How Florida will extend its streak to 32 games against Kentucky

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Kentucky comes to Gainesville on Saturday trying to end a 31-game losing streak to the Florida Gators.

If it seems like the Wildcats have been slowly closing the gap between themselves and the Gators, it’s because it is true. In the Mark Stoops era at Kentucky, Florida has won by an average score of 29-16. Compare that to the 39-16 average score from 2000-2017 and it looks even more impressive.

The last four years have been marked by three one-score games, with Kentucky coming up short each time. There was the triple overtime game in 2014, the 14–9 Gators victory in 2015 before we knew Will Grier was Will Grier and the unguarded wide receivers allowing Luke Del Rio to be the hero last season.

That is in comparison to only two one-score games in the other 14 years since 2000. It turns out that when your offense struggles, you end up playing a bunch of close games regardless of whether your defense is lights-out or not.

While last season’s win might be pinned on those unguarded receivers, the real reason Florida won was wide receiver Kadarius Toney. Toney had 35 yards receiving, ran for a 36-yard TD out of the wildcat formation and opened up a pivotal TD drive with a 50-yard throw on a trick play.

Florida’s offense looked excellent in its opener against Charleston Southern, and that was without Toney. It is not definitive that he will be back from an opening game suspension, but you can bet that Stoops has had to prepare for him and what he can do.

Still there’s a sense that 31 in a row has to end at some point. The Kentucky media enjoys constantly picking the Wildcats in hopes that they will get to claim they were right.

So will 2018 be the year?

2017 season comparison

Kentucky went 7-6 overall and 4-4 in SEC play. However, the Wildcats were outscored 367-332 overall and 246-217 in SEC play. Point differential is a key indicator of how a team actually played as opposed to record, and Kentucky’s point differential suggests a team that should have only won 5.9 games.

Against FBS competition, Kentucky was 85th in yards per play on offense (5.3) and 99th in yards per play allowed on defense (6.1). The Wildcats were equally bad against the run (98th) and the pass (99th) on defense.

So how did Kentucky go 7-6? Well, that same defense forced 11 interceptions and 10 fumbles, of which 7 were recovered. Those 18 turnovers were perfectly distributed to maximize winning, with Kentucky averaging 2.7 turnovers per game in its 7 wins and 0.3 in its 6 losses.

Florida’s 2017 was obviously a disaster. Against common opponents, Kentucky averaged a 30-27 score versus a 21-32 score for Florida. Florida was worse on offense (104th in offensive yards per play) but better on defense (67th in defensive yards per play allowed).

Kentucky returns 7 starters on offense and 8 starters on defense from last year’s team, so the 2017 performance is particularly relevant. While Florida has a bunch of returning starters as well, the expectation is that Dan Mullen will be able to extract considerably more out of those Gators than Jim McElwain.

Kentucky Defense vs. Florida Offense

Both teams struggled on defense in 2017, particularly against the pass. That’s why it was such a good sign for Florida fans to see the defensive performance against Charleston Southern. Yes, the Gators gave up some yards on the ground, but to hold an opponent to 3 yards passing is quite an achievement.

Kentucky’s defense also played pretty well in its opener against Central Michigan. The Wildcats offense coughed up the ball four times, and the defense only surrendered 5.1 yards per pass attempt and 255 yards overall.

But there are some underlying stats that point towards things being a little bit easier for the Gators offense.

In 2017, Kentucky was unable to put pressure on the QB, only converting 7.3 percent of its tackles into tackles for loss and only 3.4 percent of its total tackles into sacks. That did not improve at all against Central Michigan, as the TFL percentage is virtually identical and the sack percentage actually went down.

Now this is only one game. But I think it is a worrying sign for Kentucky that it is not likely to get a ton of pressure on the QB. This is because that is how you disrupt any QB, but particularly Feleipe Franks.

On this play, Florida has a perfect stop-and-go set up based on previous short throws out to the wide receivers. Wide receiver Dre Massey is open, and Franks doesn’t have to make a perfect throw.

But Florida guard Fred Johnson can’t get over in time to block the Charleston Southern linebacker and he gets a free shot at Franks. Franks doesn’t put any air under the pass, perhaps because he had to throw it off his back foot, and the pass is just a little bit too tall for Massey.

Franks has certainly gotten better. He showed some of that on this play, when again the offensive line protection broke down.

Nick Buchanon and Johnson get split by the Charleston Southern defensive end, but instead of running outside like he would have last season, Franks just slides to his left and up in the pocket. The rest of the pocket is clean and he is able to deliver a beautiful throw to Freddy Swain.

