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We hope you enjoy and stay tuned for more! -Ray)
By: Will Miles
Orange Bowl Reaction
I’ve got to be honest, I’m not really sure how to react to Florida’s 36-28 win over Virginia.
It wasn’t that close, as the Gators outgained 549-375. That was with the Gators basically sleepwalking through the second half until they needed a fourth down conversion to put the game away.
Kyle Trask was underwhelming in this one, perhaps the first time we could say that about him this season. That’s not entirely true, as he struggled against South Carolina but that has been dismissed because Florida won going away and the weather was pretty horrid.
On the other side, Florida ran for 244 yards, averaging 7.2 yards per rush. The offensive line wasn’t perfect, and much of that rushing yardage came from big plays, but those big plays have been few and far between in 2019. They also cleared enough space to allow Lamical Perine to give a vintage Perine performance. His 181 all-purpose yards and three touchdowns were a big reason Florida won the game, and he rightfully (and obviously) won the Orange Bowl MVP.
Bigger picture, I’m elated that Florida finishes the season 11-2. Mullen said after the game that going from four wins to 10 is easier than going from 10 to 11 and he is absolutely right. It’s only the second time that Florida has won 11 games this decade, and as a fan scarred from the Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain eras, I’m going to savor this type of season for a while.
MVP of Gators 2019 season
This award goes to Trask, and it’s not even close.
Florida doesn’t win against Kentucky without Trask’s heroics coming into the game late after Feleipe Franks’ injury. Florida probably doesn’t win against Auburn without Trask coming back after it looked like he suffered a serious knee injury. He was a huge reason that Florida looked as competitive as they did against LSU, something Jake Fromm and Jalen Hurts were unable to do.
He doesn’t have the strongest arm. He doesn’t always throw the prettiest ball. He doesn’t run the ball all that effectively.
Except you look at the box score of the game against Virginia and Trask ran for 37 yards on 8 carries. He also topped 300 yards passing for the fourth time this year. Even in a game where he looked really rough, he wound up running an awkward-looking option that got a key first down and then hit a dagger to Tyrie Cleveland on the very next play.
Florida went 8-2 with Trask as a starter and established itself as the lone real challenger to Georgia in the SEC East next year. Kyle Trask may not be the most gifted QB on Florida’s 2019 roster.
But he was its most valuable player.
Grime Time critical for Florida’s 2020 offense
The buzz surrounding the Orange Bowl is that wide receiver Trevon Grimes will come back to Gainesville next season. That’s a critical thing for the 2020 offense – and team overall – for a bunch of reasons.
With senior receivers Tyrie Cleveland, Josh Hammond, Freddie Swain and Van Jefferson moving on, Grimes provides some level of continuity at wide receiver for Kyle Trask to rely on. More than that though, Grimes is a willing and capable blocker on the outside. That’s an area where the graduating receivers really excelled, but also an area where we haven’t had much of an opportunity to see players like Kadarius Toney or Jacob Copeland be asked to produce.
While everyone is looking at how many catches or the leadership leaving Gainesville, one thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is all of the bubble screens that were substituted for the running game in 2019. Those screens are only successful if the receivers can hold their blocks well.
For a team with big questions still along the offensive line, Grimes return is a big deal in the running game as well.
Early signing day is “the” signing day
Florida currently ranks eighth in the 247Sports Composite recruiting rankings. That’s pretty much where the Gators are going to end up.
That’s because the early signing period has now become the real signing day. Programs can put finishing touches on their classes before February, but if you don’t have your class in good standing at this point, you’re pretty much lost.
I’ve looked at how often recruits end up getting drafted based on their recruiting ranking, and there is a steep drop-off every 15 ranking spots (80% for players 1-15, 25% for players 75-100) until things level off for most of the other four stars around 20%. That means that to really increase the standing of a recruiting class, you have to add a top-100 talent or two between now and February.
There’s just one problem with that: there aren’t very many of those player left.
Only 12 of those players are currently unsigned, and of those 12, only two are considering Florida (Avantae Williams, ranked 55th overall, Xzavier Henderson, ranked 59th overall).
