Florida’s season-opening win over FAU provided some answers but possibly even more questions about how the 2021 Gators’ campaign will play out. In a reversal from a year ago, the defense seems to be in a much more knowable state than the offense. Let’s look at the high level takeaways that illustrate the situation.
Passing game identity
One of the more common criticisms of less-than-stellar offenses is that they don’t have an identity. They run a bunch of stuff without an obvious rhyme or reason, and the lack of coherence makes it hard for everyone to tell what the overarching strategy is.
UF’s offense doesn’t lack an identity. It has one: run, run, run. It has two dual threat quarterbacks who are superb ball carriers, goes five deep at tailback, and has an offensive line that, for the first time in forever, made a G5 defensive front look like a G5 defensive front.
The passing game, though? That half of the offense appears to lack an identity.
For one thing, the distribution of passes was strange. Jacob Copeland was supposed to be the clear No. 1 receiver. He got three targets, all in the first quarter. Xzavier Henderson only had one, a pass interference-negated drop in the fourth quarter. The only receiver that Dan Mullen seemed to make a point to get the ball to was Justin Shorter. Dameon Pierce had more targets than the rest of the running backs combined, and the tight ends had zero targets. And, in one of the most puzzling decisions of the night, Anthony Richardson was a target on a pre-halftime Hail Mary.
Some of this is actually explicable. There wasn’t an emphasis on deep passing at all, so Copeland and Henderson’s games didn’t really fit all that well with the game plan. The tight ends only occasionally did anything other than block or serve as a safety valve, so they didn’t have a ton of opportunities to catch passes. And then Richardson, according to Mullen, has taken over Kyle Pitts’s spot on the Hail Mary team for being tall with reasonably good hands.
The receiver with the best outing was probably Rick Wells, who not coincidentally led the wideouts with five receptions. He used his body well to box out a defender on an early slant, catching a fastball from Jones in tight coverage. It’s in times like those where you can see the rapport he built with the Gators’ new starter for literally years as a reserve. Unfortunately, Wells appeared to be the least adept at blocking of the top handful of receivers, a factor that will limit his snap counts and usage until it improves.
I think Mullen was experimenting a bit with this game, trying out player combinations and strategies to see what works well in games. On the first two drives he was definitely calling a straight game, leaning on the run and punishing crowded boxes with quick outside passes. It was less clear after that how much he was tinkering versus going for the jugular, but in an opener against a clearly overmatched opponent with plenty of new faces around, that kind of thing is appropriate.
Quarterback completeness
Mullen says Jones can do more of the offense, but he also said that Richardson graded out better against FAU because of the bonuses he got for explosive plays. It’s not a bad first summary of the difference between the two.
You can tell Jones knows what’s going on when he has time, generally. He was diagnosing the defense pre-snap and even changed some plays at the line. It’s part of what makes his interceptions stick out so much, because they were bad as far as those go. They weren’t tip drills or spectacular plays by defenders. His first one consisted of staring down his first option and ignoring the check down. His second was one of the few plays where he had all longer routes with rocker-step play action on top, and he underthrew a well-covered Wells.
If it felt like you could really tell when he was going through progressions and when he was locking onto his first read, it’s because he had a habit of turning his shoulders while scanning the field. Most quarterbacks keep the same stance and only turn their heads, but Jones used more of his body to do it. It made him late and also telegraphs to the defense what he’s looking at. If I’m a safety or linebacker dropped into coverage, maybe as a robber, I wouldn’t worry about the ball going where Jones’s shoulders aren’t pointing. He didn’t do that every time, but it happened often enough to be noticeable.
Richardson didn’t get many throws before he was tossing it to third stringers and walk ons, and he was half good in that area. His timing and receiver choice were better than Jones’s were. His ball placement was scattershot at best, though. Wells bailed him out on a terrible screen pass on the run for his first completion, and his long one to Weston was even more underthrown than Jones’s second pick. His deep tosses after that were all overthrown, though his last one to Kahleil Jackson might’ve been hauled in by a Shorter or a Copeland.
Mullen said Richardson missed some reads, and one example is an open Ethan Pouncey underneath a covered Ja’Quavion Fraziars on a badly overthrown deep ball to open the final drive. If Richarson wasn’t so electric running the ball, the word everyone would be using for him is “raw”. Not that it’s necessarily an accurate descriptor, of course. Mullen also said Richardson can run the entire offense, if not as well as he thinks Jones can.
As long as the Gators can run the ball, they have two capable quarterbacks. But FAU could stop the run somewhat reliably when it loaded up against it, leaving open the question of whether either signal caller can use his arm to punish a better defense that also tries its all to stymie the ground game.
Tentative step forward on defense
Some of the problems with last year’s defense already appear to have solutions.
Most basically, there were zero times when the offense snapped the ball with Gator defenders standing around and pointing because they didn’t know what they were doing. FAU caught a few players off guard with tempo on one play shortly before the half, but that’ll happen to anyone — especially in Game 1. That aside, though, the communication problems seem fixed.
An underrated aspect of 2020’s performance decline was the lack of a dominant pass rusher up front. Jachai Polite was that in 2018, and both Jonathan Greenard and (when healthy) Jabari Zuniga were that in 2019. Zachary Carter led the team with just five sacks a year ago, well below Polite’s 11 and Greenard’s 9.5.
On Saturday, Carter had three by himself. He looked as big as a defensive tackle but as fast and agile as an end, and the Owls had no answers for him when he went all-out after the passer. He might have another to go with him in Khris Bogle, who picked up a sack of his own on a terrifyingly quick rush off the edge. Todd Grantham’s defense doesn’t work if quarterbacks aren’t being harassed, and N’Kosi Perry was harassed quite a bit.
As for other issues, there was visibly more press coverage outside — even if it wasn’t as much as some fans would like — and Ty’Ron Hopper appears to be the complete middle linebacker that the Gators have lacked since all the Muschamp recruits at the position left. Ventrell Miller remains a reliable run stopper and Mohamoud Diabate has some pass rush bona fides of his own, but Hopper was effective in limited pass coverage duties on top of plugging gaps.
The performance as a whole was reminiscent of the 2019 defense. The ’19 unit shut out three overmatched opponents, and while the Gators didn’t blank the Owls, FAU was a better team than either FCS opponent and maybe even Vandy of two years ago. Besides, FAU didn’t start its first scoring drive until midway through the fourth quarter.
It’s asking too much for the defense to get back to the 2019 level in just one year after 2020’s debacle, especially with how many new faces there are everywhere. It didn’t get there either, allowing some garbage time points and several extended drives instead of one or two. A more accurate passer would’ve had a field day such as we saw against even that ’19 defense a couple of times. Regardless, there were green shoots on the defensive side that could grow into something more impressive as the season goes along.