By Will Miles
Rise of the Mailman
Everybody doubted Stetson Bennett. I suspect he even doubted himself, especially after an attempted incomplete pass while under pressure turned into a fumble that put Alabama in position to go up 18-13 with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter.
But then Bennett came out and led a 4-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that included a 40-yard touchdown pass on a second-and-18 when it looked like Alabama might hold Georgia to a field goal or push them out of field goal range again.
The narrative coming out of this one may be that Bennett won the game. He certainly contributed, but the Georgia defense is the reason they are champions. In October, when they swarmed Anthony Richardson in a flurry to end the first half, it was fair to wonder what Dan Mullen was doing throwing his young QB out to make his first start against that unit. I think it’s even fairer to ask now.
Georgia got hit in the mouth a few weeks ago in the SEC Championship Game but were able to redeem themselves. In part, that’s because they were a dominant team all year, and if you give a team that good two cracks at a good-but-not-great Alabama team, they’re going to get a win the second time around.
But a big part of it is luck. Bennett dropped the ball without being hit on the opening drive and it bounced right back to him. A similar thing happened to Bryce Young in the SEC Championship, as he was able to recover his fumble and Alabama scored on that play.
I think Georgia was the better team when you take the entire season into perspective. But there’s absolutely zero doubt that those were the best two teams of 2022.
Bama not dead yet
We keep waiting for the end of the Saban era, and I’m here to tell you that if he’s going to ride into the sunset, it won’t be until after next year’s playoff.
That’s because in addition to Will Anderson and Bryce Young, Alabama’s reload this year included a lot of really young players. The Tide had 10 total All-SEC players, and 7 of them hail from the 2019 or 2020 class. Compare that to Georgia, who had 11 total All-SEC players and only 4 hailed from the 2019-2021 classes.
What that means is that Alabama is heading right into a sweet spot where their talent hasn’t been able to leave for the NFL yet, but has a significant amount of experience. And if you think being a 3-point underdog to Georgia was rat poison, think about what losing that game last night is going to do.
I do think there’s a good chance though that Saban might call it quits after next season though. He just saw what we did: that Kirby Smart is going to be a huge problem for him moving forward. Combine that with Jimbo Fisher, Billy Napier and some of the other high-profile SEC coaches, and you wonder how much longer Saban is going to want to do this.
But anybody looking for a retirement announcement anytime soon from the greatest coach to do it isn’t going to hear that this offseason. Because next year, the Tide are going to be way, way better.
SEC Domination
Nick Saban’s Alabama squad has dominated the national scene in a way not seen in the recent history of the sport, but the idea that the SEC is just Alabama took another hit with Georgia’s win.
The SEC has won the last three championships, each with a different team (LSU in 2019, Alabama in 2020 and Georgia in 2021). If we go further back to the last 15 years, the SEC has won 12 of the championships with five different teams. Show me another conference with that sort of depth in the conference’s history.
Going back to 1998 (the BCS era), here’s the conference breakdowns of number of championships and number of teams.
- SEC: 14 (6)
- ACC: 5 (3)
- Pac-12: 2 (1)
- Big-12: 2 (2)
- Big-10: 2(1)
Oklahoma and Texas – set to join the SEC – account for the two Big-12 titles. Ohio State and USC are the only Big-10 and Pac-12 teams. Only the ACC (Miami, Florida State, and Clemson) has had even a modicum of success, and perhaps not coincidently, those three schools are also right in the heart of SEC country.
The reality is that Florida is positioned perfectly. That’s not necessarily just because of its location or the benefits of Gainesville, but because of its position within the best conference in the world.
That was proven yet again over the last two weeks.
Napier has his work cut out for him
Anybody who watched that game though has to acknowledge that Billy Napier has his work cut out for him. That was a physical game and it wasn’t until the second half when the defenses started to wear down that anyone could get more than a field goal.
We often look at a 5-star QB or running back and assume that another team will be able to keep up just fine. But I was struck by how athletic both of those teams were on special teams. Every punt had multiple gunners circling the punt returner making sure that there was no chance at a return. Georgia turned momentum when they were able to block a field goal. The Bulldogs almost had a huge return that was negated by a holding penalty as well.
Billy Napier knows and has said that this is a talent acquisition business. That begins obviously with the starters that you have on the field. But if the game last night is any indication, it ends with getting young guys experience on special teams so that when they’re ready to finally shine in a starting role, they’ve already been out on the field in big, competitive moments.
Saban/Smart on NIL
Kirby Smart and Nick Saban had a lot to say this week about the name, image and likeness rules.
Both coaches were pushing for some uniform guidelines and regulations, with the warning that the separation at the top was going to be exacerbated if regulations weren’t put in place to prevent it. It seemed like they were almost arguing against their own self-interest.
Consider me suspicious.
These guys had the best recruiting apparatus’ in all of college football prior to NIL. They’ll retool to take advantage of the system in some capacity, but the reality is that there’s a lot more money flowing into places like Miami, Florida than there is into Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
I actually think the argument against regulation is a similar argument when coaches talked about quitting if the players ever could profit off of their name. For those in the lead, change upsets the apple cart. The strategy is to warn about doom and gloom for the sport, and that it’s actually going to advantage you but you’re magnanimous so you don’t want to see the sport suffer.
In reality, NIL has already helped a program like Jackson State. It’s going to help other schools like potentially Wisconsin, Nebraska, USC, and others who normally wouldn’t have a shot at pulling a recruit out of Tuscaloosa but now have more money to offer.
