2020 Florida Preview

Well, we’re finally here.

The 2020 SEC football season starts on Saturday, and buckle up. Whereas we normally have to endure Georgia taking on Nichols State to open the year, instead the Bulldogs get….Arkansas….well, never mind.

Regardless, only this weird year could give us a top-25 matchup (#23 Kentucky @ #8 Auburn) at noon. Florida gets Ole Miss at the same time, Tennessee is going to show us all the end of the season was a mirage against South Carolina and Alabama is going to beat Vanderbilt by 50-plus.

To top it off for Gators fans, we get to hate-watch Florida State and Miami. The only question there is whether we want FSU to shut up all of the “Miami is back” nonsense or whether we want Miami to shut up the “UCF is the best team in the state” nonsense?

But Week 1 is just an appetizer for the rest of the season. What does last year’s results tell us about what will happen this year? Who is the dark-horse team on the Gators schedule? Will Florida be able to get over the Georgia hump?

The answers lie within.

SEC East

There are two questions I ask myself heading into every season: How did the team perform last season? What is the probability that they will get good QB play?

You can look at who a team lost on defense, coaching staff changes or even who the returning starters are and those things can be important. But if you want to distill things down,  or even the continuity of a particular team, but I think those two questions give us a really good baseline for where a team will end up at the end of the year.

So here are the numbers for the SEC East. Other than Tennessee and Missouri being flipped, point differential tracks quite nicely with win percentage.

Something that didn’t surprise me is that the point differential numbers suggest that Tennessee overachieved in 2019. Anybody who watched the Vols at the start of last season saw a terrible football team. Just because they won against Kentucky, Missouri and Indiana by a combined 9 points doesn’t mean the Vols are back.

Something that did surprise me was that Georgia’s offensive performance was identical to Florida’s. I would have suspected that with all of the struggles for the Bulldogs that Florida would have outpaced them on offense, but that wasn’t the case.

The big takeaway is that it is going to take a major leap – and likely a huge QB performance – for any of the also rans to catch the Gators or the Bulldogs. So does anybody fit that mold?

Tennessee

The Vols do have the most experience at QB with Jarrett Guarantano. Guarantano actually played pretty well last season (QB Rating of 144.0). He also threw this….

That throw sums up the Guarantano experience. He’s got lots of skills, but he’s so incredibly inconsistent. He threw for 415 yards and 2 TD against Missouri, but then went 6-17 for 120 yards against Vanderbilt and 18-31 for 221 yards and 2 INTs against Indiana. Next!

Vanderbilt

It looks like Vanderbilt may be starting true freshman Ken Seals. He completed 58.5 percent of his passes his last two years of high school. Next!

Missouri

Ditto for Missouri’s likely starting QB, TCU transfer Shawn Robinson. Robinson completed 58.6 percent of his passes his senior year of high school (45.1 percent his junior year), but did run for over 4,400 yards in his three seasons as a starter. That translated to his 2018 season at TCU, where he did complete 60.8 percent of his throws, but averaged just 6.5 yards per attempt while only running for 230 yards (4.7 yards per carry). Next!

South Carolina

Ryan Hilinski’s story is a heartbreaking one so you root for him. He also was the 64th overall recruit in 2019 and was thrust into action last season. He did complete 64.2 percent of his passes his senior year in high school, but that didn’t translate last year at South Carolina, where he only completed 58.1 percent of his throws and an absolutely anemic 5.8 yards per attempt.

Now, Florida fans are not surprised that a Will Muschamp team has taken an elite-level recruit and made him a sub-standard QB. They may have changed offensive coordinators from Bryan McClendon to Mike Bobo, but they didn’t change the head man.

The only decent QB that Muschamp has ever had is Jake Bentley (QB rating of 137.3 over three seasons) and he just ran him off to Utah because of Hilinski’s potential. Next!

Kentucky

This is the one that scares me.

Not only were the Wildcats the closest to Florida and Georgia by point differential, but they did it after starter Terry Wilson and backup Sawyer Smith went down with injuries, forcing wide receiver Lynn Bowden in at QB.

