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- 2020: 10.73% explosive plays allowed
- 2019: 10.05% explosive plays allowed
- 2018: 11.64% explosive plays allowed
Surely that must be a mistake. The 2018 defense was more susceptible to big plays than the 2020 defense? So I went a little bit deeper and looked at yards per play allowed vs. SEC opponents.
- 2020: 5.69 yards per play allowed
- 2019: 5.05 yards per play allowed
- 2018: 5.72 yards per play allowed
Yikes! Does this really suggest that in two of his three years, Grantham’s defenses at Florida have been as bad as last year? And is there something we can learn from 2018 and 2020 that tells us whether history will repeat itself in 2021?
We all like cupcakes
That 2018 team didn’t play a very difficult non-conference schedule (that’s putting it kindly). The Gators played Charleston Southern, Colorado State, Idaho and a down Florida State team that season.
The Gators surrendered an average of 10 points per game in those contests and an average of 3.86 yards per play allowed. That’s a big part of how you end up with a defense that ranked 21st in points per game allowed and 26th in yard per game allowed, stats that look good on the surface.
But the loss to Kentucky at home? 7.96 yards per play allowed. The ugly losses to Georgia and Missouri? 6.60 and 6.36 yards per play allowed, respectively.
The only games where the defense held an SEC team to under 4.0 yards per play was against Mississippi State.
That demarcation line is interesting because if we do the same exercise for Florida’s 2020 defense, it allowed less than 4.0 yards per play against South Carolina, Missouri, and Kentucky. Of course, it also surrendered more than 7.0 yards per play against Ole miss, Texas A&M, Arkansas and Alabama.
That really illustrates why the Florida defense was so frustrating in 2020. It had significantly more bad games than the 2018 defense.
But if you substitute the two added SEC games (Texas A&M and Arkansas) with the stats against Charleston Southern, Colorado State, Idaho and Florida State from 2018 into the 2020 schedule, Florida’s overall yards per play in 2020 (4.84) would have been better than in 2018 (5.08).
The only thing that pushes the 2020 defense over the edge is the game against Oklahoma, which Dan Mullen admittedly didn’t care about.
The deeper-dive makes it pretty clear: Florida’s defense was just as porous in 2018 as it was in 2020.
But what about the points?
The one place where the 2018 defense definitely had the 2020 defense was in points allowed.
Again, if we look at just SEC play, the 2018 defense gave up 205 points for an average of 25.6 points per game. The 2020 defense gave up 315 total points for an average of 28.6 points per game. So why the difference?
Maybe it was third down defense? The 2020 Florida defense gave up a third-down conversion rate of 41.1 percent while the 2018 squad gave up a conversion rate of 40.4 percent, so that doesn’t explain it.
Maybe teams were more effective in the red zone? Florida ranked 74th in 2020 with an 84.4 percent conversion rate against. But the 2018 squad allowed a 93.1 percent conversion rate and ranked 123rd, so that should mean that the 2018 defense would have given up more points.
Perhaps it is pressure? The 2020 team averaged 2.8 sacks per game while the 2018 squad averaged 2.9 so it doesn’t look like that’s the smoking gun.
Perhaps it is turnovers? The 2020 team averaged 1.3 turnovers per game versus 1.9 per game in 2018. Now we’re starting to get warmer. The 2020 team averaged 0.8 interceptions per game versus 1.0 in 2018. The 2020 team forced 1.0 fumbles per game compared to 1.1 in 2018. But the 2020 team only recovered 48.2 percent of fumbles compared to a 62.5 percent recovery rate in 2018.
But that’s a problem if we’re expecting a massive improvement for the Florida defense. That’s because fumble recoveries tend to be a 50/50 proposition over the long-haul. What this suggests is not that the 2020 defense was an aberration, but that the 2018 defense got lucky.
Personnel
What do 2020 and 2018 have in common?
Well, the safety rotation on that 2018 team consisted of Chauncey Gardner-Johnson, Donovan Stiner, Jeawon Taylor, Brad Stewart and Shawn Davis. That looks like a pretty similar depth chart to 2020, when the leading tacklers at safety were Stiner, Stewart, Davis, Trey Dean and Rashad Torrence.
Those personnel limitations showed up in the statistics. The 2018 defense gave up 7.27 yards per pass attempt compared to 7.62 yards per pass last season in SEC play. The argument that “anybody else” would have been better than throwing out the same guys in the defensive backfield does appear to hold water based on these numbers.
The 2020 defense was actually better up-front statistically than two years ago, giving up only 3.94 yards per rush compared to 4.60 in 2018.
That is reflected in the stats at defensive tackle. In 2018, transfer Adam Shuler led the Gators up-front with 39 tackles, but that was after barely playing against Charleston Southern and Colorado State and then coming up huge (9 tackles) in the third game of the season against the Vols.
