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Dan Mullen, Gators, bring SEC East Title back to Gainesville with win over Tennessee

Will Miles

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Perspective is a funny thing.

Florida went to Knoxville and won the SEC East on Saturday afternoon. The Gators won the game by 12 points, but the win was a lot more lopsided in the Gators favor than that. Also, after four seasons and a coaching change, the Gators are finally headed back to Atlanta.

But if you have been paying much attention the last three games, you’ve heard Gators fans’ frustration as Florida has failed to put a complete game together. And I get it. It’s going to take a better effort to beat Alabama than the Gators brought against Tennessee. But……again some perspective.

That’s right. When Florida went to play the Tide in the SEC Championship Game in 2015, the Gators were coming off of a four-game stretch in which they’d actually been outscored 55-62 despite going 3-1. The same thing happened in 2016, as the Gators went 2-2 heading into Atlanta and were outscored 59-79.

Perhaps then it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Florida lost those two SEC Championship Games to Alabama by a combined score of 83-31.

So a last little bit of perspective. This 2020 Gators team has won its last three games by a combined score of 103-46.

Is it perfect? No, it isn’t.

But I remember how I felt in 2015 when I went to the FSU/Florida game and my 7-year old daughter asked me to get her cotton candy right as the fourth quarter started and I obliged because it was better than watching Treon Harris airmail receivers for another 15 minutes.

I knew we had zero shot at beating the Tide.

I remember how I felt in 2016 when Austin Appleby and Luke Del Rio were Florida’s quarterbacks. Even after Appleby led a perfect touchdown drive to open the SEC Championship Game to put the Gators up 7-0, I knew we had zero shot at beating the Tide.

Can this team beat Alabama? It’s going to be really tough, but it isn’t impossible. There’s a narrow path Florida will have to follow to beat the Tide, but it isn’t a zero percent chance.

And besides, part of the fun of an entire season is getting to enjoy the ride. Florida didn’t play Alabama this week, they played Tennessee. And the Gators performance was more than enough to soundly defeat the Volunteers.

Defensive Improvement

Don’t be fooled by the final score.

Florida was up 31-7 with 11 minutes left before Tennessee put up two meaningless touchdowns to make the score more respectable.

The Gators harassed Vol QB Harrison Bailey five times and had six sacks in the game. The Gators only gave up 54 yards rushing and 119 yards passing through three quarters.

Gone were the completely busted coverages (I only saw one, linebacker James Houston not taking a running back out of the backfield). Again, the defense didn’t surrender a bunch of explosive plays (two, one on the final TD for Tennessee after the game was over).

This defense isn’t perfect. But it isn’t LSU either.

I know Florida fans are going to be worried that Alabama will do to the Gators what the Tide did to the Tigers on Saturday night. But heading into Saturday’s games, Florida was giving up 5.5 yards per play while LSU was giving up 6.5. That is a huge difference.

Florida improved that average by giving up 4.4 yards per play to Tennessee. And again, if we only consider the first three quarters, the Gators gave up 3.5 yards per play. That’s after surrendering 3.6 yards per play against Kentucky.

Prior to that, the Gators gave up 6.0 yards per play against Vanderbilt and 7.1 yards per play against Arkansas. Even against Georgia – whom I’ve been reliably informed would have beaten Florida had J.T. Daniels been playing (yeah, right) – averaged 4.8 yards per play against the Gators defense.

So the narrative that the Gators are playing down to their competition just isn’t true on the defensive side of the ball, at least not the last two games.

If you asked me what concerned me most, it’s this sequence of plays on the one legitimate drive that Tennessee had.

On this play, I suspect that James Houston (#41) is supposed to have the running back out of the backfield. I say this because Brad Stewart (#2) and Donovan Stiner (#13) bracket the receiver going down the middle and Marco Wilson (#3) is in man coverage at the bottom of the screen. Houston drops into a zone, but I think he’s responsible for the running back.

Again, Florida is in man coverage on this play. Ventrell Miller (#51) goes out to guard running back Eric Gray (#5) while Amari Burney (#30) immediately goes to take away the screen to Velus Jones (#1). But one of the weaknesses of man coverage is nobody to take the QB if he’s able to escape the pocket, which is what happens here.