Unfortunately for Florida, the Gators are ranked directly in front of Texas and the Longhorns also have players in the top-100 leaning strongly their way. The Longhorns have a 100% chance – according to 247Sports – of landing defensive end Alfred Collins (71st ranked) and a 7% chance of pulling 5-star corner Kelee Ringo (8th ranked) away from Georgia. Should either of those players commit to the Longhorns, Florida won’t be able to stay ahead unless the Gators land both Williams and Henderson.
Even with Williams and Henderson signing, the Gators maybe jump Auburn to 7th. If they strike out on both and Texas and Oklahoma close strong, Florida could finish 10th. But if that happens, the lesson shouldn’t be that Texas closed strong or that Florida didn’t. The lesson should be that you’re only moving a spot or two on signing day with a strong close anyway.
You pretty much know what kind of class you’re going to have when the smoke clears after the early signing day in December.
Recruiting correlations
After Miami’s embarrassing shut-out loss to Louisiana Tech in the Independence Bowl, I saw quite a few people posting about recruiting services and Tate Martell.
After all, Martell was the 56th ranked player in the 2017 class. How could the recruiting services have missed so badly? They must be biased and unreliable, right?
Well, the four teams in the playoff this season are all rated in the top-9 for overall talent according to the 247Sports roster rankings. Last year, all were in the top-10. Oklahoma was an outlier in 2017, but that team had Baker Mayfield and a weak Big-12 to content with. The other three teams were in the top-10.
So yes, the recruiting services did miss on Tate Martell, but that’s really the beauty of football. High-level recruits are a huge part of winning, but so are developing those players and making the right on-field decisions. Willie Taggart has had more talent than Dan Mullen in the past two seasons, but Mullen has clearly been able to do more with it.
The question isn’t whether recruiting services are rating Mullen’s classes too low. The question is whether Mullen is so much better than other coaches that he’s able to take teams with borderline top-10 talent and run the SEC gauntlet to the playoff.
If he’s able to do that, we shouldn’t use that as evidence to denigrate recruiting rankings. We should use it as evidence that Mullen is a way better coach than anybody he’s going up against.
Lock down Florida
So if recruiting does need to improve, what does Mullen need to do about it? Well, the biggest thing he needs to do is lock down Florida.
In his time as Gators head coach, Mullen has secured commitments from 10 players rated in the top-20 in the state of Florida over his three seasons. For comparison, Urban Meyer secured 17 over his first three years.
And this doesn’t have to do with early signing period or Mullen’s first class. Mullen actually signed three top-20 players versus just one for Meyer in their first seasons. The difference was that Meyer signed seven in his second year, along with pulling some guy named Percy Harvin down to Gainesville from Virginia Beach.
There has been a lot of frustration in Gainesville (and on message boards) about Mullen’s inability to pull in a kid with game changing skills like Harvin. But perhaps more frustration should be placed on the fact that Mullen is still getting outdueled for players inside the state.
Yes, there are forces in Tuscaloosa, Athens and Clemson that appeal to Florida recruits. But Mullen also has Florida State going through a coaching transition after an awful two seasons and Miami really soul searching after a terrible first year under Manny Diaz.
The time will never be better for Mullen to put a full-court press on the state of Florida. We can all point to one guy or another who might have considered Florida, but missing out on one guy isn’t what’s limiting Mullen’s recruiting classes.
It’s that he hasn’t yet been able to string together a class with the elite-of-the-elite from Florida high schools coming to Gainesville.
Florida lost to LSU
I didn’t think this was news, but apparently with Oklahoma’s loss, the popular refrain that Florida played LSU the best of anyone is being used by some to intimate that Florida should have been given a chance in the playoff.
This is lunacy.
Florida played its best game of the season against LSU and lost by two touchdowns. The Gators couldn’t stop Joe Burrow any more than Oklahoma could. Both Alabama and Auburn – two loss teams themselves – lost to LSU by less combined than Florida did.
This is the problem when you start looking at transitive properties. I don’t think Oklahoma (or anyone else in the Big 12) can approach the quality of the top teams in the SEC. But I also don’t think anybody in the SEC can approach LSU.
That’s why I thought it was unfair in the 2011 season when LSU beat Alabama during the regular season (in Tuscaloosa, no less), yet had to face the Tide again in the championship. You could say the same thing about FSU in 1996, though at least that game was in Tallahassee and Florida nearly came back from 17-0 down after the first quarter in the regular season matchup.
