very well, except for the opening drive (which I attribute to coming out flat and high off of their press clippings from Game 1), and the last two drives (by which time they were completely gassed because of the frenetic pace of the ECU offense, the quick-pass scheme designed to exhaust defensive front 7s, and the Florida offense keeping the Gator defense on the field way too long). In between those drives, they basically dominated the vaunted Pirates offense.
  • The Florida offense, upon second look, did not perform that badly either. They scored 24 points and should have scored 34 if not for a bogus penalty and two shanked field goal attempts. This was with a freshman and true sophomore rotating signal calling duties in a brand new offense, with a brand new staff, a brand new offensive line and tons of young players getting their first significant action in college football. Compare that to the most mature and seasoned offense that Muschamp ever had, just a few months ago, with a 4th-year senior quarterback in the rotation, which only scored 21 points against this ECU defense.
  • Though the offense had many dysfunctions that I will examine down the page, the difference-making difficulties in the game really came down to a lot of sloppy plays, some untimely errors and a ton of penalties. The kind of stuff that derives not from a bad football team but from a badly un-focused football team. A team that perhaps was excessively full of themselves after beating up on weak sister New Mexico State and didn’t take ECU very seriously. A football team that a head coach would say was suffering from a severe entitlement complex.

Getting Defensive

Why not start with the most positive areas of Saturday’s performance?

Despite the surprisingly large number of fans who expressed angst and trepidation over the defensive performance Saturday, the defense really played outstanding. The fan concerns probably stem from the old Hollywood formula that was in play in the game: Grab their attention at the beginning and wow them at the end. ECU bookeneded the game with a few scary drives, but every minute of the game in between, the Gators either controlled or dominated them.

The first drive for the Pirates essentially was two plays. Antonio Morrison whiffed at an open field tackle allowing a would-be short gain to go for 21 yards. That flipped the field and moved them to the UF 36. Then there was the 31-yard touchdown pass that Quincy Wilson had covered perfectly and was going to intercept except that he made an awkward jump for the ball and spun himself out of position. Then there were the final two drives: the 66-yard drive to draw within a touchdown, and the 40-yard drive that ended on the UF 13 with a fumble. By that time, the defense was completely gassed. Playing against this frenetically-paced offense will do that when the offense cannot sustain drives to keep the defense on the bench an adequate portion of the game. The Gators won the time of possession battle by 2 minutes and 14 seconds, but that is simply not good enough to keep a defense rested against an offense that operates at this tempo.

Between the opening drive and the final two drives when the defense was out of gas, East Carolina had 11 possessions wherein they averaged just 14 yards per drive. As bad as Florida’s offense was all night – including six drives that only went 0, 1, 1, 2, 4 and 5 yards, respectively – the Gators still averaged double that: over 28 yards per possession.

The biggest problem on ECU’s last two drives other than fatigue is that the defense was missing three of their four best pass defenders: Vernon Hargreaves, Keanu Neal and Alex Anzalone. Two of them should return against Kentucky, while we wait to see the extent of Anzalone’s injury.

The Defensive Line

Many people were complaining that pass rush or overall push from the defensive front was another big problem on the night, but that simply was not true. Watching the game film, I counted the plays that were disrupted behind the line of scrimmage by the defensive front (that is, when a running back or quarterback had to alter his route in the backfield, hurry his pass or leave the pocket). The Gators’ front disrupted 32 plays. That amounts to nearly 40% of the Pirates’ offensive plays. That’s doing some work, and most of it was done by the defensive line (I counted five by Bryan Cox, four each by Joey Ivie, Jonathan Bullard and Alex McCallister, and three by Caleb Brantley to lead the defense). As mentioned earlier, this misinterpretation of the push by the defensive line was probably fed by the lasting memory of the final two drives that made Gator fans so nervous. To demonstrate just how tired the defense was by that point, consider the numbers: Before those two drives, ECU ran 62 plays, of which 28 were disrupted by the Gator defensive front. That’s an average of one disruption every 2.2 plays. On the last two drives, the Pirates ran 19 plays, of which the Gators were only able to disrupt 4 plays, for an average of just one disruption every 4.8 plays. That’s a big difference against an efficient short passing attack with the game on the line.

