UF defense trying to cut down on explosive plays, create more turnovers

Two of the best statistics to evaluate how well a defense is playing are explosive plays and turnovers.

By preventing huge chunk plays, a defense forces the offense to string together long drives in order to score. By making them run more plays, you increase the likelihood of the offense making a mistake.

Generating turnovers is important for obvious reasons. It gives your offense more opportunities to score and allows you to not have to defend as many plays.

If a defense does a good job of limiting opposing offenses’ big plays and produces big plays of its own, the other statistics used to measure a defense will usually be good as well.

So far this season, the Gators’ defense hasn’t been good in either area, and that’s contributed to them ranking 12th in the SEC in total defense and eighth in scoring defense. They’ll look to reverse those trends starting Saturday at Kentucky.

If you need an example of just how much a few explosive plays can skew things, look no further than UF’s game against Tennessee last week. The Volunteers gained 423 yards and averaged more than 18 yards per completion. The perception among fans after the game seemed to be that the defense played poorly.

However, 42.3 percent of Tennessee’s yards for the entire game came on four plays. Both of their touchdowns came on big passing plays. Florida played pretty solid defense for 64 plays, but the four bad plays caused a bunch of damage and allowed Tennessee to take the lead at one point.

UF coach Dan Mullen has challenged his team to be mentally tougher this week and maintain their focus throughout the game.

“I think to be a great team, you have to eliminate those [explosive plays],” Mullen said. “You eliminate all of those, you’re going to be a great team. When you eliminate every mental error and play at a high level, you’re going to be a great team.”

The positive news is that the explosive plays they gave up to Tennessee were the result of correctable mistakes. The first touchdown came after multiple missed tackles on a third-down screen play. The second came after backup safety Mordecai McDaniel got caught with his eyes in the backfield instead of on the receiver that he was supposed to cover.

It’s not like the Volunteers made those plays because they were bigger, faster and stronger than the Gators. It’s a focus and discipline issue, not a talent issue.

“The common theme would be attention to detail and the exactness you have to play with every play,” Mullen said. “Now, there’s not one thing you pinpoint in each play and say, ‘It’s the same thing on all four plays.’ The thing is, if you’re not executing and 100 percent locked in on every single play, the other team has an opportunity for an explosive.

“I look at their explosive plays this past week, their three biggest plays of the game, two resulted in touchdowns. Give them credit. They have to execute them, but, all three of them, we could have the opportunity to defend those; we just didn’t put ourselves in position or had a missed assignment or poor alignment on one and poor technique on another.”

Nose tackle Antonio Valentino agrees with Mullen’s assessment and thinks that they just need to execute their individual assignments more consistently.

“I hate to bring up the Alabama game because everybody seems to want to bring up the Alabama game, but, after we settled down and played our game how we’re supposed to, did our jobs within the framework of the defense, did what we were supposed to do, calmed down, not let the moment control us, not letting the environment control us, I think we’re a very good defense,” Valentino said. “I think we’re very physically tough, mentally tough.

“Coach [Todd] Grantham talks about it all the time is that we have to have 11 guys every snap doing their job, and, if we don’t, somewhere, there’s a hole in the defense. If I’m not in my ‘A’ gap how I should be or in my ‘B’ gap how I should be, it’s probably going to be a touchdown, and that’s just the reality of the situation. It’s SEC ball. You can’t make mistakes in any game. Pretty much any game in this league is win or go home, so to speak. That’s kind of the mentality that you’ve got to have.”

Grantham is pleased with how quickly his players are making adjustments and learning from previous mistakes. For example, during the third quarter, Tennessee ran the same play that Alabama scored a touchdown on a week prior. This time, safety Trey Dean defended it perfectly.

Grantham is confident that they’ll clean up their mental errors as the season progresses, such as the one that saw McDaniel give up a 75-yard touchdown.

“When you have young guys, you know things are going to happen,” he said. “The key is really trying to stay positive, coaching guys, developing guys because the thing that will happen is that play will show up again. Just like the first play of the game was a copycat from Alabama in the first drive of their game when they got an explosive play on a screen. That was really the first play Tennessee ran, and we stopped it for a no-gain play.

“So, any time you have things that maybe you didn’t execute the way that you want them, they’re going to show up again. So, the good thing is we’ll have an opportunity [in the] next couple weeks to make that play on that particular play you’re talking about.”

Dean said that eliminating explosive plays isn’t just something they need to do on game days; it needs to be a daily commitment during practice.

“You give up big plays in practice, you’re going to give up big plays in the game,” Dean said. “So, I think it’s eye discipline, little things that we’ve got to correct. It’s nothing catastrophic, but I think we’re going to get those corrected, and we’re going to be the defense that we know we can be.”

Meanwhile, the Gators have only forced three turnovers this season, an interception by Kaiir Elam against South Florida and two fumble recoveries by Gervon Dexter. One of Dexter’s recoveries came on a dropped snap that UF’s defense had little to do with. They haven’t forced a single turnover in either of their two SEC games.

Mullen isn’t overly concerned about the lack of turnovers at this point. He prefers to evaluate the way they do things rather than the end results. He thinks they’re doing a good job of pressuring the quarterback and executing their assignments in the secondary. They’re doing what they need to do to create turnovers, but their opponents have done a good job of taking care of the ball so far.

He believes that the turnovers will eventually come if they keep playing how they’ve been playing.

“We’re getting after people,” Mullen said. “To create turnovers, the offense has to make mistakes, too. You look at that type of stuff happens. I don’t know if that’s that big a deal. I think as we continue to be disruptive, create negative-yardage plays, put offenses behind the chains, they’re going to start to come because that’s going to force offenses to make mistakes.”

He might have a point. Since he and Grantham came to UF prior to the 2018 season, the Gators have produced 68 turnovers, which is tied for the fourth-most in the SEC and the 18th-most in the country over that span. This scheme has generated turnovers in bunches before, so they’re capable of doing it again.

You can also be optimistic by looking at UF’s ratio of interceptions to passes broken up. Usually, the national average winds up being around one interception for every four passes broken up. So far this year, the Gators have broken up 13 passes but intercepted just one. Surely, they’ll get on a role here soon and draw closer to that 4-to-1 mark.

It might seem like an overly simplistic explanation for the defense’s struggles, but the Gators need to take the ball away from offenses more and keep them from gaining a large number of yards at one time when they do have the ball.

Once they do that, the defense should return to the form that their fans expect.

Ethan Hughes
Ethan was born in Gainesville and has lived in the Starke, Florida, area his entire life. He played basketball for five years and knew he wanted to be a sportswriter when he was in middle school. He’s attended countless Gators athletic events since his early childhood, with baseball being his favorite sport to attend. He’s a proud 2019 graduate of the University of Florida and a 2017 graduate of Santa Fe College. He interned with the University Athletic Association’s communications department for 1 ½ years as a student and also wrote for InsideTheGators.com for two years before joining Gator Country in 2021. He is a long-suffering fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars. You can follow him on Twitter @ethanhughes97.