by Will Miles
Covid-19 Recovery
The Florida program is recovering.
It’s not at full strength yet, but things are looking promising as the Gators got back to practice on Monday. Certainly the biggest thing is that you hope that all of the players who have been infected by Covid-19 are okay. Once you get beyond that point though, it’s fair to think about what this means for on the field.
The players haven’t had supervised lifting or any practice time for the past two weeks. That is a double-edged sword. After missing spring practice, likely there was a need to push during fall camp to get players ready. Combine that with players being isolated from strength coach Nick Savage during the offseason and I suspect that the players were feeling the layoff in the second half against Texas A&M.
That isn’t something that should be an issue at this point. Two weeks of minimal activity should have the players refreshed and focused. And a 2-week layoff after a loss should have them hungry and aggressive.
Whether Missouri has the ability to take advantage of that aggression or not will likely tell the story of this game.
Predicting what will happen
Florida is a 13-point favorite (according to ESPN) as I’m writing this. That is a lot of points for a team coming off of a Covid-19 quarantine. Then again, shorthanded teams have done pretty well this season.
Perhaps the most visible was Virginia Tech. They opened their season against NC State missing 23 players and four coaches due to the coronavirus. That included starting QB Hendon Hooker and defensive coordinator Justin Hamilton.
The Hokies then jumped out to a 31-10 lead at the half and held on for a 45-24 win.
They did the same thing the next week against Duke, holding on for a 38-31 win on the road missing 21 players and two coaches.
Virginia Tech was an 11-point favorite over NC State and I would’ve said you were crazy. Missing a starting QB and 23 players should have been a burden really difficult to overcome. Instead, they dominated with six sacks and 314 yards rushing.
The Gators may be shorthanded, but they’re not going to be that shorthanded. I think it’s encouraging to see how the Hokies rallied around their hardship, and I hope to see the same from Florida.
Things I want to see:
There are a bunch of things I want to see in the game against Missouri. I’ve gone into a little bit of detail for each of them below.
Kyle Pitts completely healthy
Kyle Pitts was a terror against Ole Miss (8 catches for 170 yards and 4 TD). He was less of a factors against South Carolina (4 catches for 57 yards), but still caught two TD passes.
Against Texas A&M, the Gators targeted Pitts repeatedly early, as he caught 3 passes for 28 yards and a TD on the opening drive. But then he only caught two more balls on the field goal drive of the second half, but he was clearly laboring.
Florida has relied on Pitts (17 catches) and Kadarius Toney (18 catches) a lot this season. They are going to need both healthy and fully humming to have any chance against Georgia next week.
Thus, I want to see Pitts running around like he did against Ole Miss when the Gators come out against Missouri.
Kyle Trask taking what the defense gives him
Pitts is really important. But Trask has to get back to giving what the defense gives him.
Trask has been outstanding in 2020, and perhaps this is nitpicking to the extreme. But he was really fortunate that a horrible interception got called back against Texas A&M, and he has thrown the ball up for grabs a bit more than I’d like to see. There are times to take chances and times to take the check-down. Trask has excelled at that, but a couple of times a game, he’s trying to fit the ball into tight spaces that may get him in trouble.
I’m thinking in particular of the play I showed last week of Trask throwing across his body back to Pitts in the end zone when Malik Davis was wide open but there are other examples.
https://youtu.be/G6Qp-ocGuO4?t=5773
In particular, this play sticks out to me. Trask goes down the field to Toney, who is single-covered (with deep safety help), but Dameon Pierce is wide open underneath for an 8-yard gain. It was second-and-10. A first down here puts Florida in a position to run three more minutes of clock up by 21 points. Instead, Trask throws an interception on the next play and the game was closer than it needed to be.
Malik Davis getting back to what he was doing
Davis is averaging 8.3 yards every time he touches the ball. He hasn’t broken a run yet like he did in 2017 when he averaged 6.7 yards per carry, but he’s getting close to being able to hit a big one.
The fumble at the end of the A&M game certainly cost the Gators dearly, but it wasn’t the reason Florida lost the game. But plays like that can zap a player’s confidence, and you hope that doesn’t happen to Davis.
That’s because while I really like Dameon Pierce – and Pierce has had to do yeoman’s work after contact – the big plays are going to come from Davis. We already saw that in the passing game against the Aggies, and I hope Florida gets back to that.
They are easy throws for Trask. They take the pressure of off Pitts and Toney to have to always get open. They’re going to free up players like Trevon Grimes and Jacob Copeland as the defense adjusts to having to cover the back.
Offensive line winning a quarter
Florida is averaging 4.8 yards per rush, but that’s not really because of the Gators offensive line.
