The Florida Gators will have to play their best game yet to defeat the LSU Tigers on Saturday night. Here are the biggest things about the game that will define the pre-Georgia segment of UF’s 2019 schedule.
A tough task
ESPN’s Chris Fallica tweeted out a stat that it’s very hard to win an upset over a ranked team at home and then beat another ranked team as an underdog the next week. With the Tigers nearly two-touchdown favorites this weekend, that is the task facing the Gators.
Perspective on Florida situation at LSU this week. Dating back to 2010, last 12 ranked teams to pull a home upset and face another ranked team as an underdog the following week: 1-11 SU, 4-8 ATS. Only win '14 Ole Miss at A&M week after Rebels upset Alabama.
— Chris Fallica (@chrisfallica) October 9, 2019
These things don’t come up often, since even the toughest schedules only feature five or six ranked teams. In the 9+ years Fallica’s research covers, he only has 12 instances to look at.
You will be able to think of some Florida home upset wins, like over Ole Miss in 2015 or over LSU in 2012. After beating the Rebels, the Gators played unranked Missouri. After beating the Tigers, they went on the road against unranked Vanderbilt. Again: these situations just don’t happen much.
The closest thing I could find in recent history to this back-to-back set of games is in 2006 when the Gators played top ten-ranked LSU at home followed by a road trip to top-ten Auburn. Florida beat the Bayou Bengals before dropping the game on the Plains, but UF was the higher-ranked team in both contests. In 2012 they also played consecutive top ten opponents in South Carolina at home and then the Cocktail Party in Jacksonville. Again, they won the game in the Swamp but dropped the game away from home.
The 2006 example is the most instructive and applicable. The week after a huge home win, the Gators lost a tough road game in a harsh environment. They may have needed some improbable help late (thanks, UCLA), but that loss ultimately didn’t impede their ability to accomplish their goals for the season.
Keep contain and carry on
The revamped LSU offense is for real. It’s not just them ranking up points and yards in garbage time either. If you take that phase of the game out, most of their statistics actually improve since Joe Burrow is so much better than his backup Myles Brennan.
One that does go the wrong way for the Tigers is sack rate (sacks divided by total pass plays). In both standard and passing downs, LSU’s sack rate allowed rises about a percentage point when you toss out garbage time. Overall, it goes up from 4.57% to 5.56%. Even as Burrow has taken multiple sacks more than he hasn’t, including four against Texas, the Tigers throw so much now that it keeps the rate fairly low.
Burrow has been excellent under pressure so far, so it may not matter a ton whether the Gators are sacking him on average 1.1 times in 20 pass plays (5.56%) or 0.91 times in 20 pass plays (4.57%). What is probably more important is keeping him in the pocket regardless of whether they sack him or not.
Taking out sacks, Burrow ran for 6.6 yards per carry against Texas and 7.3 yards per carry against the best SP+ defense LSU has faced in Utah State. He’s far from a pocket statue and can do real damage on the ground.
Florida has given up some big plays on quarterback runs. Towson’s Tom Flacco was the worst of it, but Kentucky’s Sawyer Smith and Auburn’s Bo Nix had some good scrambles too. Florida will have a tough enough time of it stopping the bulk of LSU’s offense. They don’t need to make things worse by overrunning Burrow off the edge chasing a sack and letting him jog for eight yards to pick up 3rd & 7.
If the Texas game is any real indication, you can sack Burrow with blitzes. Florida may try that if the secondary is handling the receivers well enough, and they just might if Terrace Marshall, who missed the Utah State game and has been in and out of practice this week, can’t go. They just need to make sure that they don’t leave any lanes for Burrow to escape, because he will rack up yardage on the ground.
Real resistance
I mentioned SP+ (formerly S&P+) defense a little bit ago. Let’s expand on that a bit.
Burrow has completed more than 70% of his passes and thrown for at least 9.1 yards per attempt in every game this year. His opponents were FCS Northwestern State along with Georgia Southern (SP+ defense rank: 73), Texas (66), Vanderbilt (109), and Utah State (40).
Last year he hit both those same marks three times and topped the latter a fourth time in the bowl. The opponents were Ole Miss (90th in 2018 SP+ defense), Arkansas (49th), Rice (125th), and UCF (47th).
Just going off of the eye test, Burrow looks a lot better this year than last year. The entire LSU offense is indeed more sophisticated than it was last year too and ranks 3rd in SP+ offense against 30th a year ago. It is worth noting, however, that Burrow’s incredible performances haven’t come against anything tougher than a Group of 5 defense presently ranked 40th.
As of right now, Florida’s 2019 defense is ranked fifth in SP+ defense.
Keep Trask clean
As a number of game previews elsewhere have pointed out, the middle of the field appears to be the soft spot for the LSU passing defense. That’s a good thing for Florida to hear, as one of the most distinctive things about Kyle Trask versus Feleipe Franks is his willingness to go over the middle. Freddie Swain made a ton of huge plays over the middle against Auburn, and Josh Hammond’s touchdown catch against the Tigers also was a middle throw.
It took Texas a little while to catch on, but it increasingly found open space over the middle whether Sam Ehlinger completed or even attempted a pass there or not.
Florida has some quick passes for the middle area, but Trask will need some time to hit some of the intermediate routes. Keeping the pass rush away from him is the most important thing there, since he’s not terribly mobile. In fact, LSU may drop linebackers in the middle more against UF than it did against UT because Ehlinger is a real run threat where Trask is not.
One notable feature of the LSU defense is that it doesn’t force many fumbles. The Tigers as a team have only done it three times in five games so far. Trask fumbles while getting sacked too much, so protecting him is as much about turnover prevention as anything. The Tigers probably won’t force more than one fumble in the game via anything other than sacks.
We keep saying that Florida can’t win games while turning it over as much as it has, but it has survived it only because they’ve turned opponents over at an even higher rate. LSU has lost just six turnovers on the year, so they’re not prone to coughing it up. I have my doubts as to whether the Tigers will turn it over more than twice.
Trask has done a good job of avoiding picks overall, so if they can just keep the defense away from him in the pocket, that should help close down the main avenue for Florida turnovers.