On this play, Tennessee motions Gray (#3) prior to the snap to give him a running start. Again, Ventrell Miller (#51) is responsible for getting over to him. Slot receiver Cedric Tillman (#4) gets in his way (this is legal because the throw is behind the line of scrimmage) and Brad Stewart (#2) follows Tillman outside and is unable to funnel Gray back to the inside. Safety Donovan Stiner (#13) takes a poor angle while Marco Wilson (#3) is unable to get off of his block.

I’ve heard Gators fans screaming, “why are we playing so far off,” all season. Grantham has likely heard it as well. But this is why they can’t do that consistently. The linebackers are easily exploited in the passing game and the corners have really struggled to hold up as well (Wilson gave up a back shoulder throw on third-and-8 to start the drive).

It almost got them on the next drive too.

At first this looks like just a great open field tackle by Kaiir Elam (#5), and it is that. But Tre’Vez Johnson (#16) is late following the man in motion (Jalin Hyatt, #11) across the formation. Velus Jones (#1) peels off to block Johnson, but I don’t think he needed to. Had he instead gone out to block Elam, this would have been a huge gain.

Overall, I think the Gators looked way better tonight against Tennessee, at least for three quarters. But these sorts of motions when they are in man coverage are causing significant issues.

I do think it’s better than some of the passivity they’ve shown with zone coverages earlier in the season, and I think moving to a more aggressive defense – pretty much since the second half against Kentucky – is helping them improve.

Offensive “Struggles”

Tennessee had one good drive in the first half, that 11-play, 96-yard touchdown drive to take a 7-3 lead highlighted above. That drive started with 33 seconds left in the second quarter, which means that the Gators had held the Vols scoreless in the first.

So why was the game only 3-0 at that point?

Well, the first reason was they missed a touchdown on their opening drive.

This is a tough throw to Kyle Pitts (#84). It’s clear that Pitts is where Trask is going from the outset. And I think it’s the right read because the safety alignment at the snap suggests that a throw between the corner (Alontae Taylor, #2) and the safety (Jaylen McCollough, #22) is there. That’s further confirmed when Taylor plays outside leverage, trying to funnel Pitts back to McCollough.

The throw is there, but Trask hesitates and double clutches, then throwing the ball while drifting backwards despite not being under pressure. The result is an inaccurate, late throw and a field goal attempt.

Trask was actually “off” for much of the night. If it felt like the offense just wasn’t right, including Trask, I think there’s something to that.

I have a stat I track called Yards above Replacement (YAR) that tries to measure efficiency of a QB by looking at how often he outperforms the averages of his peers. A YAR of 0.0 is average, 1.0 is very good (think Jake Fromm in 2018) and 2.0 is Heisman-worthy.

For the season, Trask came into the game with a YAR of 2.47, with his worst game at 1.62 against South Carolina. Well, against Tennessee Trask put up a YAR of 0.98, which is still really good but still not up to his standard.

That’s how you end up with a ridiculous tweet after the game like this.

It’s true. Trask threw for 433 yards and 4 TDs and this was his worst game of the season, at least by my metric. It was actually his second-worst game if you use a more traditional metric like QB rating, where his performance against the Volunteers produced a rating of 172.6 compared to his season average of 196.8.

That’s still really, really good. Even by YAR we’re talking about a really solid performance. And it’s better than any QB Florida has had in a really long time.

But defenses are starting to do some things to confuse Trask post-snap.

On this play, the pre-snap look is that Tennessee will have deep safety help to both sides. That means Kadarius Toney (#1) will be open on a crossing route over the middle.

But watch as Tennessee’s safety (circled) fakes going deep then comes up to help take away the crossing route to Toney. The minute the safety starts forward, Trask should know that Jacob Copeland (#15) is going to be open deep and that the other safety can’t get over there in time.

Instead, he keeps waiting for Toney to come clear but decides not to throw the ball. I’m not sure he ever looks to Copeland before he feels some pressure pressure and runs into a sack.