Elam, Pierce declare for the draft
As expected, both Kaiir Elam and Dameon Pierce have declared for the NFL Draft.
Pierce makes sense to me. He’s been an efficient runner in his time at Florida (5.5 yards per rush) while not putting a lot of miles on his tires (329 carries in four years). His iconic helmetless touchdown against FSU is going to stick in scout’s minds when they’re thinking about him. Plus, running backs rarely get drafted highly anyway unless they’re thought of as truly special, so chances are, Pierce wasn’t going to improve his draft stock all that much.
Elam, on the other hand, surprises me a little. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s leaving. That’s been expected since pretty much last offseason. But what surprises me about it is that corners do go high in the draft if they’re thought of as elite, and Elam has that potential. I say potential though because we haven’t seen that all come together on the field.
Elam was hurt this year, and so he couldn’t properly show what he could do after the Alabama game. And the injury might have pushed him this way as well, given that another, more serious injury could push him out of the league completely.
But coming back would have given him an opportunity to really improve his draft stock. I was hoping he’d do that, but I wish him luck in the NFL.
Trevor Etienne commits
Napier continues bringing in heralded recruits, this time the brother of Jaguars running back Travis Etienne, Trevor.
Etienne is a bowling ball at 5’9” and 218 lbs, so what the Gators just lost in Dameon Pierce, they may have just gained right back with Etienne.
The Etienne signing is important for a couple of reasons. One, he’s a blue-chip prospect, ranked 183rd nationally in the 247sports ranking and adds to the 2022 recruiting class. But the second reason this one is so important is because while Florida’s running back room was a position of strength in 2021, it’s a position of need in 2022.
We don’t really know the severity of the injury to Nay’Quan Wright. Is he going to be back and healthy for 2022 right away? Lorenzo Lingard still hasn’t proven he’s completely healthy from knee surgery. And Demarkcus Bowman – for all of the hype coming into last season – hasn’t shown anything on the field just yet.
Combine that with Napier’s clear preference for running the ball while at Louisiana and having both depth and quality back there is going to be important.
Roster Management
With the commitment of ULL cornerback transfer Mekhi Garner to LSU, the exodus of Louisiana players is no longer just to Florida.
I wrote about this last week, but Garner never made a lot of sense for Florida. The Gators have a lot of depth at both the cornerback and safety spot, and that depth is relatively young. Bringing in a guy like Garner to compete with the likes of Jason Marshall and Avery Helm never made a lot of sense.
But there are places where it absolutely makes sense. We already saw that with the addition of Jack Miller at the QB position, as Florida now has added depth to a position that is painfully short on experience (excluding Emory Jones).
So where else would it make sense? Well, running back would be a good spot to start. The last blue-chip recruit Florida signed at the position was Nay’Quan Wright. Offensive tackle is another spot, where the only players on the roster are Austin Barber, Michael Tarquin, Josh Braun and Richard Gouraige. Gouraige is likely gone after this year and Braun has been playing mostly guard.
On the defensive side of the ball, the defensive line is a glaring hole, with pass rushers Antwaun Powell, Lloyd Summerall, Brenton Cox and Princely Umanmielen as the only players who’ve really seen the field.
The point is that if we watched the championship game the other night and saw the strength of those teams, you’d have to say it was on the lines. In fact, the reason Georgia won the game is because its defensive line was able to take advantage of some weaknesses on the Alabama offensive line.
Florida may end up with a great quarterback or a great running back. But at the end of the day, the reason they’re going to succeed or fail starts up-front. That’s where this team is currently lacking in experience and numbers, and it’ll be up to Napier to fix that, likely through the portal.
Point Differential
It wouldn’t be basketball season for the Gators if they weren’t an inconsistent team that polarized the fan base.
Mike White had his supporters crowing after beating Florida State handily in the second game of the year. But things came crashing down with consecutive losses to Oklahoma and then Texas Southern.
When I’ve written about baskeball here, I’ve pointed towards point differential as a way of measuring whether a team is about equivalent to their record, better or worse. For Florida, after 14 games, its point differential is 10.2 points per game. That sounds great (and would be for an entire season) until you compare to the first 14 games for the past three seasons, where the point differentials were 7.4, 8.4 and 9.9. By the end of those years, the differentials were 3.9, 5.9 and 4.2.
I think this suggests that this Florida team at 9-5 is about what we’ve seen for the past three seasons. Indeed, the past three seasons have produced 14-game records of 10-4, 10-4 and 9-5, coming pretty close to matching this year’s 9-5.
I’m not a proponent of firing someone just to fire someone. But the reality is that if White defenders were hoping for this influx of transfers completely changing the trajectory of the program, then that hasn’t happened.
You can make an argument for White to stay, but I think there’s a pretty convincing argument at this point that he’s essentially reached his ceiling. I’ll say that whether this team gets eliminated in the first round of the tournament or whether it makes a deep run.
We now have seven seasons of data with White. His teams have finished ranked in the A.P. Poll twice, but zero times in the last four seasons. I don’t expect them to finished ranked this season either.
There’s a good debate about whether that’s good enough at a football school like Florida. You can argue that White is doing what previous Florida coaches not named Donovan have done and those should be the expectations. But I find it hard to buy the argument that what he’s doing in 2022 is all that much better than what he was doing in 2016.