The Florida Gators will take the field again against Missouri this weekend, and it’s hard to know what to expect. Dan Mullen pre-announced that the team will be shorthanded for the contest a while ago, and there have been disclosed positive tests since then.
With UF not giving specifics on who exactly is testing positive or quarantining due to contact tracing — plus Mullen being more secretive than ever about injuries so as not to allow for process-of-elimination deduction of COVID-19 cases — we won’t know who’s going to play or not until game time. For that reason I can’t definitively spotlight players or positions where a change might be coming, but I can point out three bigger-picture things that I want to see this weekend coming out of the time off.
Defensive communication
How many times have we seen players looking at each other or pointing before the snap because they or someone else doesn’t know what to do? How many times have opponents gotten cheap yards on tempo because UF was not lined up on time?
I can’t give you an exact number, but the answer is “too many”.
There are a handful of freshmen, true and redshirt, who play noticeable amounts of snaps: Gervon Dexter, Jaelin Humphries, Rashad Torrence, Tre’Vez Johnson. The defense is veteran-heavy otherwise, with most primary rotation guys having been in the system two or three years. Some players are in new spots for this season, but they just had a couple weeks to study up.
Stadium capacities are low enough that noise is not a factor. The entire defensive coaching staff is the same as last year, and most of them were 2018 originals. In short, there is no reason for communication issues to persist anymore.
On Texas A&M’s final drive to win the game, UF gave up a 3rd & 1 conversion because the defense wasn’t lined up on time. Only three members of the defensive front were ready with their hands in the dirt against seven blockers. Giving up easy conversions can’t happen if Florida wants to achieve its goals from here on out.
Ironing out the communication problems will help with the next thing I’ll be looking for, which is:
Get a couple of extra stops
If the defense can just get two or three extra stops per game, it will have a cascading positive effect over the entire team.
The defense will be able to get more snaps out of its best players. UF rotates a lot as a matter of course, but it can rotate less often if it’s defending 65 plays a game instead of the current 78.3 average. Once drives start getting to the six, seven, eight plays kind of range, starters like Tedarrell Slaton and Zachary Carter will give way to backups.
Nothing against the reserves, but the starters are the starters because they’re the best players. Not allowing teams to sit on the ball for long drives will ensure that a greater percentage of plays will happen with the best defenders on the field.
In addition, getting a couple extra stops will help out the offense by taking some of the pressure off. Florida’s offense has been terrific. Its best game so far is probably the last one. A&M has the best defense the Gators have faced, and Kyle Trask and friends put up a robust 4.75 points per drive on them. It’s the best points per drive figure UF has had on the year.
And yet, it wasn’t enough because the defense couldn’t get a stop to save its life. The offense got points on 75% of their possessions — five touchdowns and one field goal in eight drives — but it had no margin for error. Trask took a sack that helped kill one drive, and Malik Davis fumbled on another. Those two mistakes were sufficient to cause the offense not to score enough points to make up for the defense’s ineptitude.
I am not saying the 2020 defense needs to turn into the 2009 defense overnight. It can’t and won’t. But if it can find a way to induce a couple more punts, it’ll make things better for everyone.
Keep the offense rolling
You never want to see an offense hit an off week when it’s been cruising like Florida’s had been in the first three games. We all know why the interruption happened, and it was even two weeks off instead of a typical season’s one for a scheduled idle Saturday.
As long as Trask is healthy and available, I think the offense can keep things going. The liberal use of the depth chart early on was a sign that Mullen and staff trust a sizable number of players on the team. The rotation tightened up on the road in College Station, but it might be able to open back up this week in a friendly environment. Either way, there are reinforcements if some number of guys on offense are the ones who are out.
This offense is a joy to watch, and Trask is on pace to set records and have one of the ten best seasons a UF quarterback has ever had. I want to see an absence of rust against a defense that just doesn’t have the talent that the UF offense does.
Missouri‘s defense is competent, if not spectacular. The most comparable offense to Florida’s that it has faced is Alabama’s, and the Tide dropped 28 on them in the first half before coasting to the finish (and fumbling it away twice). If the Gators haven’t lost any of their timing and precision, it should be another contest where the passing game does what it wants most of the time.
The potential for a get-right game is there. If the offense hasn’t lost a step, the defense’s communication improves, and a few more defensive stops happen, UF should remind everyone why they had lofty preseason expectations.