Florida beats Texas A&M

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The Gators went to College Station and came away with a 17-point win over Texas A&M.

That doesn’t tell the whole story of the game, but it says a lot about this team. Coming in as three point underdogs, losers of two straight while giving up an average of 43.5 points per game in those contests, there was every reason to believe that Florida was going to make Texas A&M look like an offensive juggernaut.

That was exactly what happened in the first half, as the Aggies – behind backup QB Haynes King – put up 24 points and 307 yards on 9.3 yards per play. A&M looked absolutely unstoppable and even though the Gators offense put up 264 yards of its own, Florida trailed 24-20 heading into the half with the Aggies getting the ball to open the third quarter.

But something happened at halftime. The Gators came out and played inspired ball, holding King to a QB rating of 65.3 (after allowing a rating of 172.4 in the first half). The resulting second-half shutout was by far the most complete this defense has looked and by the time the Gators got what felt like the inevitable King turnovers, they were already ahead 34-24.

This wasn’t a perfect performance. Far from it. But if what we spend all week talking about is wanting to see progress, we definitely saw that.

Texas A&M isn’t a very good team right now. But coming into the game, neither was Florida. The Gators walk out of College Station with a 5-4 record and three more chances to secure a bowl bid. I can’t say I thought that was a sure thing with the way the first half went, but it is where the team now sits.

Billy Napier talked about how he hoped that the way his team fought coming out of halftime of the Georgia game was a turning point for the season. He could probably say the same about the second half this week too.

Defensive Adjustments

Patrick Toney has been much maligned this season. It felt like I might have to join the chorus of boos after the first half where it just felt like Florida didn’t have any answers.

Haynes King was starting because true freshman Conner Weigman had the flu. It certainly wasn’t because of his performances thus far in 2022 as King came into the game with a QB rating of 118.2, a completion percentage of 57 percent and averaging just 6.6 yards per throw. A&M as a team was only converting 34 percent of its third downs.

So of course King lit up the Gators, going 14-19 for 184 yards and a TD (QB rating of 172.4) and helping A&M convert 60 percent of its third downs (3-5). That completely flipped in the second half, with King going 9-26 for 95 yards (QB rating of 65.3) and A&M finishing 4-13 on third down (1-8 in second half).

To understand how the Gators flipped the switch, I think it’s worth taking a little bit of time to explain coverage concepts in very simple terms. There are lots of different coverages that a defense can play, but they essentially boil down to two categories: Middle of the Field Closed (MOFC) and Middle of the Field Open (MOFO).

In Middle of the Field Closed (MOFC) coverages, you typically have one deep safety, who covers – or “closes” the middle of the field. This typically results in two things: first, the defense has an extra defender in the box because the second safety can come up in run support. Second, opposing offenses attack the defense outside because that’s where the space is.

But that’s not what Texas A&M did.

This was an early third down where Florida decides to play MOFC coverage. You know this because the safeties are not parallel to each other and because Trey Dean (#0) drifts back towards the center of the field at the snap. The Gator defenders in coverage at the top of the screen are playing outside leverage (i.e. they are trying to force their receivers back towards the middle of the field where they have help).

But there’s only one safety back there. A&M runs double posts and Dean has to pick one to help on. This is an easy read for King and, perhaps more importantly, is a relatively easy throw down the middle.

So what about the other coverage I mentioned?

In Middle of the Field Open (MOFO) coverages, you typically have two deep safeties. Those safeties are responsible for deep coverage on the outside. Typically, this defense is good at preventing big plays (because you have two deep safeties), but as the name suggests, the middle of the field is left vulnerable.

That didn’t work for Florida in the first half either.

You can tell Florida is in MOFO coverage because of its safety alignment at the snap. Shemar James (#6) is squared up over the tight end Max Wright (#42) and tries to engage but completely whiffs. Wright is able to run right down the middle of the field into the weakness of the defense and King makes the easy throw right down the middle of the field.

You might be asking yourself at this point why I’m showing you this since neither type of coverage I’ve described worked for the Gators. Well, what you’ll notice is that King’s successful throws were in the middle of the field. Toney noticed this as well and decided to make King beat the Gators throwing to the outside in the second half. How did he do this?

This is A&M’s first third down of the second half. Florida is showing MOFO coverage, which means the middle of the field is going to be the Gators weakness. But look Jadarrius Perkins (#27). Right before the snap, he is positioned as if he’s playing outside leverage and going to allow the wide receiver to get to the middle of the field. But at the snap, he immediately shifts inside knowing that he has safety help deep and to the outside.

King still tries to throw the ball down the middle, but Perkins’ technique on this play puts him in perfect position to defend the throw.

This wasn’t an isolated incident.

Florida is again in MOFO coverage. Both Amari Burney (#2) and Tre’Vez Johnson (#16) have inside leverage on their receivers. I suspect this an option route where the receiver reads his defender and breaks accordingly.

That gives A&M one-on-one coverage with Burney on Max Wright. But it also gives Florida what it wants, with King having to throw the ball to the outside. This nearly turned into a conversion, but because of King’s inaccuracy, Florida was able to get off the field again.

