The Mississippi Game
by David Parker
In what will no doubt go down in history as the weirdest college football season ever, that was certainly a weird opener for the Gators. When you give up 35 points and 613 yards to a first-year coaching staff, 443 of those yards through the air against DBU, and yet someone on that defense wins the SEC Defensive Player of the Week award, you know it’s a weird day. Overall, though, is that when you ring up over half a hunny on an SEC opponent on the road; when you stick it to one of the most hated opposing coaches in Gator lore; when you get to see multiple team and SEC records matched or broken; when you go into a noon kickoff away from the Swamp against a West opponent and don’t have to visit your cardiologist after the game; it’s a very successful day!
Taking Offense
The offensive line has taken its due praise already, with Brett Heggie even snagging SEC Offensive Lineman of the Week honors in his first career start at center. And while in the first quarter, they often looked like the same unit that struggles to move defenders off the ball in the run game, even against lower division competition, for much of the game after, they were making holes and pushing defenders around pretty well for a line missing its best player to injury. And they did their typical strong job in pass protection, only I think this may have been their best game yet in that department under Dan Mullen. As much as their performance, I was impressed and encouraged by how well they and quarterback Kyle Trask worked as fingers on the same hand. Trask on almost every play knew exactly how many milliseconds he had let to stay in the pocket, he moved the right way inside and outside the pocket exactly when he needed to, and while that credit goes mostly to the quarterback, the ability to have that level of pocket presence is boosted significantly by a consistent offensive line. Consistent in that he knows who will be where, and when, and he can trust all five guys to hold their blocks and to move defenders in predictable ways when the rush advances. It’s chemistry across the line, but more importantly accountability and responsibility seen to fruition on an every down basis.
There has been much talk already of Kyle Trask trending toward a Heisman finalist spot, about Kyle Pitts being penciled in as the greatest tight end in UF history, and about how Kadarius Toney’s performance will influence the production value of his next album. After one game. And as much as I generally shy away from such lofty aspirations based on one game, I think they are all fair. Mostly because we knew these things coming in, and we then saw them in fact exceed those lofty expectations. And that ironically has led to a lot less hype around the Gators’ performance Saturday, and specifically the individual performances. The national sports punditry have praised them, but cut it all short with a summary, “Yeah, but we knew this already; it’s not a hot take.” By the way, please slap me in the face if I ever say “hot take” in any context other than quoting a talking head, or using it ironically. The media heat in the SEC was instead all over the Mississippi quarterback, for running up video game numbers on the defending national champs. Why? Because none of them saw that coming. But they should have, shouldn’t’ they? LSU is a fully gutted husk of the 2019 team, and MSU has The Pirate, a guy who has shown he can put up pinball numbers against anyone, with any talent in his locker room.
But I will waste no sweat on sports pundits. Just enjoying the win.
Speaking of things that few saw coming, how about the Gator running backs picking up the blitz Saturday? The last ten years or so, the only blitz pickups the Gator running backs did was picking themselves off the turf. Dameon Pierce in particular did a great job of not only picking up blitzes, but neutralizing the rusher completely, a few times knocking them on their backsides. At least once it helped spring a touchdown throw. Malik Davis and Nay’Quan Wright also held their own in pass protection, and Wright showed some nifty moves and a little power when he toted the rock. On one play, he made a great block and peel, and then hauled in a short pass and went full Gene Kelly down the field. Hey, we told you he was good.
And did anyone notice: there are two big things that we’ve seen creep back into the offensive playbook under Dan’s tenure, that we saw showcased on Saturday as a new strength. Two things that make any offense extremely difficult to stop. Two things whose absence has made our offenses much more defendable, and much easier to stifle, the last several years. Those two things are the spot-on-the-spot throw and throwing receivers open. The latter gets tightly covered receivers open, and the former is, like the great fade passes that Danny Wuerffel used to toss with perfection, virtually undefendable.
