Gators chart a course towards Atlanta with blowout win over Bulldogs

After Georgia hit a 75-yard run to go up 7-0 against Florida, the Gators went three-and-out on offense and I tweeted this.

Third and 6 and they go to…..Pierce? Hmmm

— Will Miles (@WillMilesSEC) November 7, 2020

The lesson, as always, is I’m an idiot.

Florida running backs terrorized Georgia linebackers in coverage to the tune of 10 catches for 212 yards. I typically measure explosive (20+ yard) plays, but the Gators running backs averaged one every time they caught the ball.

It got so bad (or good, depending on your perspective) at one point that color commentator Gary Danielson couldn’t believe they kept being able to hit on those throws.

Dan Mullen improves to 1-2 against Georgia. But this is more than that. For the past two years, Florida has been able to point at progress as the team went 10-3 in Mullen’s first season and 11-2 in his second. The only thing missing from that resume – and the only way to show significant progress in 2020 – was to win the SEC East.

Florida hasn’t won the division just yet, but they now have a 2-game lead with five games to go, all against unranked opponents. It’s not quite time to start the “WE WANT BAMA” chants, but if the team does its job, that time will come.

There were some warts in the game (we’ll cover those below), but when Florida beat Ole Miss by 16 points, I was happy. But beating Georgia by 16 points – and it not even really being that close – has the potential to be a program-defining win.

I started my preview article this week by detailing how Nick Saban lost to Urban Meyer’s Gators in his second year, and then used that loss as motivation all year long to stick it to Meyer’s Gators in 2009. The Tide haven’t stopped winning since.

Hopefully the same applies for Dan Mullen’s Gators.

How the SEC East was (likely) won

571 yards.

If you want to boil things down to one stat, that’s how Florida won this game. Florida put on an offensive display that was incredibly impressive, especially in the second quarter, and Georgia just had no way to keep up.

It didn’t feel that way after the Gators fell behind 14-0.

The Gators defense came out and did what it has seemingly done all year: struggle.

The first play of the game went 75 yards to the house. Mullen said after the game that his defensive line didn’t line up correctly, and maybe that’s true. But there are two mistakes made by defensive backs that turn this into a touchdown rather than just a big gain.

First, safety Rashad Torrence (#22) is the deepest player. He tries to take a direct angle to the running back rather than heading over to the sideline to make sure he can cut him off. The result is that Torrence gets blocked by Georgia tight end Tre’ McKitty (#87).

But that wouldn’t have been deadly if corner Jaydon Hill (#23) had taken on his blocker (#22, Kendall Milton). Instead, Hill tried to side-step Milton, which allowed White to step inside and turn on the jets.

Then came the second drive, which ended on a 32-yard TD pass to Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint.

Grantham brings a blitz from Torrence (#22). He then has Brad Stewart (#2) drop into the middle of the field. It then looks like both Florida linebackers (#30, Amari Burney and #51, Ventrell Miller) drop into the zones towards the sideline.

Again, I think this is Hill’s mistake, as he jumps the out route to Kearis Jackson (#10) rather than continuing with Rosemy-Jacksaint (#81). You can see Miller spin as he realizes there’s been a mix-up. But by then it’s way too late and Rosemy-Jacksaint is able to beat Stewart to the goal line.

At that point, Georgia had 136 yards and the second ranked defense in the country with a 14-point lead.

Florida got the ball for its second offensive series and the skies opened up and Florida fans had to be wondering whether this just wasn’t the Gators day. After all, Trask had really struggled throwing the ball in the rain against South Carolina last year.

But then he threw a dime to Xzavier Henderson (dropped). He finally completed his first pass to Keon Zipperer (39 yards) and then on third-and-4, when Florida would have had to make a fourth down decision or perhaps settle for a disappointing field goal, this happened.

Kyle Pitts (#84) occupies both the corner and the safety on his side, because that’s where Georgia expects the ball to go. Georgia blitzes one linebacker and the other linebacker covers Dameon Pierce running out in the flat. That means there’s nobody to pick-up wide receiver Justin Shorter (#89) dragging across the middle.

