PD’s Postulations – The South Carolina Game
by David Parker
We knew this day would come. From that magical moment when Dan Mullen stepped out of the plane at the Gainesville Airport frenetically Gator chomping at the greeting crowd, we knew it was coming. We knew we would be the good old Florida Gators program that romps and stomps through the SEC and the nation like it owns the place. And we knew that there would be a harbinger, a signal that we had returned to greatness and championships lay once again on our near horizon.
That signal? That symbolic gesture that lets us know we are The Gators once more? It’s the day when we beat the living tar out of an SEC opponent and fans exit the game with more complaints than praise.
Sometimes it’s just being spoiled (and that’s not always a bad thing). But sometimes it’s legit. The complaints are credible when the failure to fix the issues can and will make the difference between championships and no championships.
This Gator offense is so good, and it will get even better as the year goes on. We don’t even have arguably our best lineman playing yet. But offenses will always hit some bumps in the road. We are only two games in, and we already saw in the South Carolina game what can happen when the offense isn’t running on all cylinders. A lost fumble. An errant pass somehow floats close enough to a defender to haul it in (or, not haul it in, but the officiating crew inexplicably doesn’t review the clear incompletion…and officiating crews will ALWAYS inexplicably make bad calls that go against Florida). A third down pass gets dropped. The quarterback isn’t as accurate as usual. Receivers lose their focus and don’t run routes as crisply. All of these things seeped into the Florida offense in the second half Saturday, and if the other team had been coached by a non-Muschamp, the outcome might have been different.
Much Meets the Eye that Does Not Meet the Eye
For the second week in a row, the defense had a dangerously awful game for most of 60 minutes, a game that would have been a big “L” on or record if the offense wasn’t balling out on a new level. And yet for the second week in a row, a Gator defender was named a player of the week in the SEC. Two big wins with defensive awards, a box score surfer would think our defense was doing great.
But it’s like last year for this defense: the box score does not tell the story.
To pick a statistic many like to point out in defending the much-maligned Gator Defensive Coordinator, last year we had 49 sacks last year; 19 of them against SEC teams. Those were both far ahead of the SEC competition. But those are typically inflated Todd Grantham stats.
Of the 49 total sacks, 10 were in the opener against a helpless Miami offensive line, and 8 came against the FSU turnstiles. In fact, we got 43% of our sacks against crappy ACC teams last year. Another 20% of them came against weakling lower level out-of-conference teams Towson and UT Martin. So we got 63% of our sacks against the 38% of our schedule made up of abysmal teams outside the SEC.
It gets better/worse. Of the 19 sacks against SEC opponents, 6 were against Vandy. Throw in 4 against Tennessee, and over half our total sacks in SEC play were against the 2 awful Tennessee teams.
Against LSU, zero sacks.
Against Georgia, zero sacks.
Against Auburn, 2 sacks.
We averaged 3.7 sacks a game last year, but only 1.5 per game against SEC foes, and against the only 3 good teams we played, we averaged less than a sack per game (0.67).
Flash forward to this year and we haven’t even been able to stack any defensive stats against probably 2 of the 3 easiest opponents of the season. There’s just no way not to be seriously concerned that our defense will prevent us from reaching all of our 2020 goals: national title, SEC title, SEC East title, beating UGA, any of them.
Bailing on the Scheme
I’ve never understood why a school dubbed DBU (Defensive Back University), which has the personnel to play excellent pass defense, employs bail coverage technique, instead of press coverage. I get that it’s supposed to give the defensive back a better view of the play, but we usually line up and play SOOO far off the receivers, it seems we are using it as if the backs are so slow, unskilled and/or overmatched that bailing is the only way to prevent a long touchdown pass every play.
And even if we’re trying to facilitate better reading of the play, jumping a route won’t work if the defender is 10 yards away from the receiver. He’ll never get there, no matter how well he plays the ball, or how fast he is. And it seems to me that jamming receivers at the line of scrimmage would prevent fast, easy long completions a lot better than bailing.
I’m not sure how any defensive coordinator could look at our talent and speed and think the only way they can play is letting the offense do everything it wants, just to make them throw 5 passes to get a TD every drive instead of 1. And I don’t know how any competent DC could think that defensive backs can make pass deflections, interceptions, or even just tackle the receiver before he gets 10 yards of RAC, when they play such soft coverage.