But it isn’t just Franks who appears to have improved against pressure. Jordan Scarlett may not have made an overwhelming impact running the ball (6 rush, 24 yards), but he made a play that will be essential if Florida is going to be able to throw the ball against the blitz.

At the snap, Charleston Southern has four down linemen. But the Buccaneers drop the defensive end back into coverage and blitz two linebackers.

Scarlett – who was lined up on the right hand side of the offensive formation – quickly recognizes that he has blitz responsibilities and starts shuffling over to his left to help the offensive line. Guard Tyler Jordan picks up the blitzer with the shortest path to the QB, as he should.

That leaves the other linebacker racing around the outside of Jordan as Scarlett’s responsibility. Scarlett absolutely stones him, and Franks has a beautiful pocket to throw from.

Franks took off and ran on this play, which is an okay outcome considering there was a running lane. But you can bet that Mullen will show him this play – and the pocket that he had – and encourage him to keep his eyes downfield.

This kind of development will be an issue for Kentucky’s defense. Florida’s offensive line will have some hiccups in this game, but if Franks can mitigate those issues by navigating the pocket – and if he can get consistent help in pass protection from his running backs – he’s not going to have to make many throws under duress.

There’s a reason that Kentucky’s defense was 99th against the pass last season. Mark Stoops has clearly recruited physical defensive backs. His starting corners – Lonnie Johnson and Derrick Baity – are both 6’3” tall and Davonte Robinson is 6’2”.

Players with that kind of size can excel in bump-and-run coverage when the defense gets quick pressure. They can be exploited quickly if up against smaller wide receivers (Toney, Swain and Hammond) or players with elite speed (Cleveland, Grimes) if the defense can’t get to the QB.

Kentucky clearly showed last season that it needs turnovers to stop the opposition. The only way they’re going to get turnovers is to pressure the QB. The question is whether they’ll be able to do so before Franks’ receivers can get open.

Advantage: Florida

Kentucky Offense vs. Florida Defense

As the chart above shows, Florida’s defense did get to the QB significantly more often than Kentucky in 2017 and that trend has continued one game into 2018.

That’s an issue for Kentucky for two reasons. First, junior starting left tackle Landon Young suffered a knee injury in a non-contact drill a week before the season and will be out for this game. Young was a big-time recruit for Stoops and has played a major role on the offensive line the past two seasons.

The Wildcats do have transfer offensive lineman E.J. Price to step in to Young’s position, a former top-100 prospect. But Price has yet to prove anything much on the field and will be rotating with Naasir Watkins at the position.

Running back Benny Snell is the major threat on the Kentucky offense. Snell ran for over 1300 yards last season and started 2018 right where he left off, running for 125 yards on 20 carries against Central Michigan.

This was Snell’s biggest run of the game, a 52-yard TD that kept Kentucky in the game. The Central Michigan corner and safety bounce right off Snell as he runs right through them. Missed tackles were also a big factor in Asim Rose’s 55-yard TD run as well earlier in the game.

If you remove those two runs from the ledger, Kentucky only averaged 4.1 yards per rush. Of course, you can’t just remove those two from the game, and with them included Kentucky averaged 7.0 yards per rush.

This means that tackling will be critical for Florida in this game. The defense is still learning defensive coordinator Todd Grantham’s scheme. Even as the familiarity of the system increases, Grantham uses high variance strategies with lots of blitzing. Sometimes that means you get an explosive play. Sometimes that means you give one up.

What you can’t do is miss a tackle when you’re in the right position because there isn’t always someone there to pick you up.

On this play, Florida is in a nickel defense, with corners C.J. Henderson and Chauncey Gardner at the top of the screen on Charleston Southern wide receivers, safety Donovan Stiner with deep responsibilities, and corner Marco Wilson playing the role of safety on the bottom of the screen.

Defensive tackle Adam Shuler (#95) plays this perfectly, throws the offensive lineman to the side and just isn’t able to make the tackle. That kind of thing will happen from time to time.

But what can’t happen is that when Shuler makes contact with the running back, linebacker Kylan Johnson (#28) loses contain to the outside, allowing the Charleston Southern back to slip to the outside. Then Marco Wilson (#3) does the same thing, taking a poor angle to make the tackle and again allowing the running back to get to the outside and down the sideline.

These kinds of big plays will kill the Gators, as I’m not sure that Kentucky has the firepower to score very much without them.

