By now, you’ve heard over and over that spring games are double-edged swords. If one side of the ball looks good, it could be that it is going to perform well in the fall. It could also mean that the other side will disappoint. You can lean on the eye test to gauge individual performances, but it’s difficult to say how full-unit outcomes will translate to the regular season — especially in first years of systems when things are usually kept pretty vanilla.
With that in mind, here is a guide to how to watch the 2022 Orange and Blue game based on expectations going in. There has been the usual amount of reporting about sessions, both the 15-minute segments open to the media and the longer stretches that are supposed to be closed, that we can make some educated guesses about what will happen in the Swamp tonight.
Blue is for offense, Orange is for defense
Past staffs often put the starters in Orange and second teamers in Blue, leading to a long run of wins by the former. The rosters this year are not so clear-cut.
The Blue team has a lot of the top offensive performers. Expected starter Anthony Richardson is there. So are returning starting O-linemen Richard Gouraige, Ethan White, and Kingsley Eguakun, plus presumptive starter O’Cyrus Torrence and potential right tackle starter Michael Tarquin. The receiving corps has the top three returners by both catches and yards with Justin Shorter, Xzavier Henderson, and Trent Whittemore. Reported spring standout Lorenzo Lingard headlines the running backs, though Louisiana transfer Montrell Johnson will play for both teams.
Meanwhile the Orange squad has a lot of the defensive headliners. Brenton Cox, Gervon Dexter, and Princely Umanmielen are all up front. Returning starters Ventrell Miller and Amari Burney are at linebacker. The team’s lone lockdown corner Jason Marshall is there, as are returning safety/nickel starters Trey Dean, Rashad Torrence, and Tre’Vez Johnson.
It’s not an even split of offensive starters on Blue and defensive on Orange. Keon Zipperer, Joshua Braun, and potential breakout star Demarkcus Bowman will be in orange. The Blue team has some up-and-comers at linebacker who will push for major playing time like Diwun Black and Derek Wingo, plus a couple of guys who are competing for the corner spot opposite Marshall in Avery Helm and Jalen Kimber.
That said, it’s only a minor simplification to say that the Blue has the starting offense and the Orange has the starting defense. It’s not 100% right, but it’s close enough for a spring game.
Run over Pass
Your baseline assumption should be that the run game will look better than the passing game.
For the second season in a row, running back is probably the best top-to-bottom position grouping on offense. Three-fifths of the offensive line on the Blue side led one of the country’s best rushing attacks last year, and Torrence is an upgrade at right guard and Tarquin is probably a push at worst at right tackle. The Orange offensive line is far less proven, but then so are the Blue’s defensive line and linebackers.
Meanwhile, the spring reports suggested that Richardson and Jack Miller, the top two quarterbacks on the roster, needed time to round into shape. It’s understandable with Richardson coming off of surgery and Miller coming in fresh as a transfer. They supposedly have gotten a lot better over the session but still have their struggle points.
Receiver has also been a point of concern. UF has little balance with a lot of tall guys but only one shifty fast guy in converted defensive back Fenley Graham (Orange team). None of the guys who played a lot last year looked like future all-conference performers, and to date they apparently still don’t. There are some younger guys to watch like Ja’Quavion Fraziars (Orange) and Marcus Burke (Blue), though Burke was in a non-contact jersey on Tuesday when the media last saw practice.
On the flip side, the secondary is one of the most experienced places on the field. Everyone but Kaiir Elam returns, and the use of long rotations by the old staff means that there are few completely untested players in the two-deep. The comparatively unproven defensive line may look better simply because of coverage sacks and pressures.
If the rushing game doesn’t look a lot better than the passing game does, then we’ll need to evaluate exactly why. Maybe the defense plays super basic stuff and the quarterbacks and receivers take advantage of it, or maybe the DBs have a bad night. For now, though, the run game should look like the better aspect of the offense.
Napier era touches
Things will look and feel different in a lot of ways.
There will be an enormous amount of staff compared to all prior years. Just look at the bottom of the rosters to see how the coaches and staff will be split between teams. If you want to see some of the army that Billy Napier has been building, you’ll get your chance.
The offense will probably seem basic compared to the Dan Mullen era. While Napier’s scheme isn’t overly complicated in the way that college offenses have to be simpler than NFL attacks due to practice time constraints, it also lacks some of the mad genius flourishes that Mullen would put in for both good and ill. The new offense is more about executing on well established concepts with great players, and we’ll see how that’s progressing. Patrick Toney’s defense is the more cutting edge aspect of the Gators’ Xs and Os, but this early in the install we may not see a lot of new tricks.
There’s a good chance that more than just quarterbacks will be out there in non-contact jerseys. Napier’s Louisiana had a running back and at least one receiver in black non-contact jerseys in last year’s spring game. Given Napier’s complaints about a lack of depth in spots, we may see the same this year.
Non-contact backs and receivers have basically the same two-hand touch tackling rules that quarterbacks always get in spring games, which works well enough for a spring game. It is definitely less awkward after completions than when a tailback in a non-contact jersey runs up the middle in the red zone and linemen and linebackers have to basically pull up from the moment the ball is handed off.
In the end, it’ll just be nice to have an Orange and Blue game again after two years without. Hopefully this one sets a new format that won’t be changed three or four years down the road again.