Can Florida prove it belongs in the country’s elite with a win over Michigan in the Peach Bowl?

Florida comes into the Peach Bowl six-point underdogs to Michigan.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. The same Florida team came into the game against Michigan last season as 8.5-point underdogs and got dominated 33-17. That score doesn’t do the beating justice though because Florida had two pick-sixes to give the Gators a 17-13 lead heading into the half.

Two years before that, Florida faced Michigan in the Citrus Bowl. The 41-7 score there does reflect the level of defeat, as Florida was outgained 503-273, gave up 9.0 yards per pass attempt and 225 yards rushing.

The Jim McElwain/Jim Harbaugh match-up clearly didn’t favor the Gators.

But Jim McElwain is no longer the head coach in Gainesville. Dan Mullen has turned around that team that got blasted by Michigan last year and went 4-7 into a formidable opponent with an opportunity to cement a top-10 ranking and a 10-win season.

On the other side, Harbaugh has to motivate a team that lost out on a chance to play for a National Championship and has to view the Gators as a consolation prize. Gators fans hope that attitude is reflected in the absences of leading rusher Karan Higdon and defensive stalwarts Rashan Gary and Devin Bush.

Some Gators fans may have wanted UCF in the Peach Bowl. But the truth is that Michigan is viewed as a national power and Florida has the chance to force pundits to view the Gators as one as well with a good performance in the Peach Bowl.

Get blown out again, and Mullen’s first season ends a lot like McElwain’s first season ended. But beat the Wolverines and Florida likely starts next season as a top-10 team with championship aspirations.

The Overview

To beat Michigan, Florida is going to have to beat a team that has a full season of statistics that indicate Michigan in the better team.

Against FBS opponents, Michigan’s 2018 season has been far more impressive than Florida’s. The Wolverines played 12 FBS opponents and its scoring differential suggests 9.7 wins. The Gators have only played 10 FBS opponents and its scoring differential suggests 6.3 wins (or 7.5 for a 12-game schedule).

Michigan is a significantly better passing team, dead even at running the ball and significantly better on defense both against the run and the pass.

However, there are a few things to note. First, Michigan has played a much easier schedule than Florida. The average of the FBS opponents’ FPI for Florida is 38.9 versus 48.4 for Michigan. Of course, this includes two FBS cupcakes (Western Michigan and SMU) and if we remove those teams from the ledger, Michigan’s schedule strength comes in-line with Florida.

Of course, if we do that, Michigan’s point differential suggests a 9.3-win team, still better than Florida but a half-win change is not insignificant.

The other thing to note is the difference in how Michigan plays on the road.

The Wolverine’s two losses came on the road. Those losses were to Notre Dame and Ohio State, two top-10 teams. But even against Northwestern (20-17) and Michigan State (21-7), Michigan didn’t look great. The only team it beat handily on the road this season was Rutgers (42-7), but the 1-11 Scarlet Knights are a team that lost 55-14 to Kansas.

Looking at top-20 opponents, the home/road splits are striking as well. Michigan blew out Penn State at home (42-7) but then looked pedestrian against Notre Dame (17-24) and got absolutely dominated by Ohio State (39-62).

The Quarterbacks

The road struggles Michigan has had are strongly tied to its QB, Ole Miss transfer Shea Patterson.

Overall, Patterson has been excellent, with a QB rating over 150 and a yards above replacement (YAR) of 0.79. And while his throwing efficiency hasn’t changed too much on the road, he hasn’t been able to run the ball much at all. The result is that while his QB rating is a very respectable 143.1 on the road, his YAR is 0.07, or basically average.

When playing at home, Michigan has gotten elite-level QB play. Away from Ann Arbor, Michigan has been playing with a game manager at QB.

On the Florida side, Feleipe Franks has improved considerably from his 2017 campaign, and particularly his 2017 debut against Michigan.

Interestingly, Franks has been excellent away from Gainesville. By QB rating, the numbers say that he has been considerably better through the air on the road, with a borderline-elite QB rating of 151.6. But because he has run less efficiently on the road, YAR basically puts him at slightly above average overall, at home and on the road.

This is an interesting observation though. At a position where you would think Michigan would have a distinct advantage, the road struggles of the Wolverines have to make you wonder whether this is more even than we might have thought.

