Since I was traveling back from Gainesville after the game this week, I haven’t been able to do my normal film breakdown. Likely there will be some of that later in the week.
What follows are some quick (for me) hits about my experience at the game, what happened and where we go from here.
QB play remains the issue
It may seem like hyperbole, but this may have been Feleipe Franks’ worst game as a Gator. Franks did play worse statistically against Georgia (YAR = -3.83). He wasn’t too far behind Saturday against Missouri (YAR = -2.85).
From my vantage point at the game, there were receivers open repeatedly. The ball came out late a lot. When it went to the right guy, it was inaccurate. Halfway through the second quarter, I was looking to the sideline after every drive to see if Kyle Trask was warming up.
Combine that with the fact that Missouri came into the game ranked 93rd in yards per play allowed compared to 7th ranked Georgia last season, and I do think this was the low point for Franks.
Whether he should still be the starter is a much more complex question. First, we have to acknowledge that Dan Mullen has been fairly stubborn in the past prior to making a change at the QB position. He certainly showed that against Missouri, not making the change until the game was way out of hand. He likely doesn’t want to make a change.
Second, we have to examine the process independent of one particular result. If Franks has been better in spring camp, fall camp and practices all season long, how much better could his replacement be? Maybe Trask is a “gamer” who will be the savior that Gators fans have been looking for all decade.
But I don’t think it’s a good process to make a change just to “see what you have”. If Trask gives Florida the best chance to win, then he should absolutely be in there. If the players believe Trask should be the guy, then Mullen has to make the change.
But the same should apply to whether Franks starts, regardless of what a large segment of the fan base thinks.
Kadarius Toney needs to be on the field more
Dan Mullen has done a lot of good this year. Even with two straight losses, I think 6-3 is outperforming the track record for this particular team.
But how he continues to find ways to avoid Kadarius Toney just flummoxes me. Toney averaged 19.0 yards per touch on five touches yesterday. It’s easy to blame other players for not getting him the ball when he’s not on the field. But he wasn’t on the field very much on Saturday at all.
If you don’t want him outside because he’s not a good blocker, I get it. But he has so much value as a decoy who draws the attention of defenders that you can get value from him when he doesn’t touch the ball. He just hasn’t been used that way.
I’d estimate he was on the field for less than a quarter of the plays on Saturday. Yet he accounted for 29.4 percent of the Gators yards and two of the Gators three explosive plays.
In his post-game presser, Mullen talked about putting his players in a position to succeed. Toney can’t do that from the sideline.
Third-and-Grantham is alive and well
Early in the season, Florida was able to get a bunch of pressure on the QB and turnovers. As a result, the defense really excelled.
Recently, the pressure has subsided, and so has the Gators success on defense.
Georgia went 8-14 and Missouri went 11-18 on third down. When your opponents are converting 59 percent of its third downs, your defense is going to struggle.
But it’s not just the conversions that are concerning. In fact, you might be able to handle that if you were forcing your opponent to dink and dunk down the field. But Florida has given up 16 explosive (20+ yard) plays for 436 yards in those two games as well. Many of those are due to busted coverages that have nothing to do with design.
Florida is now 46th in yards per play allowed vs. FBS opponents. That’s better than last year, but a far cry from the top-20 defense they were two weeks ago. That has to change if the Gators are going to start winning again.
The offense has become predictable and ineffective
I’ve seen every play the Gators ran Saturday except for one. The only new wrinkle was handing the ball to Toney in a two-back set where he lined up as a running back. The play went for 12 yards and they never came back to it.
The lack of creativity has also coincided with better competition, as the Colorado State’s of the world are not necessarily known for defense.
The result is that against SEC competition this season Florida is averaging 24.9 points per game. In 2015, they averaged 23.6. In 2016, they averaged 24.5. In 2017, they averaged 21.0.
The hard truth is that for all the excitement early on for the success Mullen was showing, it may have been a mirage. This offense isn’t appreciably better against the SEC than under McElwain.
The reason the team has a 6-3 record – including 4-3 in the conference – rather than last season’s 3-5 SEC record is because the defense has been better than last season. If the defense is going to falter, a team that was thought to be an SEC East contender just two games ago is going to struggle for the rest of the season.