I can only see what the TV shows, but we seem to play primarily outside leverage with our DBs. This lets everyone from UGA and LSU to SC and Ole Miss to slice us up like flank steak with inside routes. And we never have our linebackers lined up or moving to the right spots on any pass plays, so the inside of the field might as well have chairs to sit and watch opposing receivers run downfield.
I didn’t want to just rely on impressions, or general logic, so I reviewed the game to see how we mixed our coverages and if that impacted outcomes. To my surprise, we were almost perfectly balanced, with about a third of our defensive plays (32%) using press coverage on all the receivers, a third (33%) lining up 4 or more yards off all the receivers (usually more than 4), and about a third (35%) using a mix. On the mix plays, we nearly always had one player (usually Elam) pressing, and the rest giving huge buffers.
Now, when you look at the success of the Carolina offense, those proportions were much different. The Gamecocks had three touchdown drives. On those, the Gators played 30% of the time laying way off all receivers, 54% of the time mixed, and only 18% of the time with press coverage on all receivers. And remember, our mixed coverage was all but one defender laying far off the receivers. Contrast that to the unsuccessful SC drives. Not including the last possession of the half, when Carolina just ran out the clock deep n their territory, the Gators made 6 stops on the day: 4 forced punts, 1 forced field goal, and 1 turnover on downs. On those successful defensive possessions, Florida played press on all receivers 41% of the time. They played off 37% of the time, and mixed it up 22% of the time. All 4 punts followed three 3-and-outs and one 4-and-out. Clearly not only can our defenders play press, they play it well and get much better results. All 4 of the Gators’ sacks came on press plays. And the defense stopped the run significantly better on plays where they pressed than in plays where they played off the line, and all but one of the pass defenses (unless I missed one) were made by players in press coverage.
So there you go. At least in this game, logic and results match up quite well.
I’ve said a few times this year that Grantham is worse than Jon Hoke, the DC who basically denied us an SEC and national title, in my eyes, during his short stint under Steve Spurrier. At that time, I described Hoke’s approach to scheming a defense to the Mayor from Jaws: if he wanted to kill a great white shark, his strategy would be to jump into its mouth. Grantham would do the same, except he can’t jump. The problem with Hoke was that his scheme and weekly game plans basically facilitated the success of the opponent. That’s Grantham all day, and I believe the coverage analysis helps demonstrate that.
To wit: We are completely helpless in pass defense. How do you stop a passing attack? Best way to do it consistently is to disrupt the timing of the plays. Pass completions are all about synchronized timing between thrower and catcher. You can disrupt that timing either by pressuring the quarterback or pressuring the receiver. On obvious passing downs, such as Third-and-Grantham, we rarely rush more than three, so we can never disrupt the timing of the quarterback. And on most plays, we cover most or all the receivers by laying as much as five yards or more off the line of scrimmage, and when the ball is snapped, we start bailing away from the receivers. So, we never prevent a receiver from getting into his route, never disrupt a route, never re-route a receiver, and are never close enough to a receiver to make a play on the ball once it’s in the air.
So, we basically facilitate the opposing quarterback and receivers succeeding in whatever they want to do. Our only defenses against the forward pass in the first two games were the dropped pass and the errant throw. The rare times we pressured the quarterback was when we rushed 4 or more. Given that hugging and tackling defenders are apparently no longer considered a holding penalty in the SEC, the need to rush more bodies becomes all the more imperative.
The Big Why
So, why talk about it? Why complain? Because we have a championship offense. We have a very conducive schedule, as much as one can be when you play 10 SEC games and no out of conference cupcakes like FSU. No Alabama or Auburn on the schedule. And both LSU and Georgia have taken demonstrable steps back and are ripe for the picking. And with Oklahoma already with two losses, and both the PAC-12 and Big-10 down and late to the party, prospects of making the playoffs, even with a loss, are as good for Florida as it gets. It’s all there. The path is set. The advantages are baked in.
Except our defense can’t stop anybody. On any kind of play. Ever. And it’s not because we have bad personnel. It’s not because we’re young and inexperienced. It’s not because we have a rash of injuries. It’s because Todd Grantham is our defensive coordinator, and he runs a cowardly and ineffective scheme that is nowhere near the level needed to win a championship. Any championship.
Hey, maybe we’ve been playing terrible on purpose. Maybe we’ve been following game plans to facilitate the opposing offense’s success just to trick Georgia. Maybe we will be a different team when we play them, and it will all make sense. But I don’t think I’ll be betting any of my own money on it.