But Trask does an amazing job just getting the ball out. Right tackle Jean Delance (#56) is completely lost and doesn’t block the rush end (Malik Herring, #10). Trask steps up and the ball hits Delance and he has to sort-of shotput the ball forward.

This could have been a fumble. Trask could have gone down or throw an incomplete pass. Instead, it was seven points for the Gators and the comeback was on.

After a Georgia three-and-out, Florida started executing on what turned out to be the game plan: getting the ball to the running backs against the Georgia linebackers in space.

This play is opened up by Kyle Pitts as well. It’s hard to see from this view, but Pitts (#84) actually occupies both safeties and linebacker Monty Rice (#32) drops into a zone. Because Pitts clears things out, that leaves Florida running back Malik Davis (#20) in one-on-one coverage against linebacker Jermaine Johnson (#11).

This is a beautiful throw by Trask and a great catch by Davis. But it’s also a beautiful job of knowing that Georgia was going to key on Pitts and using that to free up the running back deep.

A few plays later, Mullen finally got around to scheming Pitts open.

At the start of the play, Toney (#1) and Grimes (#8) are on the strong side of the formation and Georgia has two deep safeties and two corners to that side. Toney motions to towards the backfield and Georgia just shifts slightly, telling Trask that they are definitely in zone coverage.

Then Grimes runs directly at the safety on the strong side while Pitts flares out down the sideline. The safety has to make a decision of whether to double Grimes or double Pitts. He chooses Trask and Pitts makes an unbelievable individual play to set up the Gators second score.

Time and time again, Mullen put Georgia in positions where they had to make a decision. And time and time again, Kyle Trask made them pay by hitting the guy they decided to leave in single coverage. It was even true on the pick-six.

Trask sees Georgia safety Christopher Smith (#29) head deep at the snap. That tells him he has one-on-one against Kadarius Toney (#1) and he lets it go. But Freshman receiver Xzavier Henderson (#3) leads his man (Eric Stokes, #27) directly into the path of the throw and instead of an easy completion, Georgia was up 21-14.

But that’s when Gator fans should have known this was going to be a Florida victory. Because after the pick-six, Florida went down the field to score on two plays.

On the first play, Trask again hit a running back on a wheel route, this time Nay’Quan Wright (#6). But Wright wasn’t freed up by Trask, but rather a “rub” by wide receiver Jacob Copeland (#15). Copeland got in the way of linebacker Monty Rice (#32) and it was an easy throw for Trask.

But even better, safety Lewis Cine (#16) came up aggressively to help on Copeland, which left plenty of room for Wright to run once he caught the ball.

Georgia is in a single-high safety look on this play with Cine (#16) as the deep man. Perhaps Cine was caught looking at Wright going out for a route again. Trask does hold him with his eyes a little bit. But the result is that Pitts is again in one-on-one coverage against Tyson Campbell (#3). Campbell is 6’2”, 185 pounds. Pitts is 6’6” and 246 pounds.

That’s a mismatch and the game was tied at 21.

The Gator defense kept giving the ball back to its offense and Mullen kept targeting the Bulldog’s linebackers.

On this play, linebacker Nakobe Dean (#17) takes a couple of steps up on the play fake to Davis. Copeland again runs a slant – this time a little bit deeper – to occupy the corner and safety (Cine, #16). If you freeze the play right before Trask lets the ball go, ou can see Copeland is double-teamed and Toney is double-teamed, which means Davis is in one-on-one coverage against a linebacker who was moving the wrong direction after the snap. It was actually a great play by Dean to prevent a touchdown.

At that point, Florida had the entire Georgia defense completely discombobulated. Pre-snap, this looks like the play they ran earlier in the game to get the ball deep to Pitts that I diagrammed earlier. Toney motions into the backfield and the linebackers again shift. Grimes again runs right at the safety.

But Mark Webb (#23) doesn’t pick up tight end Kemore Gamble (#88). This is just a completely blown coverage by Georgia, the score was 28-21 and Florida was well on its way to dominating the rest of the half.