It’s hard to see from this angle, but Stewart Reese (#51) and Jean Delance (#56) do an outstanding job of picking a Tennessee stunt, giving Trask plenty of time. He certainly had time to move off of Toney and onto Copeland.

Of course, you can’t really blame Trask for bailing when he feels pressure.

Mullen alluded to a snap count issue on this particular play and you can see that if you freeze the play. Neither Delance or Reese move at the snap. In fact, Delance is pointing at the defender because he thinks they’ve drawn him offsides. But the entire right side of the line moves with the snap, so somebody is wrong here.

Free shots at your QB are going to make him skittish, and Florida is going to have to clean this up. I think you can deal with Delance getting beat physically a couple times a game. But mental mistakes that get your QB drilled – especially nine games in – is unacceptable.

This game probably feels a whole lot different if the long pass to Malik Davis had been allowed to stand rather than being called back on an offensive pass interference. Instead of the Gators being up 10-0 early, Tennessee was able to drive down the field to take the lead (note to Dan Mullen, you have an elite QB, go for it on 4th down in enemy territory).

But the two plays I highlighted above show Trask hesitating. Against Georgia and Arkansas, he was just letting the ball go.

In fact, the play that should have gone to Copeland came after Trask was inaccurate to Justin Shorter on first down and then checked-down to Dameon Pierce when he had Kyle Pitts coming open. On all three plays that drive, Tennessee’s safeties did something other than their pre-snap alignment suggested they would.

Florida had a chance to really salt the game away on that drive after the Gators were lucky and Tennessee dropped a fake punt attempt. Instead, the offense went backwards. After going up 24-7 to close the first half and open the second, Florida then proceeded to turn the ball over on downs and have two straight three-and-outs. And for all the fans complaining about Florida running the ball earlier in the game, Trask threw the ball on 9 of those 12 plays.

And that’s perhaps the thing that should concern Florida fans the most. The Gators don’t have to run the ball a ton, but they have to at least have it as a threat in the arsenal that the other team has to respect. That’s mostly because you can’t move your safeties all over the place post-snap if you risk getting gashed in the running game.

That wasn’t true against Tennessee as the Gators ran the ball 17 times for 19 yards (1.1 yards per rush). Copeland and Toney had two rushes for 24 yards, while Dameon Pierce, Malik Davis and Nay’Quan Wright had 11 carries for 7 yards.

Trask is going to figure this stuff out. He’s too good not to. But deception by moving safeties post-snap make reads more difficult, and will cause a QB to hesitate. I think that’s why Florida’s offense looked (for it) sluggish against the Volunteers.

Run the ball more efficiently and that problem goes away.

Takeaway

You can’t win the SEC unless you win the SEC East.

Dan Mullen has been talking about the “Gator Standard” since he came to Gainesville, and he knows as well as anyone that winning the east is a nice-to-have, but isn’t what fans expect. He has to win in Atlanta to fulfill that standard.

Still, you have to get to Atlanta first. And in probably the most challenging season any team is ever going to encounter, Florida and Alabama are the teams left standing.

I picked Georgia to win the east. I wasn’t alone. But I also knew that 2020 was the year that Mullen needed to take advantage of his advantage at QB and all of the experience coming back.

The fact that he’s been able to do just that is a clear indication that the program is headed in the right direction.

Is that going to be enough to beat Alabama? I don’t know. You hoped coming into 2020 that the loss of Tua Tagovailoa would hurt the Tide similarly to the way losing Joe Burrow has hurts LSU. Instead, it appears that Mac Jones may be even better than Tagovailoa.

But it was enough to beat Ole Miss. It was enough to beat South Carolina, Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Kentucky and now Tennessee.

That’s all that matters.

I started out this article talking about perspective. Just think back. You knew that Florida had no hope of beating Alabama in 2015 or 2016. I went into those games just hoping we didn’t get embarrassed.

That isn’t the case now. I do believe that Florida’s offense can play with anybody, perhaps even the Tide. And while it’s a large mountain to climb, I don’t think it is a foregone conclusion that Florida loses to Alabama like it was in the middle of the decade.

I do know one thing for sure. When Florida plays Alabama in a couple of weeks, I won’t see one friggin’ third-and-long play-action.

And that’s pretty neat.

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