Anthony Richardson steals show in Gators’ frustrating victory over USF

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It’s amazing how one play can completely change your perception of a football game.

Florida’s second half against USF had been abysmal. Emory Jones had looked off. The Bulls had basically played Florida to a stalemate. But Anthony Richardson was a shining beacon of light that made everything okay assuming he would start to get more playing time. He even had me thinking Florida had a chance to give Alabama a scare.

But with 10:29 left in the fourth quarter, Richardson ran up the middle, broke a couple of tackles, and sprinted down the sideline for another huge play. It looked like he might get caught but he was able to evade his tacklers for a touchdown that was about to send Gators fans into even more of a frenzy to have AR start over Jones.

Richardson then grabbed the back of his leg and my heart jumped into my throat.

I wrote in my preview that this one would get out of hand early and that the thing to watch for at that point was for Florida to get out of Tampa without any significant injuries. Well, apologies to the other injured Gators (Ventrell Miller and Jean Delance), Richardson being out or limited is just a disaster.

Dan Mullen said after the game that he was sticking with Emory Jones as the starter moving forward. The reality is that depending on the severity of AR’s injury, he might not have a choice.

And while we’re going to talk about the real issue with this team (the defense) coming up, there’s no doubt what the story of this one is. The stellar play, and now questionable health, of Anthony Richardson.

Defense

I’ve never gotten so many messages – even last year – of people just fed up with watching the Gators defense.

That’s a weird sentiment considering that the Gators only gave up 4.2 yards per play to the Bulls and outgained USF 666 to 297. That’s actually really close to what NC State gave up to USF last week (271) and so isn’t altogether terrible. Of course, NC State just lost to Mississippi State, a team that’s expected to be bottom of the pack in the SEC West.

Florida only had one sack in the game (the play before that sack was considered a designed run for Chad Fortin) and that came on the opening drive. The Gators finished the game with only one QB hurry. NC State had 10 hurries last week.

The lack of pressure meant that Florida’s defensive backs were left to cover for extended times. That didn’t work out all that well.

Plenty of people have asked me why Todd Grantham doesn’t play press coverage anymore. I think we saw why in this game, rolled up into three plays in the second half.

If you’re going to play press, you have to win in one-on-one coverage. I’m showing Avery Helm (#24) here, but this was repeatedly a problem for Florida as their DBs were beaten off the line of scrimmage, had to play catch-up, and then USF was able to take advantage. That was particularly true in the second half when Timmy McClain came in and was willing to put the ball up to the outside.

Compare that to the guy typically thought of as Florida’s lock-down cornerback.

On this play, Kaiir Elam is up in press coverage. Note that he jams the wide receiver to disrupt timing. He then gets his hands on the receiver before the ball is in the air. Finally, he’s able to adjust and make the interception after having disrupted the route.

Both players make contact with the receiver. But when they make contact with the receiver matters, and until the other outside corner – whether Helm or Jason Marshall or someone else – starts making contact at the correct time and avoiding contact after the ball is in the air, playing press is going to be problematic.

So what do you do until you get to that point? After all, Kaiir Elam is expected to be a first round draft pick and you can’t expect that level of play from the second outside corner. Well, you try to give that corner help with the safety.

That’s what is supposed to happen on this play. Watch as Jason Marshall opens up his hips at the snap, essentially giving the receiver the inside because he is expecting help. Safety Mordecai McDaniel (#32) is in a single-high look, meaning he is supposed to drop and be the deepest man at all times.

But McDaniel gets caught between the intermediate route and the deep route. The help Marshall expected isn’t there, and while it would be great to see him go up and make a play, this isn’t his fault even though it might seem that way.

The point is that if you don’t get pressure, you can’t trust your corner in one-on-one, and you can’t trust your safeties to cover deep when you give your corners help, you can’t play press coverage. It sounds great to just yell “be more aggressive” at Todd Grantham, but his hands are tied.

Now, you can argue that they are tied because of a lack of development or a lack of recruiting. But they are tied, which is a scary proposition considering who is coming to town next week.

The Quarterback Battle

There shouldn’t be a battle at this point. Anthony Richardson has thrown the ball 11 times, and has 192 yards passing (17.5 yards per attempt). He has 11 rushes, and has 275 rushing yards (25.0 yards per rush). Those are absolutely insane numbers.

Dan Mullen can say all he wants about how Richardson is making incorrect reads, but if that’s true, Richardson is really good at making elite explosive plays out of those wrong reads. But I don’t think that’s really all that true.