The fortunate thing for the Gator defense is that no team remaining on their schedule runs the kind of fast-tempo offense they faced in ECU. True, 346 yards is a load to surrender through the air, but the Gators held the Pirates to (-13) yards rushing and more than a half a yard loss per rush.

Getting Offensive

Now for the painful part. Like I said, the offense was not nearly as bad in review as it looked live. But there are some serious issues here. None so critical to success and none so poorly performing as the guys up front.

Offensive Line

Some of the issues are position placement right now, with Halter being a less than optimal fit at tackle because he lacks the quickness in his lateral movement. He is a much better option at guard and could develop into a strong asset there. Getting Martez Ivey back for the Kentucky game will allow him to slide inside and boost the OL play. Just how much it is boosted with one of the tackles playing in his first college game remains to be seen.

The view from 3,000 feet was that the offensive line got no push against the ECU front all night and was inconsistent in pass protection. When reviewing the game tape, those perceptions were not quite so cut and dry, nor were they so damning as they appeared to be while watching live.

Tallying up the wins and losses on the line, the first thing that is comforting is that out of 25 pass attempts, the line provided a clean pocket 18 times. Two quarterback runs were intended to be pass attempts but became scrambles because of a dirty pocket, but a 67% effectiveness rate in pass protection is a pretty good number for a line with this microscopic number of starts and snaps under their collective belt.

The running game was a different story, however they actually opened up a lot more holes that I thought. On the game, I only saw the line get zero push or get pushed back on eight running plays. For whatever reason, they blocked better in the run game when Treon Harris was in the game. Will Grier’s series saw six running plays with no push, while Treon only suffered two such plays. Likewise, 14 times Treon handed off, there was at least a small hole for the back to squeeze through, while this only happened 8 times for Grier. And Grier played twice the number of series that Treon did. The problem was this: on those plays where the offensive line created holes, most of the time it was only a crack of daylight worth a few yards, and did not get any push across the line. They were also rarely getting blocks at the second level.

But they did get 196 yards rushing and averaged 4.4 yards per rush. The main issue with that is that those are great numbers against SEC competition, but against East Carolina it is nothing to write home about. And that is what should concern Gator fans going forward.

The Quarterback Battle

After two games I have a definite idea of who I would name the starter from this point forward. And I think it is important that a starter be named because we saw against the ECU that the quarterback carousel is making it very difficult for either quarterback (and the whole offense) to get into or stay in any rhythm.

Before getting into my analysis of the quarterback comparison, I will give you the stat lines of both. Ignoring the final drive that was just taking a snap to end the game, here is how the production shook out (%Pass=% of drive yards through the air; YPD=Yards Per Drive; PPD=Points Per Drive; Pts Earned=Points that would have been scored if we had a competent kicker; TOs=Turnovers; YPC=Yards Per Completion/Yards Per Carry):

Drives     Yards (% Pass)       YPD        Pts Earned (PPD)  Actual Points (PPD)     Scoring Drives                Drives≥25

Grier        8                203 (74%)                25.4          21 (2.6)                     17 (2.1)                                       3                4 (50%)

Harris      5                148 (36%)                29.6          13 (2.6)                     7 (1.4)                                          1                2 (40%)

Drives≤5                  TOs          Cmp-Att-Int (%)     Yds          YPC         TD            Long        Sacked     Rush-Yds (YPC)-Long

Grier        1                1                10-17-1   (59%)      151           8.9            2                34             1                3-19 (6.3)-19

Harris      1                1                5-8-0        (63%)      54             10.8          0                28             1                3-36 (12)-22

Each player led different categories, but to me the numbers that stand out are points earned and actual points, touchdown passes and percentage of drive yards through the air. These all favor Grier.

But the quarterback decision is not going to be determined by the stat line. Last week I detailed the plays that I felt differentiated the two, demonstrating Will’s knack for throwing on time to the first read and Treon’s knack for ignoring the first read, leaving the pocket and throwing late and sometimes under-throwing. I will look at those elements this week as well, but first wanted to go to another level and compare positive and negative plays. Since this week’s drives were not balanced equally between the two, it will be helpful to go to this extra level of analysis. I counted up the good plays and bad plays in the passing game for each quarterback, ignoring neutral plays that are good outcomes (completed pass) but did not require much effort, like a simple dump pass to a wide open receiver.