And I’ll explain what I mean by a spot-on-the-spot throws, since that’s not part of our football lexicon. It’s a fishing term for finding the best bite. When you’re in the boat with two other anglers, you all three fish the same spot at the same time. But on every great fishing spot, there are good, better and best spots ON that spot that will produce the most and biggest fish. The guy fishing the SOTS, the spot-on-the-spot, will always out-fish the other two.
In football, that skill is throwing the ball where only the receiver can make the catch. If the receiver can’t make the catch, it’s incomplete because it’s placed where the defender can’t get to it, can’t intercept it, and usually can’t deflect it. Passes to the back shoulder; passes off the ground just enough where only the lurching or diving receiver can get to it; passes that let the receiver use his body to keep the defender off the ball. We saw all three of those elements in the NFL-caliber K2K (Kyle-to-Kyle) connection in the front corner of the end zone Saturday. The only way to stop that touchdown would have been to literally tackle Kyle Pitts before the ball got there. And these passes have the most potential to succeed when you have big, strong receivers with great body control. That’s what we have, and that’s what Dan recruits. Kadarius Toney is a glaring exception, but he is an all-purpose outlier, and we use him in different ways.
One of the things that made our receivers so good in the days of Danny, Shane, Timmy, etc., is that the pitchers put the ball where this powerful dynamic comes into play.
This isn’t exactly a heavily guarded secret of the trade. We simply haven’t had a quarterback with the accuracy to hit the SOTS for some time now. Will Grier was getting there in his painfully short time in Gainesville, but he had a lot of discipline hurdles to clear before that would be a consistent part of his game (and I mean discipline in technique, not off the field). Florida signal callers haven’t had this quill in their quiver since Timmy was slinging arrows around Florida Field, and even he struggled with that pinpoint accuracy at times. But when he was on, like in the 2008 SEC Championship Game, those are passes that just cannot be defended. Those of us who watched the Arkansas game Saturday, with former Gator Feleipe Franks chucking it, don’t have to cast our minds back in time to remember how it was every time a UF quarterback let it fly, just hoping it would be aimed at a Gator and not a defender. The nuance of SOTS throws wasn’t even in the conversation. Now, with Trask, it’s the norm.
One last comment on the offense: time will be the judge, but I think newly promoted offensive coordinator Brian Johnson called a better game than Dan Mullen usually does. Dan tends to outthink himself a few times in every game, and kills drives that way. Of course, he also pulls out Spurrieresque jaw-drop plays, which hopefully BJ has in his trick bag as well. Again, time will tell. And I would bet that on those occasions where Dan reads the feel for the game and thinks a gadget or new twist off an old formation will strike gold, I imagine the head ball coach will have BJ’s ear.
Don’t Get Defensive
Now the bad part. And I preface this with the acknowledgement that we were missing Shawn Davis, Kyree Campbell, Jeremiah Moon, James Houston and Brad Stewart, all of whom will be or are expected to be back very soon, if not immediately. All of them combined certainly would have changed our chances of making stops on D, even if they didn’t play any better than the rest of the team that did play. But I don’t think the main problem on defense Saturday was personnel driven. Because it was all too familiar to the defense we saw in some really big games last year. I don’t know what needs more work on defense: tackling, lining up, taking proper angles, or over-pursuit, but I think the first thing to address is the scheme.
I believe the main defect here is that we don’t try to pressure the quarterback on third down, and don’t cover receivers. And we do this especially against quarterbacks uniquely skilled to kill defenses that don’t pressure and don’t cover. The insufferable number of times Todd Grantham only rushed 3 and did not blitz on 3rd-and-very long last year against LSU (loss), UGA (loss), UVA (got nervously close at the end) was again on full display in Oxford. On plays where the opposing offense needs extra time as a matter of course to get beyond the distant sticks, Grantham repeatedly called his standard no-rush, soft non-match zone, that facilitates the offense having all the time (and space) in the world to make the first down. And when they can’t, the quarterback can just jog 20 yards downfield before the first Gator defender greets him, because our zone clears out everyone and leaves nobody to spy on mobile quarterbacks. If there’s an NCAA record for most conversions allowed on 3rd & 15+, I bet Grantham has broken it in his 2 years and 1 game at UF.
