You know it, I know it, everyone knows it: Florida can’t accomplish its goals for 2021 without a much better performance from its defense. We won’t know a lot for certain after the Gators face off with the Owls of Florida Atlantic, but we should get a good idea as to whether things might be pointed in the right direction or not.
To begin with, the communication issues from a year ago have to be mostly absent. Maybe there’s one such problem early in the game involving a young member of the secondary and the home crowd being loud. There will be a blown coverage or two, as those just happen in Week 1 and three of the five back end defenders on the top line of the opening depth chart haven’t played a whole lot.
But Florida must not have players visibly not knowing what to do when the ball is snapped. It’s a basic part of football that most P5 teams never experience except maybe when going up against a light speed tempo team. It’s table stakes, in other words, and there is zero excuse for a repeat of 2020 in this department.
Beyond that, this should be the kind of game where a Todd Grantham defense thrives. It’s not just about having a talent advantage, but also because the opposing quarterback isn’t a good passer.
The name of FAU’s starter should sound familiar. N’Kosi Perry played three years at Miami before transferring this year, platooning in 2018 before starting for a short stretch in 2019 and playing backup to D’Eriq King in 2020. He appeared in just five games a year ago, with by far most of his action coming after King went down to injury in the Cheez-It Bowl.
Perry’s career completion rate is 52%, with him connecting on about 51% of throws as a freshman and 53.5% as a sophomore. He managed 55.6% in the bowl a year ago. That’s progress, I suppose, but that trend isn’t moving up quickly enough to be a problem for UF. The only thing consistent about him is his inconsistency, and in general quarterbacks don’t suddenly get tremendously more accurate in Year 4 when they struggled mightily in Years 1 through 3.
Say what you want about Grantham, but his Florida defenses have generally not given up a ton of points to teams with bad quarterback play.
In 2018, UF allowed 30+ points to three teams. They were quarterbacked by Jake Fromm (2nd in the SEC in passing efficiency), Drew Lock (4th), and Jake Bentley (5th), and all were above 140 in PE. The loss to Kentucky that year was about not stopping the run; the ‘Cats rolled up 303 yards on the ground, and Terry Wilson got just over a third of his yards on the day from a single busted coverage.
In 2019 the Gators only gave up 30+ points once, to Joe Burrow’s LSU. The other loss on the year was to Georgia again, with Fromm fourth in the SEC with a passing efficiency above 140. Against teams with subpar QB play, the defense blanked Vandy, gave up only field goals to Missouri, and only allowed points to Auburn on drives of no more than 32 yards. South Carolina managed to put up 27, but one TD was from a short field and another was in garbage time.
Then there was last year’s defense, the cause of so much heartburn. They faced four teams with starting quarterbacks in the bottom half of the conference in passing efficiency. Against them they allowed ten points to Kentucky, 17 to Vandy, 24 to South Carolina (which had three scoring drives of less than 50 yards), and 21 offensive points to Georgia (seven of which came on a 75-yard run). They also held Tennessee and its unappealing QB options to 19 points and only gave up 17 to Mizzou and its promising-ish freshman Connor Bazelak.
Even with a unit that everyone thought was bad, that’s three games under 20 points allowed and two more at no more than 24 with some asterisks about short fields and explosive plays. If you roll an ineffective quarterback out in front of Grantham, he will probably find a way to stymie you. A person can’t be a defensive coordinator on the major college level as long as Grantham has been without being able to do that very thing with regularity.
All this is to say, I don’t expect FAU to be able to score many points with its regular offense. I don’t think the UF defense will get all the way back to its 2019 level in just one year, so I’m not predicting a shutout (which the ’19 unit pulled off three times). On top of the defense possibly needing to just get their feet back under them, there will room for busts or special teams shenanigans or points off of turnovers.
But if some overmatched team is going to come into the Swamp in Week 1 and put a scare into the Gators by method of shootout, it’s not going to be one with a quarterback like Perry. He just doesn’t fit the profile of someone who will really challenge a Grantham defense, even without giving last year’s unit any grace or caveats for the pandemic.
The Florida defense can’t prove that it fixed everything with an excellent performance on Saturday, but it can show that it’s on its way back by holding the Owls to a number in the single digits or teens. Allow anything more than that, and it’ll be a bad, bad sign for the long term job security of the Gators’ defensive boss.