In his eight drives, Grier had 10 good plays and 6 bad plays. And to further illustrate my point about the quarterback rotation disrupting rhythm, only one of Will’s bad plays came in his first stint starting the game, and the other five all came after he was pulled and reinserted into action. By contrast, Treon had 3 good plays and nine bad plays. To possibly counter my theory however, all three of his good plays came after Treon had been inserted, pulled and reinserted into the game.

Now let’s get into the plays that defined their performances. First, Grier’s good plays:

1)    Drive 2: Perfect wheel connection to Brandon Powell in blanket coverage. Great catch, but a special, NFL-level throw.

2)    D2: Perfect post pass to Showers but a pass interference infraction prevented the would-be touchdown pass.

3)    D2: Touchdown pass to D-Rob was perfect. Grier did not get happy feet, rush throw or leave pocket when the defensive end came in unblocked. Called back on bogus phantom penalty. Settled for field goal.

4)    D3: Perfect touch pass to Goolsby on another wheel route.

5)    D3: Perfect roll and strike to Goolsby for a touchdown.

6)    D7: First read was Powell in the slot, but he was blanketed and then Cam Dillard got plowed backwards into the pocket by the blitzing linebacker and Will resisted the risky throw and took off for a 19-yard run.

7)    D9: Textbook wide receiver screen to D-Rob, went for 13 yards and a first down

8)    D9: Textbook wide receiver screen to D-Rob, went for 16 yards and a first down

9)    D9: Textbook wide receiver screen to D-Rob, went for 7 yards and a first down

10)D9: Patiently waited for D-Rob to disengage from sticky coverage, then threw a bullet to his chest for a touchdown.

Now for his bad plays:

1)    D4: On third down, threw a pass behind Brandon Powell at the first down marker to kill the drive. Had he properly led him, his forward motion gets the first down easily; throwing behind him spun hum around into the arms of the defensive back and a tackle short of the first down.

2)    D7: Designed rollout, wide open Antonio Calloway at the first down stick, threw it at his feet.

3)    D7: D-Rob open on the post route for big gainer, Will threw short and offline.

4)    D9: Designed rollout, unblocked blitzer forced a throw that was almost intercepted. The pass was actually on target to Jake McGee in the back of the end zone, but Will did not see the linebacker drop back into coverage.

5)    D10: Calloway wide open on the seam route for a touchdown, but Will badly under-threw the ball and it was almost picked off.

6)    D10: Another pass offline, this one to Valdez Showers; almost picked off.

So you see he was building good rhythm and production in his first three drives, but after being pulled and brought back in, he was far less effective. Ironically, he had three passes that could have been intercepted but were not, while his one interception was a perfect pass under pressure that was just bobbled into the air by the receiver Alvin Bailey.

Now for Treon’s good plays:

1)    D11: Perfect deep touch pass on sideline to Goolsby.

2)    D11: Great bullet pass to a blanketed D-Rob at the first down marker to extend the winning drive.

3)    D11: Pocket collapsed as Ahmad Fullwood was coming open on a shallow cross. Treon had a great feel for the pressure, tucked and ran for 22 yards and a first down.

And Treon’s bad plays:

1)    D5: On 3rd & 4 at the ECU 9 yard line, he had both Fullwood and Bailey open on a high-low at and beyond the first down sticks and possibly with the real estate to walk it into the end zone. Treon stared them down but did not throw the ball. He waited until the defensive ends collapsed the pocket, then scrambled for a drive-killing sack. The chip-shot field goal was shanked.

2)    D6: Designed rollout, he had Jake McGee wide open in front of him at the line of scrimmage and green pasture behind him well past the first down marker, and C’yontai Lewis wide open on the same hash beyond the marker. With no pressure, he again ignored his reads ad ran downfield. He made the first down with about the same amount of yards that would have been gained by throwing to one of the two receivers, but it was a bad play for two reasons: (1) The receivers could have extended to even longer gains with runs after the catch, but more importantly, (2) Treon took a hit on the tackle that he would not (and should not) have taken if he made the throw.