The Missing Wolverines

Looking at all of these stats is interesting, but it doesn’t take into account the guys who were there all year for Michigan, but won’t be there for the Peach Bowl.

Running back Karan Higdon, defensive tackle Rashan Gary and linebacker Devin Bush are all missing the game to prepare for the upcoming NFL Draft. In a sport as violent as football, I don’t begrudge them this decision. But the fact that they chose to skip the game while Florida’s Chauncey Gardner-Johnson decided to play is a distinct advantage for the Gators.

Higdon is the Wolverine’s leading rusher this season. Not only that, but he was the workhorse for the Michigan offense, carrying the ball 224 times. Backups Chris Evans (74) and Tru Wilson (59) are the only other backs who have more than 50 carries for Michigan.

Evans and Wilson (5.4 and 6.0 yards per carry, respectively) have been just as efficient as Higdon (5.4), but that’s likely a function of having less carries and getting carries against lesser opponents in garbage time.

Devin Bush is second on the team in tackles (66), tackles for loss (8.5) and sacks (4.5). He is one of the players who harassed Franks in last year’s game and combines with linebacker Chase Winovich to force opposing offensive lines to make choices about who to double team. The types of blitzes that can be run without him there may change for Michigan and Florida should be able to exploit that.

But the biggest loss for the Wolverines is defensive tackle Rashan Gary. Gary was the consensus number one recruit in the 2016 recruiting cycle. He has validated that ranking with his play during his first three years at Michigan with 23.0 tackles for loss and 9.5 sacks. Those are big numbers for a defensive tackle.

But you can’t always measure the impact a defensive tackles has on a defense directly. Someone like Gary demands double teams and is able to free up players like Bush and Winovich just by the attention he commands.

But we do actually have a way of looking at that for this season because Gary missed three Big Ten games: Maryland, Wisconsin and Michigan State.

Florida was a pretty good defense at generating pressure this season, with TFL/TT and Sacks/TT ratios of 9.2 and 3.6 percent. Alabama had TFL/TT and Sacks/TT ratios of 11.5 and 5.0 percent.

So basically, with Gary in the lineup, the Michigan defense was on-par with Alabama’s. Without him the pass rush remained but the pressure in the backfield against the running game vanished.

This is critical for Florida, as the Gators are going to have to run the ball to be successful. With Gary out, that is significantly easier for Florida to do.

Beyond that, Florida’s much-maligned offensive line has improved considerably this season. Last year against Michigan, the Gators allowed 11 tackles for loss, 6 sacks and 5 QB hurries on only 48 snaps. That trend continued through the year, as Florida’s offensive line ranked 114th in sack rate according to Football Outsider’s NCAA offensive line rankings.

Mullen and offensive line coach John Hevesy have fixed that. This season, Florida ranks 15th in overall sack rate and first in sack rate on passing downs. Some of this is due to playcalling, but some of this is due to development up-front.

So if Gary is missing and Michigan can’t get tackles in the backfield against the running game and the Florida offensive line doesn’t allow pressure to get to Franks, what does that mean for this game?

What the heck happened to Michigan against Ohio State?

This is a question that has been asked of me over and over since this bowl matchup was announced. The Michigan defense – ranked number one in a bunch of different categories coming into the game – got run off the field by the Buckeyes.

If we take a step back to look at how Michigan played against other top-10 opponents, a trend becomes pretty clear.

Against Penn State, Michigan was in the backfield a ton, sacking QB Trace McSorley five times. The result was Penn State only ran 47 plays and put up a total of 186 yards.

Against Notre Dame, Michigan was able to get pressure in the backfield (7 TFL) but didn’t get to QB Brandon Wimbush a ton. The result was that Wimbush played better against Michigan (QB Rating of 125.4) than he did over the season (113.3) and the Irish were able to pull out a close win.

Against Ohio State, Michigan was unable to get any pressure in the backfield (4 TFL) and no pressure on QB Dwayne Haskins (0 sacks). The result was that Haskins had 396 yards passing and was able to exploit the Michigan secondary in a way that it hadn’t been exploited all year.

Ohio State did that by relying on a heavy dose of crossing routes.

On this play, Michigan is in one-on-one coverage. Ohio State eliminates Michigan’s ability to jam receiver Chris Olave (#17) at the line of scrimmage by having its receivers set-up close together. At that point, it’s just a foot race between Olave and senior defensive back Brandon Watson (#28).