There was more to what Florida did in the second half than the adjustments I’ve shown here. But fundamentally on third down, they made things more difficult for A&M’s receivers with proper positioning and getting away from funneling guys to the inside.

The doubt this planted in King’s mind made him hold onto the ball an extra beat, which first caused him to be inaccurate as he got pressured and then eventually allowed Florida’s defensive line to get home for the backbreaking turnovers.

This won’t work against every QB out there, but a QB as inexperienced and inaccurate as King is going to struggle when you make him adjust to what he sees pre-snap. For those upset that the Florida defense hasn’t been able to make adjustments, they made some here and it paid off with a shutout in the second half.

Florida’s Offense

The Gators offense scored 41 points against the Aggies, and that’s probably the least they could have come away with in this one.

Adam Mihalek missed a short field goal, the offensive line got blown up on a fourth-and-goal from the half-yard line, and Florida committed a bunch of false starts in the red zone that put them behind the chains.

When the Florida defense couldn’t stop the Aggies, the good news was that the Aggies couldn’t stop the Gators either. Specifically, they couldn’t stop Anthony Richardson.

The final stats make it look like the Gators had great performances from its running backs with Montrell Johnson, Trevor Etienne and Ricky Pearsall combining for 214 rushing yards on 42 carries (5.1 yards per rush). But those three only had 19 carries for 90 yards in the first half.

Instead, the running game was driven by Anthony Richardson, who had 4 carries for 81 yards and 2 TDs. A common criticism of Richardson has been that he has been too willing to give the ball up when running the read-option. But the criticism I’ve held is that since the Utah game, there haven’t really been any designed runs for Richardson. That changed in this game.

This isn’t a read-option, at least not how Florida usually runs it. You can tell because while the entire offensive line shifts to the left at the snap, tight end Jonathan Odom (#87) pulls across to the right. If Odom gets outside the defensive end, Richardson knows he has not only the edge, but a lead blocker coming around the edge.

The effect of this was further exacerbated by motioning wide receiver Marcus Burke (#88) to the left as well. Once he goes in motion, A&M realigns its secondary to have three defenders to the top of the screen and two to the bottom.

With Odom pulling, that means two blockers for two defenders and an easy TD for Richardson.

This one was a lot more difficult, but AR made it look easy.

Richardson sees the deep safety for A&M and immediately knows the Aggies are in MOFC coverage. Because Florida is on the right hash, he also knows that if he throws the ball to the pylon, there’s no way for the safety (circled) to get over to help. He essentially has one-on-one coverage on the outside.

It is a beautiful throw, dropped in where only Fraziars can make the catch. But even if he throws it short, it likely ends up a pass interference penalty because of the defenders positioning. If he throws it long, it’s out of bounds and the Gators live to see another day.

The last time I saw Richardson try this throw was in the first half against Kentucky. He then proceeded to fall apart and we haven’t seen it since. The fact that it came back when Florida needed it is a very good sign for the Gators.

Takeaway

This wasn’t a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination.

The defense was putrid in the first half, to the point where I was dreading having to defend the staff again at the end of the game because it is their job to put their players in a position to succeed. Luckily, they were able to do that in the second half.

The offense left points on the field and every time it felt like Florida had an opportunity to put its heel on the Aggie’s throat, they’d have a short drive and punt the ball right back to the other side.

Clock management and end-of-half game decisions continue to be questionable. Florida keeps costing itself points by trying to hedge in these situations and Billy Napier is going to have to knock it off.

Against Kentucky, Richardson threw an interception with just a few minutes left in the first half that turned the tide of that game. The Gators got conservative around mid-field against Tennessee with a little over two minutes left and had to give the ball back to the Vols. And Saturday against Texas A&M, not only did the Gators have a delay-of-game penalty coming out of a timeout, but then the running back and QB went the wrong direction once they finally got the play in.

Florida needs to enjoy this win. Prior to the season, this was one a lot of us – including myself – had marked as a loss. Obviously, this isn’t the A&M team that we thought we were going to be getting, but this Gators team isn’t good enough to take wins for granted, particularly 17-point wins on the road over an SEC opponent.

There is definitely work to be done. That is true for the offense, defense and Napier himself to get this team where we all want it to go. All of the good will built by the second-half performance can go away in a flash if the defense comes out and plays like the first half against South Carolina.

But with LSU’s win over Alabama, the Gators losses look a lot more excusable. You never want to lose, but the Tigers, Tennessee and Georgia are all going to be in the top-10 come Sunday.

Of course, Florida fans want to be beating these teams like Brian Kelly just did rather than bragging about losing to the best the conference has to offer. But it’s not like Dan Mullen was beating those teams all that regularly. And for all the dysfunction in Baton Rouge, LSU won a national championship just three years ago.

It’s okay to acknowledge that Florida has further to climb.

That climb really started with this win over Texas A&M. A record of 5-4 and 2-4 in the SEC isn’t good enough for this proud program, but it sure beats the alternative. Florida now has the ability to secure a bowl bid and 8-4 with a win over in-state rival FSU is still on the table.

That won’t happen if this is the only progress we see. But you can only take one step at a time. Florida took one of those steps Saturday. They (and fans) should enjoy it.

Wins in the SEC aren’t guaranteed.