By Will Miles
Shots fired: Mullen finally beats Kirby
In last week’s musings, I posited that this was Dan Mullen’s shot to finally get over the Georgia hump.
Well, whether or not he felt that pressure, Dan Mullen got over that hump in a big way, leaving Georgia fans questioning their QB, their coach and their ability to compete long-term with Florida.
Now, you never want to draw too much from one game. Georgia had a bunch of guys out, particularly on defense. And the Gators found ways to keep the Bulldogs in the game. But this game wasn’t even remotely as close as the 16-point score might indicate.
Instead of folding when Georgia jumped up 14-0, this team pulled together and went on a 38-7 run, with the 7 points coming on a pick-six due to an incorrectly run route. It was clear that by halftime the only question was whether Mullen would pour it on or whether the Gators would coast to a victory.
The fact that they did the latter might be cause for concern, but a 16-point win over a hated rival is always a big deal. And regardless of the injury situation, you are what your record says you are.
And in 2020, Mullen is 1-0 against Kirby Smart.
Duh, QB Matters
As if we needed further confirmation that QB is the most important position on the field, Saturday’s game just brought that into even sharper focus.
The Gators threw for 341 yards in the first half. Georgia only gained 277 yards in the entire game. Kyle Pitts was a mismatch one-on-one and created mismatches when Georgia decided to double-team him. The running backs did a terrific job of running routes and beating linebackers in one-on-one coverage.
But the man pulling the trigger was the star of the show. One of the things I’ve become more and more convinced of is that, at the college level, you can measure a QB by how often he throws into traffic. If a QB has a strong arm and is constantly fitting the ball into tight spaces (hello Jamie Newman), scouts love what he can do. That’s for a reason, after all. You have to fit the ball into tight windows at the NFL level.
But at the college level, there is a limit to how many coverages a defense can roll out there and how athletic the players on the field are. If a QB can locate his mismatch, it’s almost always going to seem like he’s throwing to a guy who’s uncovered.
Finding that mismatch is not easy. There’s a reason why Florida has cycled through QBs like pez over the past decade. But Kyle Trask is uniquely talented at doing just that, and so if it seems like he was throwing to wide open receivers or receivers who had beaten their man one-on-one, it’s because he was.
Stetson Bennett and D’Wan Mathis missed some throws they should have hit. But I guarantee if you go back and look at the film, they also missed open guys who they didn’t throw the ball to because they didn’t read the defense correctly. That rarely happens to Kyle Trask, and it’s why he’s been so successful and why Florida walked away with a victory.
Trask for Heisman
Trask hadn’t really had “a moment” yet. But I’d submit that after throwing that pick-six, being down 21-14 against the number one defense in the SEC, he finally had one.
First, he hit Nay’Quan Wright perfectly in stride on a wheel route for a 50-yard gain. Then, he looked off the safety and hit Kyle Pitts over Georgia corner Tyson Campbell for a touchdown.
You suspect Georgia felt a little bit deflated after giving up its 14-0 lead, but then started to feel like things were going its way after the pick-6. But Trask being able to take Florida down the field immediately after that interception cemented what we suspected after watching the first quarter: Georgia had no answers for this Gators offense.
Nobody’s going to anoint the QB of a 4-1 team the Heisman frontrunner at this point. But that loss to Texas A&M is looking better and better as the Aggies keep putting up wins. And the showdown with Alabama awaits for Trask to have another moment.
Trask has gotten some recognition, but it seems as though there is still a proclivity to focus on Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence because those guys came to their schools as a “name”. But if the Gators go 10-1 with a win over Alabama in the SEC Championship game, the recognition is going to come for Trask.
And perhaps more importantly, a chance to play for a championship will come as well.
Pitts out?
The hit on Kyle Pitts in the second quarter was a reminder of why I believe the targeting rule is necessary.
Those sorts of hits used to be completely commonplace. The fact that it made me wince as much as it did when it happened live is an indication that the way I watch football has changed. It also made me reflect on why we don’t see those sorts of hits anymore.
