I am of the age where Florida State is my most hated rival. I grew up on Spurrier football in the ’90s. That meant that it was bound to be either FSU or Tennessee rather than Georgia like those noticeably older than me. Or noticeably younger, as it seems to have turned out.
It is therefore always frustrating to take losses to that team, but it’s especially so when the game is winnable. And Friday’s game was definitely winnable.
A lot ended up quite even in the game. Florida had 460 yards on 73 plays for an average of 6.3; FSU had 497 on 74 for 6.7. Turnovers were tied 1-1. The Gators were 8-of-16 on third down, while the Seminoles were 9-of-16 on third down. And the score, of course, had a final margin of just one touchdown.
I’ll write something about it for the main site later this week, but a lot of the things that seemed fixed about the team after South Carolina turned out to not be in the two weeks since. Worse than that, penalties suddenly became an issue.
Florida kept a couple of extended Vanderbilt drives alive with flags, and really, they could’ve done worse against FSU. Antwaun Powell-Ryland’s personal foul was on a third down that FSU converted anyway, and they only got three additional yards versus the actual play. The drive ended in a field goal. A hold by Kingsley Eguakun helped put UF in a 4th-and-18 hole on the final drive, but a Seminole pass interference flag (correctly called, Brock) erased it. The flags that weren’t thrown against FSU for holding (all game) or facemask (on the Gators’ final play) largely hurt worse than the ones that were thrown.
Only the punt return personal foul on Ja’Markis Weston followed by a Trey Dean hold two plays later really were damaging, as they helped FSU get the touchdown that put them ahead 38-24. Even then, Dean was beat so badly that absent the hold, the play might well have gone for six.
It also might not have, because Jordan Travis is not an accurate passer. It’s galling to me that the defense made him look like a superhero at times because he’s just not that good. He put up some nice numbers on ACC defenses this season, though not the one stellar defense in the league in Clemson. He at least managed to complete more than half his passes on the Tigers — something he didn’t do on Friday — but it was for a whisper above six yards per completion.
Florida held him to 43% completions, but when he did connect on passes, they went for almost 21 yards per completion. That allowed him to have a healthy nine yards per attempt despite the low completion percentage.
He doesn’t have that strong an arm, and he’s as likely to throw a wobbly duck as anything. Say what you want about Anthony Richardson skipping bubble screens, but at least they’re tight spirals when they happen.
Unfortunately, that’s just what the Gator defense did this year. They made Jayden Daniels look like Joe Burrow, and they made Haynes King look like an SEC caliber quarterback for a half.
To his credit, Travis is fast and elusive. He doesn’t have elite speed like the broadcasters kept saying, but mobility is why he’s a Power 5 starter. Many of the Gators’ missed tackles of him were disappointing, but at least they were understandable.
What’s not understandable is when, coming out of a timeout on the first FSU drive of the second half, Patrick Toney elected to have Gervon Dexter drop back as a spy on Travis. Dexter is a terrific defensive tackle, but of course he’s not going to contain a legitimate dual threat quarterback. Travis couldn’t find anyone open after dropping back, and he easily evaded Dexter to scramble for the first down.
That’s another thing that made it frustrating: the decision making from the coaches. It wasn’t all bad, since they did only lose by seven. However the fact the game was close made every misstep magnified.
You had Dexter as a spy. You had the abandonment of the run game for much of the third quarter. You had Richardson miss badly on a check down to the sideline on the first of the bad third down drives followed by Billy Napier calling for essentially the same throw on a bubble screen on the next drive. AR missed badly on that one too.
The receiver injuries were a real issue. Ricky Pearsall was the only wideout to catch a pass. Caleb Douglas couldn’t hold onto a couple of on-the-money throws. Daejon Reynolds was silent a week after rolling up 165 yards on Vandy, which, when combined with his 74 against Eastern Washington, somehow put him in a clear fourth place for receiving yards on the entire team. He’s fast enough to get open against Vandy but I suspect not against FSU’s much better and more athletic defense.
But still, the run game was cooking for a half and Napier just stopped using it. There was no need for that, especially with the Seminoles’ pass defense being the strength of the defense.
Despite those receiver injuries and some (some! Not all) of the bad tackling, it was a totally winnable game. That tells me that Florida isn’t that far off. The only double-digit losses on the year were to Kentucky, when AR had the worst game of his life, and the teams playing this weekend in the SEC Championship Game. A couple of the losses, including this one to FSU and the one to LSU, were ultimately due to a bad quarter more than a bad overall game.
What they’re not far off from is getting back to the Mullen peak of ten wins and a New Year’s Six bowl. They could easily be back to that next year. Getting to the entire sport’s peak is the tougher task and is probably off the table in 2023 unless Napier pulls off some real miracle work in the portal.
Napier’s recruiting has surpassed that of Tennessee and FSU, and they won’t always lose to UK and Vandy in the same year. There are some adjustments to be made strategically, but this year’s 6-6 is a lot different than last year’s.