Big plays abound as Florida wins a shootout over Ole Miss

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It’s funny how you feel one way about things in the moment and then after a little bit of time passes, you feel much differently.

That’s how it was for me with Florida’s 51-35 victory over Mississippi. In the moment, I was incredibly pleased with how the Florida offense performed (obviously), regardless of how poor Mississippi likely is on defense. On the other hand, I was really disappointed with the inability of the defense to stop big plays on the other side, as Ole Miss seemed to be running free all game long.

The defense is still concerning to me. But after watching the rest of the SEC slate, I feel much better about the win than I did in the moment. After all, Texas A&M looked like hot garbage at home in a 5-point win over Vanderbilt. LSU gave up 623 yards passing at home and lost to Mississippi State. And Oklahoma coughed up a 35-14 lead late in the third quarter at home again Kansas State.

Saturday was weird. We saw – for the most part – offenses way more prepared than defenses. And for Florida to get a 16-point win on the road in an SEC opener after this strange offseason is exactly what the Gators needed to do.

There are still some major things that need to be fixed. But the game wasn’t really ever in doubt after Florida pulled away at the end of the first half.

And at the end of the day, Saturday confirmed what we already knew. A win in the SEC is a win in the SEC. You don’t take those for granted because this conference is tough. Overlook anyone at your own peril.

Defensive Struggles

You can’t ignore the struggles of the Gators defense. That’s clearly the place where the team is going to need to focus this week. First, some stats:

• Florida gave up 7.9 yards per play, which would have ranked 130th (dead last) against FBS opponents last season.
• The Gators gave up 13.4 yards per pass, which also would have ranked 130th last season.
• Ole Miss averaged 54.0 yards per pass in the third quarter.
• Florida gave up nine explosive (20+ yard) plays.
• Ole Miss had 613 total yards and 395 yards passing to Matt Corral.

Some might attribute this to poor tackling, and that was part of it. But a lot of it was players not knowing where they should be or trying to do too much.

On this play, safety Donovan Stiner (#13) is caught peeking into the backfield even though he has deep responsibilities. While corner Kaiir Elam (#5) does get turned around, Elam is expecting help over the middle based on the defensive formation. When that help doesn’t arrive, it’s an easy touchdown.

Here’s another example. On this play, either Rashad Torrence (#22) or Marco Wilson (#3) screwed up the coverage (it’s hard to know without knowing the coverage call who’s fault it is, but Wilson clearly thinks it’s on Torrence).

Kaiir Elam (#5) drops into the underneath zone, and it looks like Wilson (#3) is just reading Corral’s eyes.  Torrence then has to make a decision about which receiver to guard as they cross and he chooses outside. That leaves the middle of the field wide open for a big play to Elijah Moore (#8).

But it wasn’t all bad for the defense. When Emory Jones threw a terrible interception, the defense gave up a big play but then Brenton Cox blew up a play in the backfield and tipped a pass that got intercepted.

And after Florida punted, Mississippi had a third-and-1 and this play happened.

The hit by Ventrell Miller (#51) is what you immediately see. But what Greg McElroy did a great job pointing out on the telecast was the way Zach Carter (#17) put freshman right guard Jeremy James (#78) 5-yards into the backfield.

On the next drive, the defense did it again.

A Florida player again fills the hole, this time the aforementioned Donovan Stiner (#13) makes a great tackle. But Brenton Cox (#1) beats his man at the point of attack, as does Marlon Dunlap (#91). The result is that Florida is deep in the Ole Miss backfield and Rebels’ center Ben Brown (#55) can’t get to Stiner.

And then there was the customary bad tackling that you would expect coming out of an offseason with limited reps and extremely limited hitting.

The disturbing thing here is the lack of push up-front. Carter (#17) gets pushed back. Slaton (#56) gets pushed back. Burney (#20) puts up little resistance against Brown (#55). And Ventrell Miller (#55) gets stoned by a pulling tight end (#84, Kenny Yeboah) and kind-of lackadaisically pursues the play.

Top that off with Wilson (#3), Stiner (#13) and Torrence (#22) completely whiffing, and you have a recipe for disaster.

I’m actually not worried about the two big passing plays I diagrammed. Those are learning experiences that will get fixed as the players get a little more comfortable. And when Florida needed stops in the first half to create separation, the defense was able to step up and get them.

But that running touchdown worries me. If Florida holds Mississippi to a field goal there, the game is essentially over. Instead, the level of effort and intensity wasn’t high enough.

I suspect the intensity level will be increased against South Carolina. If nothing else, to avoid having to run again like what’s coming on Monday.

Offensive Explosion

The Ole Miss defense is going to be doing the same running as Florida’s though, because the Gators offense put up 642 yards of its own.

Much like in 2019, Dan Mullen tried to be balanced in the first quarter (8 pass, 10 rush) and then said “screw-it” in the second quarter and chucked the ball all over the place (18 pass, 4 rush). Just like in 2019, that proved to be an effective strategy.

This was the second offensive play of the game for the Gators, and it told me all I needed to know about this game.

Mississippi rushes three players on a second-and-1 because they suspect Florida might take a deep shot. Trask stands back in the pocket against an eight-man zone and picks the defense apart. The line gave him plenty of time (Jean Delance, #56 stones his man), and once it was established that even with eight guys, Ole Miss wasn’t going to be able to cover Florida, you knew this was going to be a long day for the Rebels.