Wilson had a good, but not great 2018 season. He was otherworldly in Kentucky’s win over Florida early in the season, but he ended the season with 11 TD and 8 INT and averaging 7.0 yards per attempt. By my Yards above Replacement stat, Wilson graded at just above average

Because Kentucky is closest to Florida and Georgia, Wilson doesn’t have to make as big of a leap as some of the others. But it’s asking a lot for him to be special against both Florida and Georgia coming off of a significant knee injury. Maybe, but most likely…Next!

Florida

This is my favorite stat about Kyle Trask’s 2019 season (h/t SEC Stat Cat).

Behind a patchwork offensive line, Trask was the exact same QB overall as he was on 2nd-and-long and 3rd-and-long. That kind of consistency is a big deal and a big reason that the Florida offense was successful in 2019.

But a Joe Burrow-like leap is really unlikely.

For one, Joe Burrow had one of the best seasons a QB has ever had. That kind of leap is a once-in-a-generation thing, not an every-year occurrence. But the other reason is that Burrow got so much better in 2019 because he improved his efficiency while Trask was already really efficient.

Burrow completed 57.8 percent of his passes in 2018 and averaged 7.6 yards per attempt, both pretty pedestrian. But he did average 13.2 yards per completion. Thus, when he raised his completion percentage to 76.3 percent (!), he raised his yards per attempt to 10.8 even though his yards per completion only increased to 14.1.

On the other hand, Trask completed 66.9 percent of his passes, averaged 8.3 yards per attempt and 12.4 yards per completion. There’s just not much room to move things from an efficiency perspective. Trask is going to have to throw downfield more effectively at the same efficiency, which is an unlikely combination. If nothing else, it is a much different situation than where Burrow was heading into 2019.

That doesn’t mean Trask won’t be a good QB. I fully expect him to be.

But does the Florida offense have enough to overcome what is going to be a stingy Georgia defense?

Georgia

It would seem that the Bulldogs would be in a worse situation at QB than Florida given a new offensive coordinator, the transfer (again) of Jamie Newman and coronavirus restrictions. But if he is cleared to play by the Georgia medical staff, USC transfer J.T. Daniels immediately becomes the most talented passer in the SEC, and it’s not even close.

The 16th overall recruit in 2018, Daniels started as a true freshman at USC and had mixed results, completing 59.5 percent of his throws for a 7.4 yards per attempt average. He’s not a runner either, which significantly diminished his value at USC.

But he did average 12.4 yards per completion (not coincidently, exactly the same as Trask last year). Except that he does have the ability to get more efficient. If he ticks his completion percentage up to 65 percent, he’s going to be bordering on elite QB play.

If you’ve read me for any length of time (and have probably gathered from this preview), I’m a huge fan of looking at high school completion percentage as a predictor of the ability to have high completion percentages in college. It’s the reason I was so high on Burrow when he transferred from Ohio State.

So how did Daniels do in high school? Ruh roh.

Daniels skipped his senior year to enroll at USC. He “struggled” as a Freshman, only throwing for 33 TD and 4 INTs with 55.6 percent completions. But he stepped it up in 2016 and 2017, throwing for a combined 119 TDs to 10 INTs while completing over 73 percent of his throws.

This isn’t quite Burrow, wo averaged 12.2 and 12.8 yards per attempt his Junior and Senior years. But this isn’t Jamie Newman either, who could wow you with spectacular plays but was always throwing into traffic.

It also isn’t Jake Fromm either, who completed 63.7 percent of his throws his senior year at Houston County High School but only averaged 10.2 yards per attempt. Fromm’s completion percentage in college? 63.2.

(Kinda) Darkhorse on the Gators Schedule

The 10-game schedule undoubtedly made things more difficult for Florida, but it could have been worse.

Drawing Arkansas – even with the emotional return of Feleipe Franks – is about as close to a sure-fire win as it gets. But the Texas A&M game is really interesting.

First off, it’s in Texas. Governor Greg Abbot has not been shy about his desire to open things up even as coronavirus cases have increased. Now that they are on the downside of the outbreak, is it possible Florida could be facing a half or even a 75-percent full Kyle Field environment?