One of the reasons Kentucky almost beat Florida last season is that Stephen Johnson was an above average quarterback. He wasn’t elite (YAR = 0.05 for 2017) but he was certainly serviceable. The same can’t be said of Kentucky’s QBs this season.

Terry Wilson has been named the starter for the second week in a row. He completed 61 percent of his passes against Central Michigan, but only averaged 4.3 yards per attempt. Wilson is a dual-threat QB and did average 4.2 yards per rush, so that brings a dimension that Florida will have to deal with. But he’s just not very accurate (57.6 comp. % in junior college last year).

Wilson’s backup is Gunnar Hoak, who completed over 65 percent of his passes in his senior year of high school, but only averaged 9.9 yards per attempt. Hoak does not have the running skills of Wilson and only completed 4 of 9 passes against Central Michigan.

The biggest difference between the two was turnovers. Wilson threw two interceptions and gave away a fumble as well. The first interception was a good play by Central Michigan after Wilson was trying to make a play on a scramble. The second interception indicates how Grantham might try to exploit Wilson’s youth.

Before the snap, the safeties are not parallel to each other. This is usually an indication of one of them being in run support and indicates one-on-one coverage on the outside. But immediately at the snap, they both immediately backpedal into a zone.

Once Wilson gets the snap, he immediately looks left, thinking he has one-on-one coverage on his outside receiver. He doesn’t see the linebacker allow the inside receiver to run past (because he has help over the top from the safety) and settle into a zone for an easy interception.

This is the kind of mistake first-year QBs make. It involves making a post-snap read and is something I’m sure Grantham will throw at him as well.

If Kentucky’s QBs put up an identical performance to last week (4.7 yards per pass on 27 throws and 4.2 yards per rush on 9 carries), that likely won’t be enough to beat Florida. When you factor in that first-year QBs typically struggle much more on the road than they do at home, and that this is going to be their first SEC road game at night in Gainesville, it’s going to take multiple big plays from the running game to put up points.

Advantage: Florida

Coaching

As noted in my season preview, Dan Mullen has won 84 percent of games against teams with less talent than his. Kentucky certainly applies to that metric, as the Wildcats are typically around 35th nationally in recruiting.

While Stoops has only won 42 percent of his games in his five years at Kentucky, he is 19-6 against teams with less talent than the Wildcats (76 percent). But that means that he has only won 19 percent of his games against more talented teams. That’s not altogether unexpected, but it does indicate that he’s fighting an uphill battle against Mullen on Saturday.

Perhaps more worrying for Kentucky fans though is this: Stoops cut his teeth as a defensive backs coach and a defensive coordinator, first at Arizona and then at Florida State. But in his five seasons at Kentucky, Stoops’ defenses have an average ranking of 86th in yards per play allowed and have been ranked 100th and 99th in that statistic the last two seasons.

Add to that the strange inability to have defensive backs cover Florida receivers last year and the strategy that took the ball out of its best player’s hands in the second half of that game as well, and I have a lot of questions about Stoops ability to handle his game day responsibilities.

Stoops has not shown the ability to keep his team from making critical mistakes or making them himself. Thus far, Mullen has.

Advantage: Florida

Prediction

This is probably one of the few times this season where I will say that Florida has a definitive advantage at QB.

Feleipe Franks doesn’t have to be spectacular. He just has to make the play he’s supposed to make. At that point, Florida has advantages everywhere on the field except for possibly the offensive line.

But Kentucky didn’t pressure the QB last week and didn’t all last season either. Should we really expect them to do so now?

Add to that the Wildcats’ porous defense over the past two seasons and their overreliance on turnovers, and this could be a runaway.

Indeed, since 2000 Florida has won games against Kentucky in the Swamp by an average score of 42-15. Only one of those games (2014) was a one-score game. That game also included a first-year starter in Patrick Towles, who torched the Gators on that day for 369 yards and 8.2 yards per throw.

Florida’s secondary was certainly suspect last season, and likely will give up some big plays regardless of who Kentucky has at QB. But picking Kentucky in this game means that you think that a team with uncertainty at QB is going to exploit a secondary considerably more talented than the Central Michigan team that just held Kentucky to 4.7 yards per throw.

Perhaps that secondary will be tested soon. But I don’t think it is this Saturday. Benny Snell will likely hit a run or two and a screen pass may get taken for a long way if a tackle is missed. But Florida isn’t going to need to put up 45 points to win this one comfortably.

Gators win: 31-17.

Picks this year thus far: 1-0 straight up, 1-0 ATS

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