And that’s why it would be unfair to let Florida, Georgia or Alabama get another shot at LSU. They all got their shot at the Tigers and lost. I’m okay with Oklahoma showing they’re inferior too. Just because they were picked to play doesn’t mean they’re better than the SEC teams who didn’t make it.
But they did earn a shot to prove they’re not.
Playoff Expansion?
There were three undefeated teams at the end of the College Football regular season. Unsurprisingly, those three teams played the best during the first two playoff games, while the team with a loss (to Kansas State) was absolutely demolished.
This isn’t a coincidence. It’s really hard to go undefeated, even for teams as loaded as Ohio State, Clemson and LSU. Opening up the playoff to more teams isn’t going to solve the blowout problem, it’s going to exacerbate it.
That doesn’t even start to get into the questions of how an eight team playoff would work. How do you separate two-loss teams Georgia, Penn State, Florida, Oregon, Baylor, Utah, Alabama, Notre Dame and Minnesota? Does Wisconsin get penalized for playing an extra game against Ohio State and losing? Why is Memphis (who just got destroyed by Penn State) ranked higher than Boise State or Appalachian State?
I also have a real problem with playoff expansion from a player safety perspective as well. Prior to 1992, college football teams played 11 games, excluding bowls. The SEC expanded and adopted the annual championship game in 1992, extending that schedule to 12. Playoff teams now can end up playing 14 games, and an expanded playoff would push that to 15.
The SEC is as close as you come to playing a weekly NFL schedule. Expanding that further puts these players at risk, without any additional compensation.
Fans may want more games. Coaches may want to be able to say they “made the playoff” rather than saying they went to the Orange Bowl. But if we’re going to actually do what’s best for the “student-athlete,” expanding the playoff is a tough sell for me.
Chuck Klosterman is a genius
I don’t agree with everything author Chuck Klosterman says or writes, but on a recent episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast, he said something that I hope the NCAA will take a serious look at.
Klosterman and Simmons were going back and forth about what an ideal playoff would look like. I am a firm proponent of four teams, Simmons was asking about six and Klosterman was resigned to eventual expansion to an eight-team playoff.
But one thing Klosterman suggested was that the first round of games could be played on campuses, and that rather than having higher seeded schools play home games, instead give the home game to the team with the highest attendance (based on percent capacity) over the course of the year.
Now, that’s brilliant.
It’s brilliant because it would incentivize fans to show up, even for games against Middle Tennessee State. It’s brilliant because it would give smaller programs who wouldn’t ever have a chance for the number one seed a chance to host a playoff game.
But more than anything, it’s brilliant because the millions of dollars that the extra home game would bring would incentivize programs to be creative to bring fans to games and improve the fan experience.
Florida isn’t a basketball school
I’ve watched – somewhat bemused – as Gators fans have become apoplectic at the start for the Gators men’s basketball season.
Don’t get me wrong: Florida should be a lot better than they are. I also think Mike White is responsible for it. These are his players, and if they aren’t making enough shots, he needs to redirect them to take the ball to the rim.
But it’s worth remembering what this program was before Billy Donovan arrived.
The program started in 1920. The AP Poll started in 1949. Floridia did not finish a season in the AP Poll until the 1993-1994 season under Lon Kruger. That team made it to the Final Four, losing to Duke.
But Kruger only accomplished that feat once. Donovan did it 12 times in 19 seasons as Florida head coach, not to mention the three championship game appearances and two titles.
So Donovan did something no other Florida coach has even come close to doing at a sustained level, yet we expect that exact same level from Mike White?
So I’ll ask Gators fans who want to jettison White: who’s his replacement? Who is taking over a program where a National Championship is the standard but there is only one coach who has shown the ability to get even close to that level?
Perhaps more importantly, who is the coach who will see the level of noise that occurred after White’s team lost to Florida State earlier this season or Utah State more recently and decides he wants that crucible without the ready-made advantages that come with taking over a college basketball blue-blood like Kentucky, Kansas or North Carolina?
White may prove by the end of the year that he isn’t the right guy for the job. But you’re going to have to take chances on young guys to find the next Donovan.
That’s because football head coach at Florida is a top-tier job. I’m not sure it’s a top-25 job in college basketball.
Thanks for reading!