Kyree Campbell helped supplement Shuler with 37 tackles of his own, significantly more than his 24 in 2020. And before you blame him only playing in seven games in 2020 for that discrepancy, recall that he only played in 10 games in 2018 and like Shuler, was not getting a ton of playing time until the Tennessee game.
The result is that not only were David Reese and Vosean Joseph – two linebackers – the Gators leading tacklers in 2018, but they combined for 174 stops compared to the 153 tackles by Gators linebackers Ventrell Miller and Mohamoud Diabate in 2020.
That could bode well for 2021 as the Gators will have both Antonio Shelton and Daquan Newkirk up-front to free up the linebackers.
Lucky or good?
I already mentioned luck once, when explaining the difference in fumble recoveries, but that isn’t the only place that Florida got lucky.
The 2018 team went 3-0 in one-score games, two of which I would classify as games that could have definitely gone either way. The 13-6 win against Mississippi State was a complete toss-up. Not only did the Gators need a Kadarius Toney touchdown pass to go up 10-6 (told you!), but they were dangerously close to going down 13-3 early in the third quarter before the Bulldogs got in their own way.
And while the South Carolina game that season was clearly a point where Florida’s season turned around, it was also a lucky bounce on a terribly executed third-down play down 17 points that turned that game around.
And had Joe Burrow been able to lead LSU down for a game-winning field goal rather than throwing a pick-six, the 2018 season from a won/loss record would have looked much, much different.
That luck ran out in 2020, with the Gators going 0-3 in one-score games. Now, some of that was self-induced. The Malik Davis fumble set up the Texas A&M field goal that led to the Gators first loss. And we’re all aware of the shoe toss and the loss to LSU. But somewhat lost in that game and the close loss to Alabama is that Dan Mullen absolutely butchered his timeout usage in the game against the Tide.
The point is that we shouldn’t attribute the success in 2018 or the failures in 2020 strictly to a decline in the defenses. I just don’t think there’s much of a case to do that.
Takeaway
So why am I harping on this so much? Well, when Dan Mullen decided to retain Todd Grantham, he presumably did so based on the improvement that the defense showed from 2017 to 2018 and from 2018 to 2019 and treated 2020 as an outlier.
The problem is that, as I have illustrated, it doesn’t appear that 2020 is the outlier. Rather, it appears that the performance in 2019 is the outlier.
The defensive backs didn’t forget how to play pass defense in 2020. They didn’t play it all that well in 2018 either, with much the same cast of characters. And as hard as it is to believe, the 2020 defense was actually better against the run than the 2018 one was.
I’m left with little hope that we’re going to see a huge improvement in the 2021 defense. Instead, what I think we’re going to see is an artificial bump because Florida’s defense gets Florida Atlantic, USF, Samford and Florida State this year instead of two additional SEC opponents.
I’ve heard plenty of people say that to win back the fan base, Grantham is going to have to put up an elite performance against Alabama in week three. That’s true, especially since it would counter the narrative that his defenses struggle against good teams. But he should have to do more than that.
He should have to put up an actual dominant season against the entire SEC schedule to convince anyone that he deserves another year.
Education in 2020
My son, Max, just finished up kindergarten. His report card came home and reflected what we already knew from interacting with him: he’s well behind when it comes to reading.
Max likely would have been slow to pick up reading anyway without the weirdness of this past year. He struggles with his speech and it makes him hesitant when called upon. He tries to guess what a word is based on the first letter rather than sounding it out or just makes up a word altogether based on the pictures in the book.
But all of this was exacerbated by the first two months of school taking place over a computer. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to wrangle a kindergartner in front of a Zoom meeting and then try to actually get him to participate, but it’s easier to convince Gators fans that Dan Mullen’s recruiting actually matters.
It was really disheartening when he would come downstairs and just not want to log in. You could tell it was hard for him and so he zoned out, which then pushed him further behind and caused him to zone out even more.
So we did what any loving family would do for a kid who is struggling and want to make sure he doesn’t fall behind further. We hired a tutor.
We have a friend who teaches first grade in a school where kids are much more economically disadvantaged than we are. Typically, this friend has two or three kids (out of about 20) who aren’t reading at grade level by the end of the year. This year, that number was 17.
I’ve been thinking about how to help with this. I don’t have an answer completely crystallized yet, but our own experience with Max has clearly pointed out the value of having the resources to help when the school falls short. That’s not a commentary on COVID shutdowns, but a commentary on the reality that schools will fall short for some kids at all times, and that likely they fell way short in 2020.
If you’re a reader with ideas or needs, please reach out. This website gives me a platform that perhaps can help a kid (or multiple kids) get help that they need. I can’t imagine the feeling of helplessness if I couldn’t get Max the help he needs.
If that’s you, I truly believe Gator Nation will find a way to help.