On this play, the USF safety (Mekhi LaPointe, #22, green arrow) creeps up to support the run. That tells Richardson immediately that he has one-on-one coverage on both receivers at the top, and that he has Jacob Copeland (#1) in one-on-one against the other USF safety. That is a mismatch.

Had LaPointe dropped back into coverage, Richardson wouldn’t have wanted to throw the ball there. But with him coming up on the play action, it leaves a huge void in the middle of the field. Yes, this is an easy throw for Richardson, especially with as badly as Copeland beat the DB, but part of why I love looking at accuracy numbers is it implies you’re throwing it to the right receiver as dictated by the coverage.

Richardson did that here.

You can see on this still what Richardson was looking at before the snap. You can see that the safeties are slightly off parallel, which indicates that one will come up while the other drops back with deep middle responsibilities. That means Richardson knows he’s got one-on-one coverage on Copeland again, but that it’s a long developing route.

Richardson heads to his right but feels the pressure and knows he needs to give Copeland some more time so he heads back to his left and then delivers a strike to Copeland for a 36-yard gain. The throw is what is going to get a ton of attention from people. There are only a few people on the planet who can make it.

But what should make us even more excited is that the throw came after the correct read.

To contrast that, Emory Jones wasn’t terrible. My Yards Above Replacement (YAR) stat had him at 0.86 for the game, which is good but not great. That seems about right except that his two interceptions were really bad, and weren’t even his worst throw of the game.

This was two plays after Richardson’s throw put Florida into scoring position. There are two things to note on this play. Jones clearly wants to get the ball to receiver Trent Whittemore (#14), but he’s staring right at the linebacker (Antonio Grier, #5, green arrow) who is backing up to where Whittemore is supposed to go. The reason Jones waits…and waits…and waits before making the throw is because that linebacker is in the way.

But had Jones recognized the linebacker was in his way, he would have also recognized that Copeland (#1, blue circle) is open right at the goal line. Instead, waiting for Whittemore to clear Grier allowed defensive back Jaydon Curry (#15) to sink back and almost get the interception.

I actually do think Jones was way better in this game. It doesn’t seem like it because his lows were really low, but his highs were really high as well.

This is a gorgeous read and throw to Henderson. Jones knows that he has three DBs at the bottom of the screen for three receivers, which likely means the deep safety (purple arrows) is going to shade over towards the bottom of the screen to help. He also knows he has a running back coming out of the backfield, which means the outside linebacker on the top (green arrow) is going to have to pick him up.

That means one-on-one coverage against Henderson, who is streaking down the sideline. Jones delivers a strike. The only criticism that I have on this play is I think the ball comes out just a tick late. It didn’t matter here, but it could in a situation where there is a deep safety coming over.

Takeaway

If Anthony Richardson wasn’t on this roster, I’d look at this game against USF as significant progress for Emory Jones from last week’s debut against FAU. He looked way more decisive in the run game. He seemed to mostly make the right reads. But he was incredibly slow getting rid of the ball, which closed his windows and made his throws more difficult.

That’s perhaps the word I’d use to best describe his performance against USF: difficult.

And that’s the exact opposite of the word I’d use to best describe Anthony Richardson’s performances the past two weeks. He just makes everything look so easy.

And he’s also perhaps the most efficient QB that I’ve ever seen in such limited opportunities. He has accounted for 9 explosive plays on offense in the last two weeks, while only throwing and running the ball 11 times each.

Just those 9 explosives have accounted for 409 yards, or 34 percent of all of Florida’s yardage in its first two games this season. I thought his YAR last week was unbelievable at 7.95 (remember, Michael Vick was at 4.02 in 1999). This week it was 33.21.

Emory Jones sits at -0.20. That’s just slightly below average, and his game today was a marked improvement (0.83) versus last week (-1.18). I have no doubt that he will continue to improve. I also have no doubt that he will be an effective SEC quarterback.

But we now have two games worth of evidence that Anthony Richardson has the potential to be the best quarterback in the country.

If Dan Mullen recruited like Kirby Smart (Jake Fromm over Justin Fields) or Nick Saban (Jalen Hurts over Tua Tagovailoa, at least until the last game against Georgia), he could afford to let his older QB play while his younger QB got some seasoning and grow into the starting role. But he doesn’t have that kind of recruiting. He doesn’t have that kind of defense.

And as good as Tagovailoa and Fields were, I’m not sure either one of them had the potential that resides within Anthony Richardson.