According to SECstatcat.com, the Gators have averaged 3.27 yards per rush behind the right guard and right tackle and have averaged 2.9 yards per rush on runs behind the left tackle and left guard. Contrast that with averages of 9.38 and 8.63 outside to the right and left, respectively.
Pierce has 130 total rushing yards, and 100 of those have come after contact. Out of the 367 rushing yards for the team, 266 (72%) have come after contact. Last year’s offensive line has been generally recognized as bad, yet the Gators “only” gained 61% of its rushing yards after contact. That number was 46% in 2018 when Florida had a decent rushing game.
So the line is struggling and needs to establish itself as a physical presence. I know people will say that it is a passing game these days and that running the ball should only be used to set up the pass. In many ways, that is true.
But we also all watched as Texas A&M completely deflated the Florida defense by going on a 10-play, 75-yard drive that included 9 runs and ended with Dante Lang playing linebacker for the Gators.
Florida’s offensive line probably isn’t good enough to win a game. But I’d really like to see it win a quarter. Let Pierce and Davis be the stars and just out-physical Missouri.
Is that tough coming off of a Covid-19 outbreak? Absolutely, but it would be a great way to go into the Georgia game.
Kyree Campbell getting push up the middle
It’s hard to say with a straight face that having any one player added to the defense would make the unit play significantly better. But Campbell might be the closest thing to hope that we have.
Tedarrell Slaton has been okay in spurts, but hasn’t been a dominant force. Gervon Dexter is still young and you don’t want to rely on him too much. When Zach Carter is moved to the inside, it leaves Jeremiah Moon and Brenton Cox to set the edge against the run.
Quarterbacks struggle when you get pressure up the middle. If you can push back the center or the guard into the QB’s face, he can’t step up in the pocket as the ends race around. Often he gets happy feet and delivers inaccurately. Sometimes he overthrows to a waiting safety.
That hasn’t happened for the Gators all year long. They only have one interception on the year, and the eight sacks in three games pale in comparison to the squad that opened the season with ten sacks against Miami last year.
I doubt Campbell is a panacea for all that ails the Florida defense, but he does start a chain reaction that might make the defense better than we might think.
Linebackers firing at the hole
If you look back at the Texas A&M game, you rarely saw a linebacker racing to the line of scrimmage to make a tackle.
Too often, the linebackers were making contact 5-8 yards downfield. This was for two reasons. The first reason is the linebackers aren’t comfortable with their gap assignments and so aren’t being aggressive. But the second reason is that the linebackers are getting mauled by offensive linemen who need to be getting occupied by a defensive tackle.
That’s where Kyree Campbell comes in and the chain reaction that I talked about. And you would expect that two weeks of film study would have the linebackers more comfortable with their assignments.
But here’s the thing. Part of coaching young and/or inexperienced players is understanding that they are going to make mistakes. If Amari Burney gets out of his gap and Missouri gashes a big run, that has to then be offset by him aggressively filling a gap on the next play and knocking down the running back for a loss.
Part of what ails the Gators defense is schematic. Part of it is personnel. Part of it is effort. But a big part of it is confidence.
Defensive backs up in bump-and-run
And if we’re talking confidence, there’s no better place to finish up than talking about the defensive backs.
C.J. Henderson was a really, really good player. Kaiir Elam has the potential to be a really, really good player, but he’s not there yet. Neither is Marco Wilson, Jaydon Hill or Chester Kimbrough. That means we should expect the secondary to take a step back.
But getting nickel-and-dimed down the field to the tune of 59% third-down conversions isn’t just maddening, it’s exhausting.
So risk getting beat deep. If you’re going to give up a touchdown anyway because you can’t get off the field, get up in the receiver’s space and bump him off his spot, disrupt his timing and risk getting beat over the top.
You’re going to lose some of those battles. But if you’re playing man-to-man, you also typically will have deep safety help. That would give a player like Marco Wilson help on some of those deep routes that were problematic against A&M. And it would force the deep shots to come along the sideline where they’re usually less accurate and less successful.
A win over Missouri
I can do all sorts of film breakdown of Missouri and make all sorts of suggestions for Florida, but the truth is I have no idea what to expect in this game.
I expected Florida’s defense to improve against Texas A&M and that certainly didn’t happen. And now we don’t know if or how many starters are going to be missing for the Gators due to the coronavirus.
That means if you get a win over what has looked like a quality SEC squad the last two games, it’s a quality win. We might not have thought that coming into the year, but we probably wouldn’t have thought 30+ players would be quarantined at one time coming into the year either.
The Gators are about to start a 7-game gauntlet (hopefully 8) to end their season, and they’re doing it shorthanded. Whether the score is 6-3 or 45-3 is really immaterial.
Play hard. Play aggressive. Play smart. Get the win. That’d be a successful Saturday.