It might be nitpicking, but there are still things to be concerned about. The offense only put up 160 yards in the second half. Trask was outstanding, but he did throw a pick-six and nearly another to Mark Webb that would have made Florida fans really nervous with about half the fourth quarter left. There was the missed field goal by Evan McPherson and the poor defense on the first two drives.

And there’s the sneaking suspicion that Florida’s defense didn’t exactly stop Georgia so much as Georgia just had horrible QB play.

On this play, Jermaine Burton (#7) is open, but Bennett airmails him on third-and-11. These are the types of plays that Matt Corral and Kellen Mond made against Florida, but Bennett did not.

On this play, tight end Darnell Washington (#0) is open coming across the middle. This could have been a really big gain, but instead Georgia was in second-and-long after Bennett threw the ball behind his receiver.

And only up 13 in the fourth quarter, Florida lets the Georgia wide receiver get behind them. QB D’Wan Mathis just isn’t able to deliver the ball to complete the play.

Takeaway

Yes, there are things to improve on. Yes, you’d like to see that Gators show a little bit more of a killer instinct and put their opponent away.

But Florida was clearly the better team, more than the final score indicated.

In the first half when the Gators needed to dig themselves out of a 14-point hole and an 0 for 3 Kyle Trask start, Trask completed 20 of 23 throws for 341 yards and 4 TD, including 7 of 8 on throws 15+ yards downfield.

Dan Mullen found a weakness with Georgia and exploited it over and over, but in very different ways. The Bulldogs basically folded late in the first half before finally showing some fight in the second half.

And the defense – which was a sieve pre-COVID – had two quarters (2nd and 4th) where it surrendered less than 25 yards. When you have an offense like this, those types of quarters will let you pull away.

And pull away the Gators did. In that second quarter, Georgia ran 12 plays for 25 yards. Florida ran 25 plays for 253 yards. There were 31 points scored in the quarter and Florida’s offense was responsible for all 31, as the only Georgia points came on Trask’s pick-six.

It was 14-14 going into the second quarter. It was 38-21 by the time the smoke cleared and the Gators just had to bleed out the second half.

That was mildly dissatisfying for fans who wanted to see the Gators put up 50 against Georgia. But if you had told me coming into the season that Florida would score 44 points against Georgia and win by 16, I would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.

What Saturday’s result did was establish that Georgia is going to have to deal with Florida moving forward instead of just being the SEC East bully. It established that Kyle Trask is a real contender for the Heisman Trophy. It established Florida as a Playoff contender. And it proved that Dan Mullen can win against the big boys when he has similar levels of talent.

It also brings into sharp focus some issues that are festering at Georgia. I’m sure Stetson Bennett is a great guy, but he has no business being the starting QB of a program that recruits this well. Bennett was 5 of 16 (11 incompletions) and Georgia QBs had 20 incompletions on the day. Justin Fields has 11 incompletions all season.

And then there’s this.

Kirby Smart is now 0-7 since 2017 against teams that rank in the top ten of 247’s Talent Composite. Average loss margin of 17 points in those games.

— Brice (@thebricegreen) November 8, 2020

I’ve written about the importance of recruiting a lot. But I’ve also written about Kirby Smart’s struggles against teams with top-25 talent. In 2018 and 2019, Florida didn’t have equal talent, and especially didn’t have equivalent talent at the QB position.

But in 2020, Florida had a huge mismatch at QB and the best skill player on the field (Pitts).

Time will tell whether this is a changing of the guard ala Saban in 2009 or whether this is going to be a more even matchup in the years moving forward.

But Smart’s defense has now been exposed against Alabama and Florida this year after being completely overmatched last year against LSU.

Nick Saban admitted it after his team’s win over Georgia saying, “Good defense doesn’t beat good offense anymore.”

The Tide scored 41 points, gained 564 yards and averaged 7.4 yards per play against Georgia. Florida scored 44 points, gained 571 yards and averaged 7.1 yards per play against the Bulldogs.

Good offense wins these days, and Florida showed it can at least rival the Tide after its big win over Georgia.

Now the Gators just have to take care of business to see who’s is better in Atlanta.

Featured image used courtesy David Waters/Gators Breakdown, all rights reserved.