Things weren’t perfect for the offensive line though.

On this play, Florida gets lucky to get a pass interference penalty on a third-and-8. Trask gets drilled right as he lets go of the ball because the right side of the line (Delance and #51 Stewart Reese) are unable to properly handle an Ole Miss stunt.

I suspect this is Delance’s fault. He likely needs to drop back and help Reese on defensive end Cedric Johnson (#33), which would give Reese a little bit of time to pick-up linebacker Momo Sanogo (#46). Instead, Reese follows Johnson, Delance can’t get to Sanogo and Trask takes a shot in the ribs.

But if we’re going to talk about pass protection, we have to talk about the long TD throw to tight end Kyle Pitts.

Look at this protection. Left tackle Stone Forsythe (#72) stands up the defensive end. Left guard Richard Gouraige (#76) does the same. Center Brett Heggie (#61) and Reese (#51) beat their men one-on-one as well. And look at the blitz pickup by running back Dameon Pierce (#27)! From there, it’s an easy pitch-and-catch.

Obviously, this points out how unbelievably talented Kyle Pitts is. But I also want to talk about what it means for Kyle Trask. Notice how Trask sees the safety creep up and then audibles. He didn’t check with the sideline. He has the freedom within the offense to make that check.

If we look at the All-22 angle, you can see that Trask sees safety Lakevias Daniel (#29) come up to cover Kadarius Toney, he knows it means he has Pitts on a linebacker (Jacquez Jones, #32) for a big play.

Trask played great. He completed 71 percent of his throws for 416 yards. He averaged 9.9 yards per throw. He had the six touchdowns, and using my Yards above Replacement (YAR) metric, he graded out at 2.17, which is Heisman-level play.

He made a bunch of great throws, but there was one particular play that made me jump off my couch when I saw it.

Right guard Stewart Reese (#51) is beaten really badly on this play. Trask knows he has one-on-one coverage with Jacquez Jones (#32) on Kadarius Toney (#1). But because Reese is beaten, Trask doesn’t have enough time to make the throw. But he feels the pressure and starts sliding backwards, creating just enough time to get the throw off.

As well as Trask played last year, his pocket presence wasn’t very good. Early on against Auburn, there were a bunch of sacks on fumbles that could have cost the Gators that game. Even in the bowl game against Virginia, Trask didn’t necessarily look comfortable when people got in his face.

According to SEC Stat Cat, when Trask was pressured last year, he completed 67 percent of the passes he threw but was sacked on 13.6 percent of his attempts. Against Ole Miss, Trask completed 7 of 11 throws but was only sacked once, or 4.5 percent.

I’m not ready to call him Joe Burrow, but the little nuances of the position that were missing last year appear to be getting filled in.

Takeaway

Saturday told us a bunch of things about the season.

The Florida offense has a chance to be truly elite. Kyle Pitts is going to be a top-10 pick in the NFL Draft, and the fact that he decided to opt-in is a huge deal and I hope people realize the risk he’s taking.

Kyle Trask has gotten better. Whether a “Burrow jump” is possible or not doesn’t really matter. He is commanding an offense that can likely hang 40 on just about anybody.

And the much-maligned offensive line of 2019 didn’t look spectacular, but looked much improved from a year ago (6.8 yards per rush, and the aforementioned pass protection).

The defense has a lot of work to do.

It starts with effort. There were too many plays where guys were either winded or loafing. Getting deeper into the season will help that, but defensive coordinator Todd Grantham is going to have to sit players who loaf to send a message.

Tackling will improve with time. We saw this last year with some awful tackling against Miami in the opener. And Ventrell Miller will hopefully grow into the leadership hole left by the departure of David Reese.

The big plays are concerning. Corral had a YAR of 3.99 for the game because he averaged 12.7 yards per attempt. That’s just unacceptable. I would have settled for a pass interference penalty or two on some of the jumpballs – at least that’s only 15 yards.

But a win in the SEC is a big win, regardless of who the opponent is. Two touchdown-plus wins in the SEC are rare, so be sure to enjoy this one a little bit.

Isn’t it great to have football back?

As I posted on Twitter all day long and was called too positive by some followers and too negative by others, a realization came over me.

Coronavirus has stripped many of us of our communities. For too long, we’ve been sitting in our houses separated from the real world and the people in it. But football – and College Football specifically – is a great unifier.

The same people who called me an idiot for my hot takes immediately started defending me when some Florida State morons came at me a little bit. More than anything, it was so much fun to interact with everyone and just talk ball. Apparently, some of you feel the same way (at least about Dave).

You’ve brought many of us fans together. You’re like the backbone of this fan base. Thanks for what you do.

— AndrewB (@andrewbarrett88) September 26, 2020

This article is going to get Read and Reaction to 500,000 reads. Thank you to everyone who has read my work, and hopefully you’ve enjoyed it and come back for more.

I’m hoping to build this site into something with a large enough audience that eventually I can consider doing this for a living. But even if that never happens, I couldn’t give it up. I now look forward to the interaction with you all in much the same way I look forward to the texts from my brother or Dad during the game.

Because today was a great reminder that we’re all one part of the Gator Nation, the greatest fraternity in the world.

Oh, and Florida State lost by 42.

Go Gators!

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