3)    D6: Out and up pass to a wide open Goolsby. Treon executed the short pump fake flawlessly but then threw late and lofted the ball, allowing the ECU safety time to close, tip the ball and almost pick it off.

4)    D6: Receiver screen to Powell needed to be fast and rocketed, but was late and a soft toss that allowed the defense to close and drop Powell for a loss. It was 3rd & 4 and should have converted the first down. Chip shot field goal was shanked.

5)    D11: Receiver screen to CJ Worton thrown at his feet.

6)    D11: Fumbled exchange with Mark Herndon. The subject of much debate over who was culpable, it appeared to me it was 40%/60% with Treon accounting for the 40% by pulling early and not giving it to him where he was expecting. Herndon still should have had it because it was in his gut, but it’s still a bad play for the QB.

7)    D12: Calloway was open on underneath quick slant. Treon pumped but did not throw. Pocket then collapsed.

8)    D12: Calloway breaking on post route, Treon looking at him but bails on collapsing pocket instead of hitting Antonio on the post.

9)    D12: D-Rob wide open on a crossing route, Treon looks at him but doesn’t throw, pocket collapses and he is sacked.

As you read Treon’s bad pass plays, you no doubt felt like you were a broken record: first read wide open, did not throw. There were many coaching factors that sabotaged Jeff Driskel’s Florida career, but one of the self-inflicted wounds he gave himself constantly was this one: reluctance, even a seemingly stubborn refusal to throw to wide open receivers. Receivers that he clearly saw open. Treon has done this in the first two games on more than half of his passing plays. Despite some throwing errors Saturday that nearly led to interceptions, Grier has not done this once this year. If he sees his first read is open, he throws to his first read on time.

Production has been relatively close between the two, so here we have the head coach’s dilemma: Grier has proven to be much better at finding and throwing to his first open read – and better at throwing on time – but the offensive line is going to create a lot of opportunities for the quarterback to operate under extreme duress this year now that the SEC season is starting. That means Grier will be in a position to make some potentially damaging mistakes trying to force the ball to his first read before getting destroyed by the rushing defenders. And Treon’s overly cautious approach would reduce this risk, perhaps significantly.

So who starts?

My gut feeling (and really, my hope as well) is that Mac is going to select a starter based on the long-term and not the short-term. Though Grier is a riskier thrower because he trusts his arm to put the ball where it sometimes shouldn’t or can’t go, Treon errs too far on the safe side. Over the first two games, we have missed significantly more scoring opportunities because of Treon’s reluctance to throw the ball to open receivers than we would have missed if Grier’s few bad passes would have been intercepted.

Grier has by far the higher ceiling of the two, in my opinion, and we are not going to compete for any championships this year no matter who the starter is, so I would hope that Mac taps Grier this week and lets him steer the ship and develop into the quarterback he is going to be. No need to slow-play his growth and development just to preserve lower risk decision making in the near term. Especially if those low risks are foregoing more reward than the risk, as has been the case the first two weeks.

Now when the SEC season starts, the risks become greater, but the need for big plays requiring risk also increases a great deal.

Penalties

I love Coach Mac’s reaction to and disposition toward the penalties. Every Florida coach since I have been following the program essentially just accepted that Florida was always going to get hammered by the refs. Mac does not accept this. He directly spoke to the fact that the refs called a lot of penalties because they are conditioned to giving Florida a million flags. And that he is NOT going to let that perspective or that trend continue. And I can understand his outlook on this: he has never coached a team that commits or is given (whether earned or unearned) this many penalties as standard procedure. And this I think was what set him on fire when he lit into Kelvin Taylor and when he tore up the press conference with fury. The Gators made a lot of mistakes Saturday, and did not win by a comfortable margin, but none of that was worthy of being called an embarrassment to the university and the administration. That commentary was driven by the penalties, both the bulk and the nature of them, with the running-into-the-punter and of course the throat-slash unsportsmanlike conduct calls bringing the most gasoline to the fire. Playing poorly is bad, but playing stupidly is what earns the “embarrassment” tag.