The other thing is that while Florida fans look at this schedule and circle the LSU and Georgia games, Texas A&M has out-recruited the Gators over the past three seasons. Nationally from 2018-2020, the Aggies have an average ranking of 9.0 vs. 10.7 for the Gators. That doesn’t seem like much, but as far as top-end talent, it means three more 5-stars and three more top-100 players.

I am not a fan of Kellen Mond. He was terrible under pressure last season (40.9%, 5.5 yards per attempt) and he hasn’t shown enough improvement to make me think that is going to change.

But normally we look towards the Tennessee game as a barometer for how good this Florida team can be. If the Gators go blow the doors off of Texas A&M, it points towards a championship run. If they squeak by or lose, there’s likely not much of a chance that they beat Georgia.

The Georgia Hump

As I showed above, Florida and Georgia are the class of the SEC East. But that’s been the case for two-years running now.

The question is no longer whether Florida can close the gap or show they belong against the Bulldogs. The time has come for Dan Mullen’s program where to take the next step, they actually need to beat Georgia.

So can they do it?

Well, the media certainly thinks they can, as the Gators came out as the favorites in the SEC East in preseason voting by the media. It was a close vote, but this does suggest that people who cover the teams believe Florida is poised to have its best shot.

But that’s not what Vegas thinks. They have the Gators with an over/under win total of 7.5 but Georgia at 8.5.

I tend to agree with the oddsmakers. I already laid out my case for J.T. Daniels being a really good QB, but I think it goes further than that.

Despite Jake Fromm playing poorly in 2019 (QB Rating of 141.2 vs. 171.2 in 2018), the Bulldogs offense still matched Florida’s output. And the defense is loaded with NFL talent, as evidenced by five players being selected for either first or second team All-SEC by the media.

That doesn’t mean Georgia doesn’t have weaknesses. Running back D’Andre Swift is gone, as are its starting tackles – Andrew Thomas and Isaiah Wilson – both first round picks. The offense may struggle at times, especially if they can’t protect Daniels or establish an effective running game. And of course, they do have the in-game coaching of Kirby Paul Smart.

But the defense gave up an average of 4.1 yards per attempt last season. The teams sandwiched around Georgia in those rankings are Ohio State (3.9 yards per attempt) and Clemson (4.3). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those teams made the playoff. Even with the evisceration by LSU in the SEC Championship, Georgia still only gave up 12.2 points per game against FBS opponents, best in the country.

Can Florida get the job done? Well, if a Will Muschamp-coached team with its third-string QB can do it, then certainly Dan Mullen and Kyle Trask can. But is it likely?

If you made me bet on it, I’d say no.

Overall Predictions

That leaves me wrestling with Florida ending up at either 9-1 or 8-2 this season. If they can keep their only loss to Georgia, there’s still a chance that they win the SEC East by virtue of Georgia having to play both Alabama and Auburn.

But I’m not a fan of Bo Nix and it would be very much like Kirby to beat Saban during the regular season only to suffer a heartbreaking loss to his mentor in the SEC Championship Game.

I hate saying it, but I think Georgia is going to have a real chance to be special this year. I know the prevailing wisdom is that continuity is going to be important in a season with limited offseason reps, but that’s not what we’ve seen thus far.

Iowa State came out – with an established QB in Brock Purdy and an on-the-rise head coach in Matt Campbell – and absolutely laid an egg against Louisiana (a Louisiana team that needed OT against Georgia State last week). D’Eriq King just torched Louisville after transferring to Miami. Phil Jurkevic (my Joe Burrow leap pick for this year) lit up Duke after transferring from Notre Dame.

The point is that perhaps reps matter more for teams with less talent than those chock-full of it. After all, if you make a mistake and have the speed to recover, the ball gets knocked down. If you make a mistake and can’t catch up, it’s a touchdown.

I think Florida is going to be really good this year. But I just don’t think they have enough ammunition yet to take out Georgia.

SEC Championship Game: Alabama 31, Georgia 27

Featured image modified under Creative Commons license courtesy Tammy Anthony Baker and Greece Trip Admin