So far this year, Florida’s offense has been running fewer plays than opposing offenses. In the case of the Ole Miss game it was a modest deficit of four: 74 plays run by the Gators versus 78 by the Rebels.
After the opener, the gap has widened considerably. South Carolina ran 30 more plays than Florida did (53 vs. 83), and Texas A&M ran 18 more (56 vs. 74).
Those latter numbers sound big. How big are they? And what should we make of them? Here are my best attempts to answer those questions.
It’s early
UF has played three games so far. Small data set sizes can allow for higher variance than larger ones.
Consider that while Florida has an average plays run deficit of 17.3 per game so far, they’re only fourth in the country. FIU is at -21.5 per game, FAU is at -18.0 per game (after playing a grand total of once), and Syracuse is at -17.8 per game.
By comparison, the largest season-long play deficit average in the past couple years was a tie between Kansas and Georgia Tech last fall at -12.8. Florida is unlikely to run fewer plays than its opponent does in every single game. When they do run fewer than their opponents, the counts will probably be closer to Ole Miss than to South Carolina or Texas A&M. That’s the concept of regression to the mean in action.
It doesn’t mean much for one game
There is no intrinsic worth for running a lot more or fewer plays in one particular game than the opponent does. The two games with the wide gaps in plays run from this year demonstrate that well. UF ran up a huge lead and sat on it against South Carolina, whereas it never led by more than 11 in what was a tied or one-score game for about 54 minutes against Texas A&M.
It’s not hard to find other examples of even more lopsided play counts in just the Dan Mullen era. The Gators had back-to-back play count deficits early in 2018 against Colorado State and Tennessee. Speaking of the former and this year’s South Carolina game, I guess Mike Bobo just draws it out of them.
Against the Rams, UF had a -39 net play count difference, 44 to 83. Florida had two non-offensive touchdowns that gave CSU more offensive possessions, a pair of three-play field goal drives after turnovers, and a one-play touchdown drive courtesy of Dameon Pierce. Against Tennessee it was down to a -26 net difference, 53 to 79. The Gators had a two-play TD drive, a pair of one-play TD drives, a one-play drive ended by fumble, and six three-and-outs.
The Tennessee game is perhaps most instructive here. Drives can end quickly for both good and ill. The play count at the end won’t tell you anything.
If you need more here, there are two other games with play count differences in the 30s from the first two Mullen years. In these instances, it was Florida racking up the plays. One was 2018 Vandy, in which the Gators ran 34 more plays than the Commodores did (92 vs. 58). UF had to come back from a large first-half deficit, but it did so methodically with seven drives of eight plays or more.
The other was 2019 LSU, when Florida ran 36 more plays than the Tigers did (84 vs. 48). Mullen took a strategy of slowing down Joe Burrow and company by possessing the ball for long stretches and shortening the game, engineering touchdown drives of 12, 11, 13, and eight plays while getting close to scoring twice more on a 12-play drive ended by a pick and a 15-play drive that turned it over on downs. Meanwhile, Burrow was getting scores on drives of two, five, four, eight, four, and four plays.
Strategy and game state makes a big difference in play count.
It might mean something over a season
You’ll recall I mentioned that the teams with the largest season-long play count deficits per game in the last two seasons were Kansas and Georgia Tech from a year ago. They both finished 3-9. San Jose State in 2018 nearly matched them at -12.5; they went 1-11.
A total of 12 teams averaged a play count deficit of 9.5 or more across 2018-19, and only two of them finished with winning records. Those were 2018 Stanford (-10.3, 9-4) and 2019 Miami University (-10.3, 8-6). Among the other ten teams, three went 4-8, three went 3-9, one went 1-11, and one went 0-12.
So it’s probably a bad sign for a team to consistently run a lot fewer plays than its opponents across a whole season. Sustaining that disadvantage is likely going to be more from going three-and-out a lot than from racking up non-offensive touchdowns and short fields after turnovers.
I’m not ready to hit the panic button on Florida yet because of the offense’s big-play ability. Mullen is getting guys open a lot, Kyle Trask is hitting them in stride, and they’re frequently avoiding or breaking tackles.
The much more obvious concern is the defense’s inability to get off the field. That problem caused the large play-count deficit against the Aggies, and it led to a loss.
The Gators can outscore teams this year in a way they haven’t been able to in over a decade, but they can only do it if the defense can get just a couple more stops per contest. Again, it’s still early, but I ran the Pythagorean expectation for UF so far this year, and it implies a final record of 6-4. Since there are only conference games in 2020, I give that more credence than I would after more typical three-game start of two cupcakes and Tennessee.
The Oregon Ducks of the Chip Kelly era were famous for light speed, quick-strike offense and not caring about play counts or time of possession. This year UF is averaging about 27:30 of possession, which is actually less than the average TOP for two of Kelly’s four Oregon teams as head coach.
But the Ducks under Kelly and the two years of momentum he imparted with Marcus Mariota for his successor Mark Helfrich (2009-14) had modest play count differences. The largest average deficit was 5.4 in 2013 in Helfrich’s first year, and Kelly’s final team actually had a play count advantage of 5.7 per game.
Those Oregon teams were wildly successful on the whole, but they didn’t run a huge play count deficit. Florida probably needs to get it closed to have the kind of success it wants in 2020, but it’ll come as a byproduct of just fixing the obvious problems. Play count difference might be a key indicator for the way this year’s UF team is playing, but it’s far more descriptive than prescriptive.