This is not news to Gator fans, and I know belaboring the point when we have a head coach slavishly loyal to his assistant coaches, but we are such a talented team this year, and have such a huge opportunity with Georgia and LSU both looking to be down this year, that it would be criminal to miss our big chance to grab the national spotlight, ascend to the elite level, and capture the imagination of the best recruits in the land, just because our defensive coordinator won’t stop running an antithetical, fatally flawed scheme.
We should be a championship team this year, and the defense looks right now like it will prevent that from happening. Last year, the defense played exactly like it did Saturday against LSU and UGA. Helpless to stop advancing drives, helpless to stop the methodical moving of the chains, helpless to stop big plays. And it wasn’t because of the opposing offenses; it was because we refused to rush the QB or cover receivers. Stopping the Heisman Trophy winner and that LSU offense would have been a tall order, but we never tried to stop them. We just tried to slow them down and hope they shot themselves in the foot.
Granted, we were missing our two only real pass rushing threats for both of those games last year, so I can cut Grantham the slack that he felt rushing 3 people and playing soft zone was the only way to win those games, but most qualified observers disagreed with that. That Grantham’s zone doesn’t pattern match (unless you count matching crop circles), made it all the worse a plan.
As ever, we will see how it plays out. But I for one have right around zero confidence that Todd Grantham will do anything to change. I eagerly wait to be proven wrong.
Keep in mind that this game could easily have been a nail-biter to the end, and might have gone the other way, if not for some very fortuitous breaks. An Ole Miss touchdown was taken off the board with a holding penalty that was away from the ball and had nothing to do with the play; an Ole Miss defensive stop was turned into a Florida touchdown thanks to a very questionable roughing the quarterback penalty that 100% of Gator fans would have called BS if it were called against us. They missed a field goal and passed up the opportunity to kick a chip-shot on a failed fourth down play inside the Florida red zone. That’s a 20-point swing to Ole Miss in a 16-point Gator victory margin. Then add in the lucky interception by a Gator lineman on a deflection inside the Gator red zone, and the two times Kiffin chose not to go for it on 4th down and a breadstick, on drives where they were pushing our defense all over the place, and you have a MUCH different game if just a couple of those things break for Missy.
I know not everyone likes to play the “what-if” game, so to even it out, let’s look at the what-ifs for Florida. There really weren’t many, were there? We pretty much maximized our offensive opportunities. There is the personnel “what-if”, as in, what if our starting safety had not been forced out of the game in the first quarter with a targeting penalty, but I don’t think one player would have done much to shore up all the defensive issues that all started with Grantham’s self-defeating scheme and game plan, and went downhill from there. So, counting up the what-ifs, add a gimme field goal that Kiffin passed up, and to be VERY conservative, let’s assume both times Kiffin passed up the easy 4th down conversion opportunities, they did not score. But we have to concede that they would have gotten a touchdown if we don’t get the lucky lineman interception, so that’s a 30-point swing to Ole Miss. Let’s be very generous and say that Shawn Davis would have made the difference in stopping two Missy touchdowns on defense. The net gain for Ole Miss would then be 16 points, the exact margin of victory for the Gators. Anyone placing bets on our defense in overtime?
That’s all pie in the sky, of course. Speculations on hypotheticals. Snappy retorts about flying frogs from Nathan Arizona. But even as pure nonsense, it demonstrates how close the horrid defensive showing might have made this game. Against one of the weakest opponents we will face all year. We as fans can dismiss it, but you can bet the coaches are attacking all the defensive issues this week, knowing full well that when South Carolina comes to town this Saturday, with just a couple different bounces, this could be a reality. It happened the last time the Kentucky Wildcats visited The Swamp; it could happen with the Gamecocks.