One thing to note is that the inside receiver starts blocking before the ball is released. This is almost never called but could be offensive pass interference. You have to bet that Harbaugh will be asking the officials for that call should Florida run something similar.

But crossing routes weren’t the only thing Ohio State did to exploit the Michigan defense.

On this play, Michigan only rushes four linemen. I’m not sure exactly what coverage is being played because the safety at the bottom of the screen creeps up before the snap, indicating that the other safety will have deep responsibilities.

The problem is that because this is a three wide receiver look, Michigan only has three defensive backs to cover. Essentially, Michigan is playing a cover-zero defense, which is really aggressive. Except they only rushed four men.

Typically cover-zero is a bet that you can get to the QB before his man can beat the defensive back. Here, the linebackers are just in no-man’s land not covering anyone and not rushing the passer. Instead, it looks like they may be guarding against the crossing routes that hurt them throughout the game.

As it is, Haskins’ pass should have been caught for a big game. But had he thrown to the inside receiver down the middle, I think he would have had a TD.

This was the story over and over, as Michigan played coverages that gave Haskins easy reads. And without any sort of pass rush, it was just easy pitch-and-catch.

On this play, Ohio State has three wide receivers to the bottom of the play against four Michigan defensive backs. This is because Michigan has seven men in the box.

The inside receiver flares out for a screen, bringing one defensive back with him. The middle receiver occupies a corner and a safety running down the center of the field. That leaves the outside receiver in one-on-one coverage (again this is Olave vs. Watson) for an easy TD.

This is definitely something that Florida can exploit.

On this play, because of its ability to run the ball, Florida has FSU with seven men in the box. While the alignment is slightly different (two WRs up top with one on the bottom of the formation), the concept is similar. FSU only has four DBs for the three WRs.

But this is also the difference between Haskins and Franks. Haskins throws the ball on-time to his receiver who is in one-on-one coverage. Franks waits (you can see him pump) for Trevon Grimes (#8) to come wide open. On the telecast, the replay showed from behind that Grimes was clearly in one-on-one.

Sometimes you just have to throw the ball up and let your guy make a play. Franks does not seem comfortable doing that and Michigan is a much better team than Florida State.

By the time the first half came to an end, Michigan was clearly flustered.

Johnnie Dixon (#1) catches a 31 yard pass from Haskins here. It doesn’t get any easier than this. Once linebacker Khaleke Hudson (#7) lets Dixon go, there isn’t a Michigan defender within 10 yards of him.

These kinds of coverage breakdowns happen in college football. They get exploited when you don’t get any pressure.

Prediction

The season stats say Michigan should win this game. But many of those stats were amassed by players who won’t be playing in the Peach Bowl.

Last season, Florida lost starting wide receiver Antonio Callaway and starting running back Jordan Scarlett right before its game against Michigan. The offense proceeded to score three points.

I’m not saying the same thing will happen to the Michigan defense in this game, but to believe that the Wolverines will just be able to plug someone else into the game and get similar production just isn’t supported by the facts.

Ohio State is a good team, likely better than Florida. But once Michigan couldn’t get any pass rush, it’s one-on-one coverage schemes couldn’t contain the crossing routes that Ohio State wanted to run. That forced the Wolverines to run coverages they clearly were not comfortable with, leading to breakdowns that Ohio State was able to exploit.

Will Florida be able to exploit those same things?

I don’t think they’ll be able to exploit them as well as Ohio State. Haskins is a better player than Franks, and makes decisions at a clip that kept Michigan on its heels. Franks likely will miss some of the receivers that Haskins saw. But based on the offensive line’s improvement this year, Franks likely will have time to hit some as well.

And Florida doesn’t need to put up 62 points to win this game. Michigan has been a pedestrian offensive team on the road this year, with a game manager at QB. The Wolverines are missing its leading rusher on offense as well. All signs point towards a team that won’t be able to score with the efficiency that we saw at times during the season.

At the end of the day, I’m betting the Florida comes out hungry to avenge last year’s loss and that Michigan comes out flat initially because they would rather be in the playoff. Franks keeps the Wolverines in the game with a turnover or two, but at the end of the day, the quick start allows the Gators to hold on.

Florida wins, 24-21.

Predictions this season: 5-6 straight up, 4-7 ATS

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