I get that the targeting rule can be messy. It’s often misapplied or confusing to fans and players. Sometimes something that seems obvious isn’t called and sometimes something borderline is called. I wouldn’t be averse to a soccer-type solution where a hit like the one Cine delivered on Pitts would be an immediate red card while other, less violent collisions would receive a 15-yard penalty and a yellow card.
But the targeting rule isn’t about the penalty. It’s about eliminating that very play from the game as much as is possible. Defenders are now taught not to launch into receivers because it’s not worth the penalty. And while I was skeptical when it was instituted, there is zero doubt in my mind that the hit on Pitts are now a very rare exception rather than the rule.
All of that is good for college football. It is good because it allows skill players like Pitts to showcase their skills rather than worrying about getting drilled in the head. It’s good because it protects players who don’t have the same protections as NFL players.
I sincerely hope Pitts is okay. I hope the hit by Cine was unintentional. But the fact that we don’t talk about hits like these except on very rare occasions is a win for college football.
Running backs turned receivers
Coming into this season – and perhaps in this very space – I expressed concern that Florida was going to have to figure out how to replace Lamical Perine. My concern didn’t really stem from the running game exclusively, but rather the fact that Perine was a complete back as a receiver and in pass protection as well.
Dan Mullen used Perine and Pitts last year to create mismatches against the defense. By splitting those two out wide after forcing the defense to bring in its base defense, Florida could virtually guarantee that it would get a linebacker in coverage.
Mullen schemed things a little bit differently against Georgia, but there were the three Gators running backs combining for 10 catches and over 200 yards through the air. Every time you looked up, a Florida running back was being trailed by a Georgia linebacker. And one of the times when Georgia’s linebacker actually picked up the Gator running back, that allowed receiver Justin Shorter to sneak over the middle for the opening TD reception.
Previous to this game, Florida has relied on Dameon Pierce mostly in the running game, Malik Davis mostly in the passing game and Nay’Quan Wright as a change-of-pace back for a drive or two. But against Georgia, all three were active in the passing game as well.
This has significant implications, because it means that just like last year when Perine was on the field, the defense cannot rely on tendencies to know whether the play is a run or a pass.
Now that those wheel routes are on tape, I don’t expect Florida to be able to run them over and over like they did against the Bulldogs. But expect the threat of those plays to open things up even more for this already potent Florida offense.
Defense steps up
Perhaps lost in the Gators offensive explosion in the late part of the first quarter and all of the second quarter was the performance of the defense.
Yes, the Gators scored 24 points in the second quarter. But you don’t get that opportunity if the defense isn’t giving you the ball.
From the time Florida went down 14-0, the defense forced four three-and-outs, one five-play drive that ended in a punt and a kneel-down to end the half. The result was that Florida gave up a grand total of 30 yards and zero points during that stretch as the Gators pulled away.
One of the hallmarks of Todd Grantham’s defenses at Florida has been their ability to shut down the opposition for a quarter every game. I’m not sure it’s as simple as Kyree Campbell being back, but the defense has been able to string together quarters like that the last two games.
The reality is that as well as the offense is playing, the Gators defense doesn’t have to be perfect. It can give up a big play (like the 75-yard run to White) and the offense has the ability to recover. We saw the same thing with LSU in 2019, where the Tigers gave up 38 points to Texas and Vanderbilt, 41 points to Alabama and 37 to Ole Miss.
That defense wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be. It just had to lock down on a couple of drives and let Joe Burrow do the rest. With the way this offense is playing, that’s really all this Gators defense needs to do.
How big is the gap?
For the past three seasons, the question coming out of the Florida-Georgia game has been whether the talent gap between the two teams is closing.
Recruiting rankings have indicated that Florida was closing the gap, but not at a fast enough clip to win consistently. But one thing those rankings don’t take into account is transfers.
While Florida hasn’t placed higher than 9th nationally in recruiting since Mullen took over, the Gators are 7th in total talent this season according to 247Sports roster rankings. The reason is simple: Mullen has upgraded talent through his recruiting classes but then upgraded even further through the transfer portal.
