Vanderbilt shocks Florida

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To say that it was shocking to see Florida lose to Vanderbilt is an understatement. By every available statistic, Vanderbilt has been an inferior team this season.

But when you just hand points over to the opposition in the SEC, you can lose to anyone, even Vanderbilt. But that’s a problem for Billy Napier, because Florida doesn’t lose to Vanderbilt.

The last time it happened (2013), Florida QB Tyler Murphy threw the ball 46 times. Perhaps then, it shouldn’t be a surprise that in Vandy’s next win in the series, Anthony Richardson would throw the ball 43 times.

All of which brings things back to Napier. As a first year head coach, he needs to get some grace as the program goes through growing pains. But all of the goodwill built over the past two weeks with wins over Texas A&M and South Carolina is gone.

You can say a lot of things about this game, but the one that sticks with me is this. When you look at the schedule during the preseason, fans and analysts put the Vanderbilt game in the win category. That’s understandable given the history and given the stats thus far.

But what it looked like on Saturday was that the Florida staff put this one in the win category too. So you can blame the players for a lot of mistakes – and we’ll get to that – but this one falls on Napier.

Because Florida shouldn’t lose to Vanderbilt.

Mistakes, mistakes and more mistakes

There were a ton of mistakes that Florida made on Saturday, but there are three in particular that I want to highlight given the way the game turned out.

The first play is the Gators defense. The offense had just come out and driven down the field to start the second half, drawing the score to 14-12. Florida force a third-and-14 and had the opportunity to get the ball back to its offense. Instead, this happened.

Florida defensive coordinator Patrick Toney decided to bring pressure, rushing six defenders. It worked perfectly, as both Princely Umanmielen (#33) and Antwaun Powell-Ryland (#52) win their one-on-one battles and force Vandy QB Mike Wright to throw the ball away.

The blitz left Florida linebacker Amari Burney (#2) in one-on-one coverage against the Vanderbilt tight end. Burney immediately ties him up as he goes out and then doesn’t let go. You can see when Wright throws the ball away, Burney and the tight end are only 2-3 yards past the line of scrimmage. Even if Burney had been beat, it wouldn’t have been a first down.

This is just focus. The whole point of bringing six rushers is to make the QB get rid of the ball quickly. You don’t care if he makes the completion. You just care that the play stays in front of you. Had Burney pulled down a receiver going deep, that’s one thing. But to hold a tight end on a third-and-14 when you know the QB is going to get heat is just bad.

The second play I’ll highlight so far as mistakes is on the offensive side of the ball. Florida was behind 7-3 and was starting to get a little bit of a push up-front. It was time to announce they were going to push Vanderbilt around.

That happened on this play except that the Gators didn’t line up properly. Based on the formation, I suspect Thai Chiaokhiao-Bowman is supposed to be up on the line of scrimmage. I realize he hasn’t gotten a lot of snaps this season, but this is first day install-type stuff. You have to have seven guys on the line and he isn’t even close.

This 27-yard run for Montrell Johnson took the ball to the 4-yard line. The illegal formation penalty had nothing to do with why the play was successful. Most likely, Florida would have converted this into a touchdown. Instead, they settled for a field goal.

The third play I’ll highlight has to do with special teams. I know you think I’m going to show the muffed punt, but that actually isn’t the one I’d point to in terms of preparation.

Point after attempts are the easiest points in football. Everything was perfect here for Mihalek. The snap was perfect, and the hold was perfect too. He just yanked it waaaaaay left. He’s now 12-18 on field goals, which isn’t really that good. But Billy Napier needs to be able to trust his kicker to make sound decisions and right now, I can’t say that he should have much faith in Mihalek.

These are just the three that I picked from. The list of mistakes is really long and sickening.

