Florida is facing Kentucky in a don’t-call-it-a-revenge-game on Saturday night. With the Wildcats having played only Toledo and Eastern Michigan and beat them by a combined score of 76-41, it’s likely you’ve not watched much if at all of UK yet. That’s all right. Here is a rundown of what to watch for in this matchup.
Familiarity
Kentucky has lost most of the big names from last year’s team either to the NFL (Benny Snell, Josh Allen) or injury (Terry Wilson). The Cats’ best receiver Lynn Bowden is still around, but many Gator fans would be hard pressed to name too many more players in blue.
The thing is, even with the 2018 stars gone, Kentucky won’t look much different. The offense wasn’t built around Snell; he was just an absurdly good fit for what the Wildcats want to do. OC Eddie Gran was part of Tommy Tuberville’s loyal cabal of assistants in the 2000s when Auburn was consistently near the top of the SEC West (right up until it wasn’t).
Though Gran has kept up to date since then, that old kind of power running is in his DNA. They will do many of the same things with A.J. Rose as they did with Snell, although Bowden may get some of the direct Wildcat snaps given his dynamic ability.
Florida may find it hard to run again because the defensive front is mostly intact save Allen. Toledo running back Bryant Kobak ran for a decent 4.6 yards per carry, but he did so at a terrible 23.1% success rate (43% is about average). EMU’s backs averaged 1.3 yards per carry.
You’d sure like to think the Gators have a better offensive line than a couple of MAC teams, but the first two levels are the strength of the Wildcat defense.
Franks
It’s not terribly exciting as a writer to talk about how the quarterback is the key player in a matchup, but Feleipe Franks is the key UF offensive player in this matchup.
Kentucky’s secondary is young and green thanks to personnel losses from last year. Toledo starter Mitchell Guadagni wasn’t terribly efficient at a 35.7% success rate on pass plays, but that was because he was throwing downfield quite a bit. He connected on enough of those passes to come out with a 10.2 yards per attempt rate before he left the game to injury. EMU’s Mike Glass was the opposite, only getting 6.4 yards per attempt but at a highly efficient 50.9% success rate on pass plays.
Further, the quarterbacks were on balance the best rushers in those games against the Wildcats. Guadagni ran for 83 yards on 11 non-sack carries (7.5 per rush) with three runs of at least ten yards. His success rate on those was only 36.4%, but that’s 13 percentage points higher than Kobak’s rate.
Glass was again less explosive but more efficient on the ground. He piled up 53 yards on eight non-sack carries (6.6 per rush) with a success rate of 62.5%. Most of Guadagni’s best runs were scrambles, though his long touchdown run was a planned quarterback rush. I did not get to see UK’s match with EMU, so I don’t know if he was moving the ball with scrambles or called runs.
Either way, the Gator offense will go as Franks goes. He will probably find it easier to throw downfield this week than last, funnily enough, since Kentucky won’t be dropping seven or eight into coverage on every play. They’ll be dropping four or five, and the guys they drop have had an alarming tendency to lose track of receivers at times. Not as badly as UT-Martin did on Tyrie Cleveland’s touchdown, but Florida’s excellent fleet of receivers will find some open grass. Franks needs to find them and hit them.
I don’t expect a ton of running room, since Kentucky keys on stopping the ground game. Franks moving the ball with his feet will have to supplement the 3.5-4 yards per rush the running backs will probably have. A winning play will likely be sending three or four guys on vertical routes, and if none come open, having Franks take off and get some easy yardage in the space between the levels of the defense.
Don’t let Smith win the game
Kentucky’s ground game will get its yards. It may not have a Snell this year — he stands alone in program history for a reason — but it has replaced him with a good one-two punch.
Rose is the efficiency back, averaging less than five yards per carry but with a 57.6% success rate. Through two games, he has almost twice the carries as any other single Wildcat player. All-Name Team candidate Kavosiey Smoke is the explosive back, as he averaged a combined 9.4 yards per carry against the two MAC opponents. He’s not been an all-or-nothing guy either, as his personal success rate is a robust 61.1%.
Smoke only has one more carry on the year than Wilson does, as the quarterback run is still a big part of the offense. Troy transfer Sawyer Smith is not as dynamic a rusher as Wilson is, but he’s still a good athlete. His first commitment was actually to Alabama baseball as a high school sophomore before he focused on football.
Smith became Troy’s starter in the second half of 2018 after an injury to the starter. He basically had great games and bad games with little in between. The quality of the defense was largely the determining factor. He mostly faced bad defenses in Sun Belt play, but App State and its 20th-ranked S&P+ defense held him to 51.5% completions and a 90.12 passing efficiency. His worst game was actually the week before against Texas State and its 73rd-ranked S&P+ defense.
Smith has a better line and skill position players this year, so that will help him out. The key for Florida is to not let him beat them through the air. Wilson’s arm was the deciding factor a year ago, as he easily had his best passing efficiency game of the season against UF except for when he faced the corpse of Bobby Petrino’s Louisville.
There are reasons to think Florida’s defense will fare better this year. The aftermath of the 2018 Kentucky loss led to Todd Grantham promoting Adam Shuler and Kyree Campbell to starter along the defensive line, changes that noticeably improved the unit’s play. Snell is gone, and he had his second-highest yards per carry rate in 2018 against the Gators at 6.48. Smith has yet to play meaningful snaps against a Power 5 opponent.
UF is unlikely to shut down UK’s rushing attack, so the key will be not letting Smith supplement it with big passing plays like Wilson did a year ago. I don’t think Kentucky can beat Florida if its offense is purely one-dimensional.
Florida is the favored team for a reason, but the gambling line on the game is also in the single digits for a reason. Bad old incompetent Kentucky football appears to be gone, aside from a few coverage busts from a new secondary still trying to find its way.
UF probably can’t sack its way out of trouble caused by mental mistakes like it did against Miami, and it’ll need to show more sense of urgency than it did early against UT-Martin. Play a good, solid fundamental game and the Gators will leave with a win. Mess around some more, and this game will be in doubt until the end.