by Will Miles
Castleton Returns
Colin Castleton is going to be back for the 2021-2022 basketball season.
Perhaps you forgot, but Castleton entered the NBA Draft but didn’t hire an agent so he could test the waters but still reserve the right to come back. Well, after scrimmaging against elite players and getting feedback from NBA teams, Castleton now knows what to work on and what he needs to show with the Gators this upcoming season.
Normally I wouldn’t be all that excited about this. Castleton did average 12.4 points per game last season, but I never really saw him out on the court and thought “wow” when watching. But with all of the turnover on the basketball team this upcoming season, having someone who was a starter come back and help integrate all of the transfers seems like it would be important.
That’s particularly true when you consider the vitriol for Mike White from some in the fan base. When the team plays poorly – and they will at some point – having someone who’s been through the negativity as a stabilizing influence may be key to coming out improved on the other side.
I’m not a huge White guy. I’m not really a huge Castleton guy either. But having Castleton come back means that White has a full roster of his guys now and experience shouldn’t be an excuse.
Lack of Experience
Conversely, Dan Mullen doesn’t have much experience coming back in 2021.
According to ESPN’s Bill Connely, Florida is ranked 121st in FBS for returning production to the team. That’s not a huge surprise with the departures of Trask, Pitts and Toney – and it puts them in the ranks of Alabama (123rd), Ohio State (125th) and Notre Dame (124th) – but Florida has recruited much more like the Irish than the Buckeyes or Tide under Mullen.
This seems like a rarity for a guy like Mullen, but maybe it shouldn’t be seen that way for a guy who has a reputation for not playing guys early but also a reputation for developing players so they’re ready to go when the time comes.
Nick Fitzgerald had a grand total of 14 throws before taking over as a sophomore in 2016. Dak Prescott had 29 before winning the job from Tyler Russell in 2013. You might say he’s gone with experience more at Florida (Feleipe Franks was the most experienced guy in 2018), except that Kyle Trask had 22 total throws prior to 2019, only six more than Emory Jones.
I think the offense will be okay. I think the place we may see the inexperience is on the defense, particularly at the safety position. For all of the negativity around Donovan Stiner, Brad Stewart, and Shawn Davis, those guys had a ton of experience.
Yes, they were limited players. But I’d argue that Tony Joiner was a limited player in 2006. But instead of seeing that as a negative, his level of experience enabled him to make plays that season to help compliment the more athletic Reggie Nelson.
Tre’Vez Johnson and Trey Dean are the only guys with significant experience coming back. That may end up being a challenge for Todd Grantham.
NIL and t-shirts
With the dawn of the name, image and likeness (NIL) era upon us, it was interesting to see a bunch of Gators players selling t-shirts on Twitter.
As someone who has explored selling merchandise for his own website, I can tell you that t-shirt revenue only becomes significant if you can move a ton of merchandise, or if you can make the t-shirts yourself. That leads to an interesting question: are these players going to be able to move enough merchandise that this keeps them happy long-term? I seriously doubt it.
College Football fans are logically tied to the institution. After all, I went to Florida and so having “Florida Gators” emblazoned on my chest makes sense. It tells you something about me beyond just which team I root for. And for those who didn’t go to Florida but grew up as fans, it says something about them too.
That connection isn’t going to exist for most fans when they’re thinking about dropping $25 or $30 for a Gervon Dexter or Malik Davis t-shirt. Yes, there will be fans who want to support the players of their team, and I think the players should be free to sell whatever they want.
But NIL isn’t going to solve the radical imbalance between the money within a program and the money in the players’ hands.
Whole team deals
Attorney Darren Heitner knows this. That’s why he negotiated a $540,000 deal for the players at Miami and is hinting that one is coming for the Gators.
This actually reinforces my main fear with the NIL concept. The team is worth way more than the individual players. The players are essentially fungible assets. That’s why a company/booster ends up paying every player $6,000 rather than singling out one player to promote his/her company. Unless the name is Tebow or Wuerffel, one player’s name just isn’t worth that much.
That’s not because their contribution isn’t necessary. It’s because legends are the only entities that really move the needle. Steve Spurrier is a separate brand from the University of Florida. But is Brandon Spikes?
Spikes was an unbelievably valuable player during the Urban Meyer years. Undoubtedly there are Florida fans who would buy something that he promoted because he promoted it. But the number of Florida fans who would do so pales in comparison to Spurrier.
That’s what players are up against. 100,000 followers on Twitter only matters if you can convert those followers into buyers, which Twitter is notoriously bad at. I hope players make a ton of money with NIL. I just don’t think that’s going to materialize.
Unions & TV Money
That leads to the next logical step. The lawyers are going to come after the TV money.
The NCAA and its conferences didn’t cave to NIL out of the goodness of their hearts. They caved because state legislatures forced them to. The recent scathing Supreme Court ruling was just the final nail in the coffin.
But one thing that ruling brings into clear view is that the court believes that college sports is a business. Businesses typically have to pay their workers. Where do other sports-based businesses (think MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL) get the money to pay their workers? Television.
That’s how college football players are going to get paid. Richard Gouraige may not be able to sell t-shirts, but Florida really needs a left tackle. And getting on prime-time TV slots requires that the Gators have good offensive line play.
So the place that players – and their attorneys – have to really be eyeing at this point is the TV money. The SEC just agreed to a $3 billion TV deal with ESPN to leave CBS, which amounts to $300 million annually. If players could negotiate a 50% revenue split, that would amount to over $100,000 per player.