Scouting the Competition
As most Gator fans did, after the Florida win, I tuned in to see how Feleipe Franks would do in his first start with the Arkansas Razorbacks. As expected, Feleipe did Feleipe things. Dropped a beautiful 40-yard dime on one play and for no apparent reason does an impromptu side arm jump pass into the arms of a safety on a next. Through the first quarter, Arkansas’s only score was because of Feleipe, and George’s only threat to score was because of Feleipe. We’ve all seen that movie before, many times. The kid has all the physical tools, and he’s worked extremely hard to learn the position, improve his game, and then just to recover and be healthy enough to play football again, but he just doesn’t see the field well. It’s not even about reading defenses; he simply doesn’t see defenders after the ball snaps. He did not look bad, at times looked good, and is getting the shot to play in the SEC that he worked hard to earn, and richly deserves. Hopefully he will fulfill his dreams on every weekend except when he plays us.
In that same game, I think what we saw from Georgia confirms what I’ve thought and said since Kirby’s first season was in the can. And that is that Kirby’s offense can only be successful in the SEC if they have an absolutely dominant line, and a very disciplined, savvy quarterback. In his first few years at Georgia, Kirby has also had the advantage of having multiple NFL caliber running backs. Though it is only one game, it does not appear that he has a dominant offensive line, NFL caliber running backs, or a very disciplined, savvy quarterback. Their defense looked pretty darn good, but against a 2-win football team with a new coaching staff led by a guy in his first game ever as a head coach, they should have looked better.
Texas A&M looked basically equal in talent to Vanderbilt, and LSU is a wet hot mess, as we expected. South Carolina and Tennessee both looked like they were locked in a contest to prove which was the worst team on the field (advantage: Muschamp). Kentucky looked like a typical Wildcat team – plays well for a quarter or two, then fades – and Missouri might be the worst team in the conference. The three toughest outs in the SEC outside of Florida look to be Alabama, Auburn and Mississippi State, none of which are on Florida’s schedule this year. It rarely works out that way. So you see the mortal imperative that the Gator defense start rushing more than 3, and start letting our extremely talented defensive backs cover receivers instead of practice backwards sprinting on every play.
ANDREW SPIVEY
Most of the guys who missed the game on Saturday should return on Saturday as they were not suspended.
Florida was impressed by Brett Heggie at center but once Ethan White returns he will take over at center and Heggie will go back to right guard.
In recruiting, everything is pretty much at stand still with the dead period. Florida has most of its class done so that’s the good news for Florida. Most of their remaining targets are wanting to wait until signing day to announce.
NICK DE LA TORRE
We did it, folks. What an incredibly long, scary, frustrating offseason. Definitely a first for me.
Let’s start with my prediction, which I don’t think I’ve put in print yet, but have talked about on the podcast. I picked Florida to win the SEC East and play in Atlanta on December 19 for the SEC Championship. I would have made that pick even with the regular schedule and not the new 10-game SEC one.
And after one game, even with how the defense looked, I’m not wavering on that pick. Florida is, in my opinion, better than Georgia. They are the creme de la creme of the East but the 800-pound gorilla is still in Jacksonville. It’s year three, gotta take care of business in the WLOCP.
I am so impressed with the offense. I will note that Ole Miss is a bad defense and they have a whole new staff that tried to coach and teach over Zoom all offseason, which didn’t help them. With that being said, this offense is going to put up numbers. There isn’t a player in the country that can stop Kyle Pitts. Teams will have to double and triple team him to try and stop him and Florida simply has too many guys that can hurt you. Double Pitts and now Grimes, Toney, Copeland, Whittemore are open. Davis and Pierce can catch it out of the backfield…. This offense has teeth.
I’m not pushing the panic button on the defense and getting a Will Muschamp offense is just the medicine the doctor prescribed after having a rough outing against Ole Miss. When it’s all said and done this year, Ole Miss will make a lot of defenses look the way they made Florida look last Saturday.
Two notes on guys you want to know about. Brad Stewart was not a COVID absence, he’s not injured. He’s starting the 2020 season the same way he started the 2019 season.
Kyree Campbell missed the season opener and there are rumors that he’s opting out. I’m told he hasn’t made a final decision, he may want to play in only home games and not travel (his family had serious cases with COVID) but I’m also told there may be a grade issue.
Jeremiah Moon and Derek Wingo missed the opener because os COVID. Both are back this week.