Suppose you’re a UF student taking a math class. The teacher assigns a set of practice problems as homework to be turned in next time the class meets.
You go to class the next time, and everyone is handing in their problem sets. You turn in an essay about World War II.
“What is this?” the teacher asks. “I assigned you math problems. I can tell at a glance there are too many words here and not enough numbers. I’m not accepting this. You get a zero.”
“But wait,” you say. “It’s an essay that will make the reader completely rethink the Battle of Stalingrad.” And it is! You put in a lot of effort on it. You did good work.
“I don’t care,” the teacher says. “You didn’t do your assignment.”
And therein lies the problem with this year’s Florida defense.
They try. They put in effort. They are quick and strong. And then sometimes, they just don’t do their assignments. They do something else instead that they think is a better idea in the moment.
But it’s not. It’s never a better idea, or almost never anyway. Defenses work best when everyone does their job. Sometimes an incredibly gifted athlete with a thorough knowledge of both everything the defense is doing and what the offense is trying to accomplish can freelance his way into making good plays. Florida doesn’t have any such guys, though, and it’s questionable how many players outside Ventrell Miller actually know what every Gator is supposed to be doing at any given time.
In some ways, Patrick Toney’s scheme has been a poor fit for the first three teams that Florida played. The scheme is clearly designed to be a spread beater, but Utah, Kentucky, and USF all used a lot of heavier rushing sets. The defense uses creativity and deception to try to get pressure with just four rushers. Sometimes guys will act like they’re rushing and drop back, and other times the heat will come from someone who’s not showing blitz.
The problem is that the pressure often doesn’t get the quarterback or running back on the ground immediately. UF has been putting six-man boxes against eight-man run plays, or it’ll rush four and drop eight against pass plays that don’t have shallow routes or safety valves.
In the former case, there are enough blockers to just block everyone and then a safety or corner has to get the run stop. Strong safety aside, defensive backs aren’t generally trained in run stopping, and backs often fall forward when being tackled by DBs regardless on account of being bulkier. Trey Dean has been UF’s designated run-stopping safety, and he’s been out of position too often. See: assignments, etc.
In the latter case, the defense has struggled with scrambling quarterbacks twice in three weeks. Will Levis is much more a runner than a scrambler, but both Cam Rising and Gerry Bohanon have the ability to turn any play into Yakety Sax. When the pressure didn’t get them down right away, which wasn’t often on account of their elusiveness, then they ran around and picked up easy yards because coverage guys who didn’t notice the scrambling immediately had to run in from ten or more yards away to try to get the stop.
So with these schematic things going against the defense, it’s very important for everyone to do their jobs correctly. Guys playing heroball cause a cascade of failures that let opponents run as much as they want wherever they want.
There were times when jack linebackers weren’t setting the edge, despite their position often being labeled as all-caps EDGE in a lot of places. Middle linebackers didn’t always plug the right holes, sometimes on account of them being freshmen who haven’t played much on the college level.
And then sometimes you have things like, to pick a key play out of a hat, Bohanon’s early third quarter touchdown run. It’s 1st & Goal from the 6-yard-line. USF has five linemen and an H-back to block for a quarterback draw, while UF has six in the box. All six blockers successfully block all six box defenders, so Bohanon gets a head of steam before running through tackle attempts by guys who give up either 20 (Rashad Torrence) or 30 (Tre’Vez Johnson) pounds to the quarterback.
It’d be nice to see them load up against the run sometimes, especially considering how DB is so much more a team strength than linebacker. Toney won’t do it because that’s not how his defense works, so guys are going to have to do their jobs and also beat blocks to stop the run.
Alas, the Gator staff is working through a learning period where they find out which parts of their schemes do and don’t work on the big-time level. It’s not just Toney, either.
Napier keeps doing things like stretch plays (screens and sweeps) to Xavier Henderson, which are averaging under three yards a pop, and leaving edge rushers unblocked on plays that aren’t options. Leaving someone unblocked is a hallmark of the option, and leaving the backside edge guy unblocked on a run the opposite direction has merits too. Napier, though, keeps calling plays where one end guy isn’t blocked but there isn’t an obvious upside to it like in those examples. No, I don’t get it either.
Urban Meyer had to retool his offense at the bye week of his first season. Napier and Toney have some things to rethink, but they’ve got less talent to work with than what Ron Zook left behind. If they could just get everyone to do the right assignments, that’d at least be a good start.