Maybe one or two players makes that kind of money with NIL rights. Everyone can make that kind of money if they go after the TV money.
Cox Injury
News has come out that Brenton Cox had surgery on his foot and may be out for fall camp and potentially early in the season.
Cox showed flashes last season but wasn’t a dominant player, so on its face maybe this doesn’t seem like a huge deal. But one of the things about the SEC is that injuries start to add up and Mullen hasn’t had one of those years like 2013 when Will Muschamp had a MASH unit on his way to a 4-8 record.
That goes double for the defensive line at Florida. The transfers of Antonio Shelton and Daquan Newkirk help, but that still leaves Florida having to put someone less explosive in Cox’s spot and to rely heavily on Zachary Carter at defensive end.
One of the things about Newkirk and Shelton that I really liked was that if Gervon Dexter could step up at defensive tackle as well, that would allow some funky combinations on the defensive line. Saving Dexter for pass rushing downs and sliding Carter on the inside with Cox and essentially another Buck on the outside would have really wreaked havoc on the QB.
Now maybe Cox is back for the season, but will he be full strength? And if he is out for any length of time, that means relying more on Newkirk, Shelton and Dexter for all three downs. Some other guys are going to have to step up, or the line is going to wear down by the end of the year.
Who steps in?
So who is the guy who steps up?
We’ve been waiting for Jeremiah Moon to step into that role for years now, but I just don’t think that’s all that likely. The guy I think who will be targeted to step in is Khris Bogle.
Bogle had 4 TFL and 3.5 sacks in 2020, and that was in a back-up role. In fact, if you watch the tape, Florida’s defense almost always seemed to tick up a notch or two when Bogle was brought in opposite Cox. That isn’t saying too much given how bad the Gators defense was last year, but Bogle brought both an energy and a speed that the other players just didn’t have.
Beyond Bogle, some young guy is going to have to step into the void. Perhaps its Princely Umanmielen, who had 2 sacks as a true freshman and with a little bit more weight could be a really effective backup to Carter. Maybe it’s Lloyd Summerall, who saw limited action but did have a sack last year.
Or maybe it’s someone new like Jeremiah Williams, Chief Borders or Diwun Black.
Regardless, the Cox injury reminds us that you have to have depth in the SEC. The lack of experience is something to watch with the starters. It’s going to be a real area of concern if more than few of those starters get hurt.
Explosive plays – Offense
There’s a lot of optimism that Jacob Copeland, Xzavier Henderson and Justin Shorter are going to step up big-time for the Gators offense in 2021. I’m not so sure that’s going to be the case.
In my most recent article at Read and Reaction, I took a look at what markers there were that Kadarius Toney and Kyle Pitts had in 2019 that said they had the potential to be stars in 2020 and asked whether those markers were there for some of the Gators receivers.
The answer I got back surprised me a little bit: Trent Whittemore.
Whittemore only had three explosive plays in 2020, but it was on 12 targets and 10 catches. Compare that to Henderson, who had one explosive on 8 catches and 18 targets. Toney – injured like Whittemore in 2019 – had 3 explosives on 13 targets and 10 catches.
This isn’t to suggest that Whittemore is going to turn into Toney. But I do think it suggests that what we saw in 2020 portends Whittemore being a major weapon for the Gators. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see all he could do last season.
But maybe that’s a fortunate thing if he can take Alabama by surprise.
Explosive plays – Defense
Florida’s defense had a 10.73% explosive plays percentage allowed (EPPA) in 2021 against SEC opponents (h/t www.secstatcat.com). Interestingly though, the Gators had a 10.05% EPPA in 2019 and an 11.64% EPPA in 2018.
That points to something worrisome for me: I’m not sure that the 2020 defense was worse than the 2018 defense.
The stats against SEC opponents actually bear that out. The 2020 defense gave up 5.74 yards per attempt compared to 5.73 in 2018. The 2020 defense did give up more per pass play (7.76 vs. 7.48), but less on the ground (3.93 vs. 4.61).
If you take the 4 non-conference 2018 games, the Gators gave up an average of 3.86 yards per play. Essentially the games against Charleston Southern and Idaho papered over what was a bad defense.
That also means that two out of his three years in Gainesville, Todd Grantham has presided over bad defenses. Yikes.
Evers High School Stats
Lots of Gators fans are excited about 2022 QB commit Nick Evers’ performance in the Elite 11 camp, and well they should be. He finished third overall out of 20 participants and showed he belongs with the elite-of-the-elite. Evers is currently ranked as the 281st overall recruit, and that surely is going to rise.
But I’m a big fan of looking at high school stats to evaluate QBs rather than relying on camps. Making throws with zero pass rush is just different than when the defense is closing in. I’ve shown previously that high completion percentages translate from high school to college, and so that – along with yards per completion – is where I tend to focus.
Evers shines in the accuracy metric in high school, having completed 202 of 299 passes (67.6%) in his junior season. That indicates that he’s throwing to the right guy and is capable of reading defenses. However, Evers has only averaged 8.7 yards per attempt on those throws, which indicates that he is checking down a lot.
For comparison, Luke Del Rio completed 70.2% of his throws for 8.9 yards per attempt his senior season while Joe Burrow completed 72.3% for 12.8 yards per attempt.
I’m not saying Evers is Del Rio. In his junior year, Del Rio completed 55% of his throws for 8.0 yards per attempt, so Evers is way ahead of him. But I am saying that we need to see more success downfield this year before anointing him the savior at QB for Florida.