Recruiting is just a measure of probabilities. The probability that a 5-star commit becomes a good enough contributor to end up drafted into the NFL is in the 60-70 percent range. That drops down to 20% pretty quickly for 4-star recruits.
But right now Mullen is hitting 100 percent on transfers. Van Jefferson, Trevon Grimes, Adam Schuler, Jonathan Greenard, Brenton Cox and Stewart Reese have been major contributors thus far in the Mullen era. Heck, even Marlon Dunlap and Jean Delance – transfers from the McElwain era – have played major minutes.
I do believe that to win consistently like Alabama does that it requires top-5 level recruiting. Mullen may just get there; the win over Georgia certainly helps.
But Kirby Smart hasn’t shown an ability to defeat teams in the top-10 of those rankings. Dan Mullen has shown an ability to outperform those rankings. And if he keeps hitting on transfers at this clip, we may end up asking whether Georgia can close the gap with Florida.
The Richt Comparison
Speaking of Kirby, how miserable must it be to be a Dawgs fan right now?
You win the recruiting national championship every year (or finish second). You felt like you were finally going to get over the hump in 2017, making it to the final game and then losing a heartbreaker to Alabama’s backup QB (some guy named Tua).
Then you go into the 2018 season thinking it’s finally your time, have Alabama on the ropes again, only to get bested in the SEC Championship Game by Alabama’s backup QB again (this time, Hurts). You then lose your blue-chip QB Justin Fields to transfer after his only meaningful play for your team was the worst fake punt call in the history of college football.
In 2019, you make it back to the SEC Championship game, but feel like a significant underdog after struggling the second half of the year, including an inexplicable loss to South Carolina. Then you get completely outclassed by LSU, losing by 27 points in a game that wasn’t remotely competitive.
Now, you come into 2020 and give up 41 points to Alabama and 44 points to Florida when your calling card is defense. The memes pointing out that Kirby is 48-14 in his time at Georgia while Mark Richt only lost 13 games in his first five years as Bulldogs head coach are depressing (if you’re a Georgia fan).
But how about this one? Richt went 49-17 in his last five years as Georgia head coach.
Return of Feleipe Franks
Former Gators QB Feleipe Franks comes back to the Swamp this week (COVID and tropical storm-willing) as Arkansas’ starting QB.
I’ve made it clear how I feel about Franks. He was often unfairly maligned by Gators fans when he was thrust into a role he clearly wasn’t ready for, in an offense that wasn’t all that competitive in the SEC regardless of who was under center.
To hear Dan Mullen, Brian Johnson and other players describe Franks is to understand why he got the starting nod over Kyle Trask. Franks led Florida through miserable times, and was the face of the program who took the slings and arrows and answered every question.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that at this point Trask is the superior QB. And normally I’d be rooting for Florida to put up a shutout against Arkansas to prove that their defensive improvement is real.
But part of me wants the Gators to win while Franks still has a big day because the way he handled himself during his time in Gainesville just makes you want to root for the guy.
Arkansas Upset?
Will the emotion of Franks’ return to the Swamp as well as the natural emotional let-down after the huge Georgia win lead to an Arkansas upset?
Well, this would probably be the one if Florida was going to trip up. I mean, look at the QB ratings of the teams they have left to play.
- Arkansas (Franks) – 154.7
- Vanderbilt (Seals) – 124.0
- Kentucky (Wilson/Gatewood) – 123.8/84.4
- Tennessee (Guarantano) – 127.3
- LSU (Brennan/Finley) – 154.7/136.5
The only team with a QB even remotely as scary as Franks is LSU, and they are giving up 34 points per game. Arkansas is only giving up 26.2.
But Georgia’s a better defense than Arkansas. And Mullen and Grantham know Franks’ strengths and weaknesses. And perhaps most important, this team came back from the COVID break a more confident group on the defensive side of the ball.
In the first three games, it looked like they were being tentative and didn’t trust their teammates to do their jobs. In the past two, there have been guys getting beat physically (which you can live with) but rarely have there been guys getting beat mentally.
That mental toughness will be put to the test against Arkansas coming off of the huge Georgia win. But I expect Florida to be able to pull this one out.