I tried to keep my expectations low going into the Las Vegas Bowl, knowing that Florida was severely shorthanded and may not have been terribly motivated to play in the game. The coaching staff is working hard to finish up the recruiting class for the early signing day as well, so I didn’t expect there to be a ton of creativity in the game plan.
Even so, the team managed to come in below those already subterranean expectations.
OK, well, not everything was quite that bad. I liked what I saw from Derek Wingo finally, which dovetailed with the pregame stories about him stepping up as a leader this winter. I don’t count anything as proven yet in this regard, but I at least wanted to head into this off-season with a glimmer of hope that things won’t fall apart at linebacker with Ventrell Miller leaving. He and Shemar James complemented each other nicely, so that glimmer does indeed exist.
The defense also performed admirably as a whole, at least when it wasn’t making big mistakes. I realize how that sounds, but work with me here. Oregon State only had one extended drive that wasn’t aided by penalties before late in the fourth quarter, and of course one of the Beavers’ touchdowns was the result of a special teams mishap.
There’s always room to improve and it wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but the defense didn’t lose the Gators this game with their actual down-to-down play. It was those drive-extending penalties that were the real problem on that side of the ball.
On the other side of the ball… was there anything that wasn’t a problem?
I have a full piece brewing about Anthony Richardson’s year, but Jack Miller showed why Billy Napier tried to be gentle with his QB1 for stretches this year. Jalen Kitna had some flashes of competence before his justified dismissal, but they truly were mere flashes. A dozen of his 14 pass attempts this year came against Eastern Washington, and the other two were at the end of the South Carolina blowout. When he had to come in on an emergency basis against Texas A&M and FSU, Napier didn’t trust him to attempt a pass.
And now, we can see why Miller got passed up by a redshirt freshman on the depth chart. His physical tools are fine, as his scrambling was actually UF’s best recipe for success on the ground in Vegas. His arm strength is adequate to get the job done a lot of the time. He won’t throw any 50-yard missiles, but most college quarterbacks can’t.
But his scrambling doesn’t make him truly mobile, and he was wracked by indecision. I don’t think UF’s underwhelming receivers were getting open on every play, but Miller still couldn’t make throws with authority a lot of the time. Plus when Oregon State loaded up to come after him, he just went running for his life without the look of someone figuring out a plan on the fly.
It was his first extended time playing in a real college game, so I do cut him a little slack. Again, no one should’ve had high expectations for a backup who fell on the depth chart during the season. Still, 80 of his 180 passing yards came on the team’s final drive, and he was sacked twice in a row to conclude that series.
The rushing game was also astonishingly bad. Yes, O’Cyrus Torrence wasn’t there, but the dropoff wasn’t this severe when he previously missed time. It didn’t take long before it began looking like some ball carriers were making business decisions about how hard to fight through contact when they were being swarmed two yards behind the line of scrimmage over and over.
I’ve seen it said that Florida’s scoring streak only survived because of those two late sacks of Miller, as they took away the option to go for it on fourth down. That could be, but I would not be surprised if Napier would have kicked the field goal on any close enough fourth down in that situation. Or, kicking on the final play of the game instead of trying to throw it in the end zone had the sacks not happened.
The scoring streak is not incredibly important. No one talks about it unless it’s in jeopardy, and basically no one ever remembers what the actual number of games is.
However, I think Napier is smart enough to understand what a bad message that would send for it to end under his watch. Florida has had some bad offenses since Urban Meyer left, and there were a couple times where the streak did almost end. UF managed to extend it with zero offensive points against FSU in 2015, and it only survived by a couple minutes against Georgia in 2017.
They certainly know inside the building that offense has been a point of frustration for a lot of Gator fans this year. The question of whether Napier should hire a play calling offensive coordinator has come up plenty of times in media, blogs, and podcasts as well as on social media and message boards (which some staffers do monitor to some degree, if for no other reason than to make sure no legit strategic or injury news is leaking).
Closing out the year with the scoring streak ending would’ve been a terrible symbolic look. Not that what happened in the Las Vegas Bowl looked good to anyone who saw it, or that a field goal with under a minute to go really is extending the scoring streak with authority. It’s a box he needed to check, and in almost the weakest way possible, he checked it.
I’ve mentioned multiple times that transition years don’t always go well from start to finish, or show improvement from start to finish, or are necessarily indicative of anything in the future. The 2022 season ended in a manner befitting the way it went about 60% of the time.
The only thing that matters from here is how Napier and staff make improvements going forward. No one will care much about this season if things rocket upwards quickly. Things are always going to be rocky given how relatively poorly Dan Mullen recruited over the last four years, and “rocky” is an understatement for some areas. It’s time to refine the plan to win, acquire some talent, and move on.