Blaming this loss on recruiting is asinine
Florida clearly has some issues at various spots on the team. Against Georgia, you could blame that on recruiting. That’s not true for this game.
Florida’s average national recruiting ranking from 2015-2018 was 14.5. Missouri’s average recruiting ranking was 38.5. If you use 247Sports points totals, Florida has averaged 249.8 to Missouri’s 197.9.
To put that into perspective, that 52-point difference in talent is nearly the equivalent of the talent gap between Alabama and Florida (56.9) over that same time-frame. Would we expect the Gators to beat the Tide? And would lack of recruiting at one specific spot on the field be a reasonable excuse if Florida were to beat Alabama?
No, and it’s not an excuse here either.
All is not lost
The Gators got our hopes up with the 6-1 start. This team is much improved from last season and has shown progress on an almost weekly basis.
The loss to Missouri is a setback. There’s no way to sugar coat getting beat at home by an inferior team (talent-wise).
But to draw any conclusions from this game ignores all of the positive data points we’ve seen thus far in 2018. I said last week on Gators Breakdown that if you had told me Florida would be 6-2 after a competitive loss to Georgia, I would have taken it.
And had you told me at the start of the season that Florida would be 6-3 with a couple of hiccups against teams we didn’t expect, I would have told you that is what to expect with a new regime and some of the issues the team has had on film.
Losses like this are all part of the growing process. Mullen will be able to weed out the guys who aren’t buying in, who aren’t working hard enough or who don’t have the talent to bring a championship back to Gainesville.
That doesn’t mean a loss like this is acceptable. It isn’t. But in the broader sense of building a program, it’s relatively unimportant.
There is still a lot of work for Mullen to do. He’s going to have to identify an elite QB moving forward. He’s going to have to recruit better than his 2019 class looks right now. He’s going to have to get more creative with the playmakers that he has.
But to suggest that this loss is anything other than a bad loss for a pretty good – but not elite – team is missing the forest for the trees.
And I’m much more interested in the forest.
Players are people too
During the game, a family was sitting maybe 10 rows in front of me. That family all had custom-made shirts that clearly indicated they were there to see Freddie Swain.
Every time Swain went back to catch a kick-off and the ball headed in his direction, you could hear them get excited. When Swain went down with what looked like an ankle injury, you could see the concern on their faces.
My mother emphasized to me during Little League that we were never to criticize another player in the stands because his family might be right there. That point was driven home to me while flying back to Philly. Just before taking off, I posted the following tweet:
This is cool. Good reminder that every player is someone’s son. Congrats Mr. Trask. https://t.co/5bTBUCAZkP
— Will Miles (@WillMilesSEC) November 4, 2018
When I got off the plane, I noticed that it had been liked by both a player and the parent of a player.
Oftentimes we forget that these are human beings playing a game for our entertainment. Yes, they signed up for valid criticism when they decided to come to Florida. And it certainly goes both ways as players who succeed are lionized for their successes.
But I hope that we – and I include myself in that collective “we” – don’t lose sight of the fact that while Twitter is an awesome tool for communication, it is also essentially the same environment my mother warned me about as a kid.
Gainesville is the best
Anybody looking for a good time during a football Saturday shouldn’t look anywhere else. I knew that from my time as a student, but as an alum coming back into town, there just isn’t anywhere better. Special thanks to the guys at the Harmonic Woods tailgate and to the Cranky Fan for the invites and the hospitality.
I come down for a game once a year. The main reason for that isn’t to see the football game. It’s an excuse to spend time with my family during a season in my life when that time is rare.
When I can’t make it down, this site, Gators Breakdown and interacting with fans on Twitter is a great way to stay connected as well. But showing up is significantly more valuable. It was so rewarding to be able to take a step back and connect with people in-person who may think different politically, who have very different professions and whose path I likely would never cross were it not for the Gators.
The best part of sports is the camaraderie that we all have around a central goal. We don’t get that much anymore as the world seems more divided than ever. It’s nice to be reminded of all that we have in common every once in a while.
Go Gators!