I would like to point something out about his sideline tirade on Kelvin Taylor. It was a strong message to Taylor. It was a strong message to the entire team. But more than that, it was a very loud message to the Florida Gators fans. The message was clear: This nonsense will not be tolerated and the fans will not have to endure an endless inner dialogue wondering why the same mental errors keep happening every week. They will be eliminated or the players making the errors will see their playing time eliminated. Mac doesn’t have much of a bench to coach with yet, but pretty soon it will be his biggest motivational ally.

Swamp Magic Back?

Not many Gator fans left the park Saturday beaming with giddy hope that the famous Swamp Magic – that which has been largely absent for the last five years – may have finally returned. But the field was heavily dusted with Swamp Magic on ECU’s final offensive play of the game. And not just because the quarterback did his best Jameis Winston fumble-backwards impersonation to save the Gators’ bacon. Because of the raucous jubilation or dizzied relief of the late game-clinching fumble, I don’t think many people took note of what was going on downfield on the play. Because Marcus Maye was completely baffled by the three-receiver cross on that play and his man was the target of what would have been a wide-open waltz-in touchdown and a point-after kick away from overtime. That is, if he had thrown the ball forward instead of backward.

Random Stats

*With Jalen Tabor’s pick-six Saturday, Florida leads the nation (tied with TCU) for the most interception returns for a touchdown since 2008 with a whopping 20.

*Getting tight: Gator tight ends caught touchdowns in consecutive games for the first time in two years, and they notched 100 or more receiving yards in consecutive games for the first time since Tim Tebow was throwing the passes in 2009. The three touchdowns in two games by the tight ends match their scoring total for the entire 2014 season.

*After blowing a 17-point lead to lose to the Sooners, the Volunteers of Tennessee have now lost 28 of their last 29 games against Top 25 ranked teams. I wonder if there is any chance Florida could sneak into the poll that week.

Interesting Scores from Saturday

 

#6 Auburn 27, FCS Jacksonville State 20 (OT)

Toledo 16, Arkansas 12

Missouri 27, Arkansas State 20

Closing Argument

Given that Coach Mac was so livid and disgusted with the performance of the team Saturday, it is safe to say that he was not expecting anything nearly that difficult to watch. This might indicate that Florida is at least a little better than what it showed. Because if it isn’t, it’s going to be a really long season for Mac to be pretending to be astonished and miffed over the product on the field every single week. Since I don’t think he is going to hire a Claude Rains look-alike to tell the Florida media that he is shocked – SHOCKED – to see that embarrassing football is being played in the Swamp, I will wait to see what we look like the next two weeks before I conclude what kind of team we have this year.

After all, there are not many good SEC East teams this season. Maybe just two. I don’t even know how good Tennessee is, either – they looked awesome against Oklahoma for most of the night, but the Sooners also just looked inept all by themselves. Big Blame Bob has rolled out some bad teams at OU before – perhaps this is one of them. And the Vols lost anyway, in humiliating fashion. Kentucky, South Carolina, Vanderbilt and Missouri are all bad teams. Maybe worse than bad. Auburn and FSU both look bad so far. I mean, sweating out a pretty good ECU team is a lot better than being taken to overtime by an FCS school like Aubie was Saturday. Arkansas was supposed to be a monster this year and they lost to Toledo. Freaking Toledo. Missouri almost lost to Arkansas State. The Gators may not be very good, but I am struggling to find many other SEC East teams that are.

And all of those programs have had coaching staffs and recruiting machines in place for many years. Coach Mac and staff are just getting started. I am hoping by year’s end we will retrospectively see that this was a team that opponents had better beat early in the season because they will be a nails-tough out by the end of the year.

David Parker
One of the original columnists when Gator Country first premiered, David “PD” Parker has been following and writing about the Gators since the eighties. From his years of regular contributions as a member of Gator Country to his weekly columns as a partner of the popular defunct niche website Gator Gurus, PD has become known in Gator Nation for his analysis, insight and humor on all things Gator.

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