I gave this post-Samford newsletter some time for a couple reasons. The main one is that I used up my early-week writing time to talk about taking my son to his first game, and I don’t regret that choice one bit. The other is that there was a nice afterglow to the game given DJ Lagway’s electrifying performance.
Everyone apparently has to give their opinions on the quarterback situation whether they cover Florida closely or not, so here we go with mine:
It’s defensible to start Graham Mertz against Texas A&M.
Yes, I went back and saw all the throws from Lagway. Yes, I am thoroughly impressed by them. And yes, I think there’s a strong chance he ends up starting before the season is out. Maybe even the month.
But let’s not forget that it really does matter that it all happened against a perhaps quite bad FCS team in Samford.
James DiVirgilio of the Gator Nation Football Podcast does detailed film reviews each week. They are quite long, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend watching them unless you have a lot of time. However, he will post clips of individual plays to the show’s Twitter/X account. I would recommend going there and looking at the single-play breakdowns that are on there this week.
James is now a big Lagway guy and thinks Billy Napier should start him. He was over the moon on this week’s show about how good the freshman looked as a passer.
And even then, in those clip breakdowns, he talks through some of the ways that the big plays were only possible because the opponent was so poor. Lagway either had opportunities that won’t be there against better defenses — e.g., on the fake-pitch deep bomb to Elijhah Badger, an SEC opponent won’t have literally every defender but the deep DBs bite on the fake, giving him all day to throw — or probably got away with things that just won’t fly against even an average defense, like forgoing a wide open Tre Wilson to attempt the circus touchdown pass to Aidan Mizell.
One reason Dan Mullen stuck with Emory Jones over Anthony Richardson is that Jones was more predictable. He ran the plays as called more often, while AR would at times do more freelancing. Mullen, as a putative schematic mastermind, wanted his plays executed exactly as called. It seemed that Mullen believed that if he knew could trust his quarterback to do what he was told, then he felt he could scheme around the guy’s deficiencies. He certainly seemed like he liked that idea much more than having someone behind center who might deviate from the script.
I don’t know if Napier is as precious about his play calls as Mullen was, though his reluctance to give up control over the offense does make me wonder about that. I do know that Napier seems fairly rigid and doesn’t like changing plans once they’re made, so he might have a Mullen-like streak in him regarding play call execution. Coaches of great improvisors — think Kevin Sumlin and Johnny Manziel — often have a look more of relief than joy on their faces even after their player pulls out an amazing sequence because they have a hard time dealing with the stress that goes along with it.
In that light, I have fully expected Napier to go back to Mertz as soon as he’s out of concussion protocol. And, I do think it’s defensible because we have way more game film of Mertz in orange and blue than of Lagway. Mertz struggled while the freshman led a garbage time touchdown drive against Miami, but one game is one game.
That said, the leash for Mertz should be fairly short. He may have a large edge in experience, but his limitations are real. Lagway completed more true deep passes against Samford than Mertz typically has done in a span of several games.
Even if you account for the Samford defense being little different than the proverbial throwing against air, Mertz has gotten time to throw long passes and just not connected on that many of them. His long pass to Badger against Miami had terrible placement and would’ve been complete had he led his wide open receiver to any degree at all instead of throwing it slightly behind him.
There also is the matter that the offensive line isn’t very good and the coaches are making it worse by mismanaging it. It looks like Austin Barber (for sure) and Devon Manuel (most likely) are the best two tackles, but they’re splitting time on the left side while anyone they roll out there on the right side is struggling mightily. Mertz has poor pocket awareness when he’s looking downfield, and he’s nowhere near as able to move around to avoid pressure as Lagway is.
For this week, a lot will come down to whether the defense can hold the Aggies in check. A&M’s offense has performed worse than expected two weeks running. If the Gators can build on some confidence they found last weekend, then that might give room for Napier to pursue one of his patented one-score wins where no team leaves the 20s. Which means, there would be more room to play Mertz more of the game.
But while Mertz showed an ability to really turn it up in the shootout against South Carolina last year, that was a bad Gamecock defense. While TAMU hasn’t impressed on offense, Mike Elko’s defense has been good like expected. It’s especially good up front, which is bad news for a team with a suspect offensive line.
If Napier mismanages the quarterback situation this weekend, it will dampen some of the good vibes from last weekend even if the team somehow pulls out a win despite it. It’s also well with in the realm of possibility that Napier rolls with Mertz almost the entire way to a 20-17 loss, and the Fire-Billy noise becomes deafening once again.
We’re about to find out just how scared Napier’s money is.