Another week goes by with another ho-hum performance, to recycle a term Dan Mullen used a few weeks back. What is going on?
Expectations have outstripped the team on the field, mainly.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but being the clear divisional frontrunner for a month is not something anyone has experienced before except Brenton Cox when he was at Georgia. Not recently, anyway. The coaches who were on Urban Meyer’s staff over a decade ago have that to remember, but in their current roles and responsibilities at Florida or Mississippi State or elsewhere, this is not something they’ve dealt with before.
Kyle Trask, he’s barely dealt with just being the starter before. You know it but it bears repeating: he’s only been such for less than a year and a half since his freshman year of high school. Now, he’s been anointed a Heisman frontrunner and is being compared to the best quarterbacks of this season and last every week. He’s handling things better than the vast majority of players ever could, but you can see a few signs of him pressing with locking onto/forcing the ball to Kyle Pitts or missing receivers by small margins in a way he didn’t early in the year.
In hindsight, the blistering offensive pace of the first half against Georgia and the whole game against Arkansas was not sustainable. After some early struggles they got there against Vandy, but they never did against Kentucky or Tennessee.
The Gators scored 27 and 31 points in the last two games, respectively. Combined that makes 58, which is only two more than they got against the Razorbacks alone (Carter had a defensive score). UK and UT have two of the better SEC defenses, sure, but Georgia is still No. 1 or 2, and the Wildcats and Vols are in the same tier as Arkansas is.
It’s gone unnoticed as far as I can tell, but the defense is back to not getting off the field quickly enough. It was a source of frustration following the South Carolina and Texas A&M games, but then UF ran more plays than Mizzou did and a lot more than UGA and Arkansas did.
The Gators barely ran more than Vandy did, and they ran fewer than Kentucky and Tennessee did. In fact UF only had 57 offensive plays against UK, which is not much more than they had against the Gamecocks (53) or Aggies (56). Ten of the 57 were even the last drive that ended on the Wildcat goal line, so it was more like 47 in the main flow of the game.
The Kentucky offense literally standing around doing nothing to milk the clock all game played into that, but in the first half they had drives of 11 plays and 14 plays. Tennessee had three drives of at least 11 plays that covered more than 90 yards. Heck, Vandy’s first two drives went for 11 and 12 plays, respectively, and they had another 12-play drive late.
Two of the Volunteers’ long drives were in garbage time, sure, but not slamming the door on opponents with more authority has been part of the frustration the last few weeks. There are benefits to doing so that UF isn’t accruing beyond just making the final scores look nicer.
There is Trask’s very real Heisman campaign, and padding his stats more would help. It’s less about yardage, as Trask is second nationally in yards per game right now, as it is the touchdowns. The streak of 4+ TD passes in games got him noticed as much as anything else, and UF’s pathetic run game ensures that most of UF’s scores will come through the air. Boosting that touchdown total is the most direct path to Trask taking home the trophy.
Beyond that, Trask has accepted a Senior Bowl invitation. He may not have officially declared, but he’s going pro and seems likely to be a first round pick. There’s no reason for him to take the 2020 eligibility mulligan and come back.
Which means, it’s Emory Jones’s team next year. Maybe Anthony Richardson could push Jones in practice, but Mullen’s long-demonstrated preference for experience and seniority guarantees Jones will get the first crack at the job barring injury.
Every drive Trask plays in a fourth quarter is one where Jones is not getting live game experience. Is him going up against the backups of bad teams super valuable? In one sense no, but he’d at least be facing different guys and different kinds of schemes than the ones he sees against in practice every week.
If the 2020 offense can run up the score, it’s an investment in the 2021 offense. Florida has missed its chance to invest much more than a drive a game, if that, in these past few games.
I am not ready to wave the white flag in regards to Alabama. The Tide defense can be had, and it’s not faced a good offense in quite a while. Neither has UF, of course, but all the talk about Bama’s defense improving and becoming one of the best has come from:
- Allowing more non-garbage time points to Tennessee than UF did
- Shutting out a Mike Leach offense that can’t handle zone defense and played a true freshman most of the way
- Nearly shutting out a UK offense that was even more shorthanded than it was against UF
- Getting Bo Nix in Tuscaloosa, which matters because he’s always been terrible on the road
Bama’s defense has still played better than Florida’s has this year, but it’s not the 2011 Bama defense. There is a chance for Florida to win in Atlanta.
It’s hard to say that UF has used this time as presumptive East favorite playing lower tier SEC teams to hone itself for that matchup, though. They’ve got one more shot before the final exam.