• Poor snap on opening drive, loss of 18
• Montrell Johnson drops easy TD catch on third-and-8 (-4 points)
• Umanmielen unnecessary roughness penalty after stop on third-and-8 (-7 points)
• Facemask on Powell-Ryland after sack on third-and-12 (same drive as previous)
• 27 yard run for Johnson called back on illegal formation (-4 points)
• Dropped pick-6 by Kamari Wilson (-7 points)
• Muffed punt recovered for TD (-7 points)
• 15-yard run for Johnson with 3:22 left, 15 yard unnecessary roughness on Eguakun
• Holding on Burney on third-and-14 stop (-7 points)
• Richardson INT, followed by awful tackling on TD to Bresnahan (-4 points)
• Targeting on Ventrell Miller
• Reynolds dropped perfect TD pass with 3:22 left, catches another 9 seconds later
• Missed PAT (-1)
• Shorter catches the ball short of the first down, clock should have run out
• Richardson throws hail mary out of the end zone

Certainly Vanderbilt caused some of these. But a lot of them are self-inflicted wounds. That’s particularly true of the illegal formation and the two unnecessary roughness penalties. The potential Wilson pick-6 is a tough play, but it’s one that could have been made and turned the tide.

All told, Florida had an opportunity to flip the ledger by 41 points in a seven-point loss. Had they made just a few of those plays, they would have escaped Nashville with a win. Instead, it’s going to be a long plane ride home.

Anthony Richardson

If you had gone on Twitter after the game, you would have thought that Anthony Richardson cost Florida this game. I’m completely floored at that reaction.

Richardson made mistakes in this game just like everyone else. His interception should have never been thrown. He should probably see Chiaokhiao-Bowman off the line of scrimmage and get him aligned. But he’s also the only reason Florida was anywhere close in this game.

The man threw for 400 yards with a 9.5 yards per throw average. He averaged 6.3 yards per rush. His QB rating of 158.3 is his highest against anyone save Eastern Washington all year. His Yards Above Replacement (YAR) – my proprietary QB stat that takes running and throwing into account – has him at 1.75 for the game, or good but not quite elite.

Was he feast or famine? Absolutely. But he’s been that way all year long. Had he played this way and had the running game been even average, Florida scored 40 points easily. But he got zero help from the running game and Florida had to rely on his arm.

For the game, Florida’s offense averaged 7.0 yards per play. That’s a little bit misleading because they had six explosive plays and if you subtract those from the ledger, the Gators only averaged 3.9 yards per play. But that has been a consistent theme of this Florida offense all season: explosive but inconsistent otherwise.

You can certainly put some of that on Richardson, but very few of those mistakes I listed above are on him. He played well against the Commodores.

You can’t say that about many of his teammates.

Billy Napier

If you’re going to criticize Napier for something in this game, I think it’s this.

After Umanmielen got an unnecessary roughness penalty for retaliating against a Vanderbilt offensive lineman on a third down stop, he remained in the game for the next play. After Chiaokhiao-Bowman was lined-up improperly on the Montrell Johnson run, he remained in the game for the next play. And after Kingsley Eguakun got a personal foul for a completely unnecessary hit after a 15-yard run by Johnson, Eguakun remained in the game for the next play.

None of those errors rises to the level of a shoe throw, but if you’re not going to hold your guys accountable for dumb mistakes, those dumb mistakes are going to continue to happen.

I hear a lot of noise about Napier’s play calling. Specifically, the criticism seems to be that he isn’t being aggressive enough. I don’t think that’s the case.

Last week against South Carolina, Richardson had a 56 percent usage rate (Montrell Johnson plus Trevor Etienne were at 40%). Against Texas A&M, that number was 46 percent (Johnson plus Etienne were 52%). But against Vanderbilt, Richardson had a 71 percent usage rate, compared to 30 percent for Johnson and Etienne.

Florida (and Napier) forgot who they are.

A prime example of that was after Vanderbilt scored to extend its lead to 21-12. On the first play of the drive, Florida took a deep shot and nearly hit.

This was almost a huge play for Florida. The ball hit Shorter in the hands but the defender was able to swipe it away. But look at Vanderbilt’s pre-snap alignment. They have six defenders in the box to Florida’s six blockers. It has two safeties parallel to each other 11-yard deep, screaming zone coverage. This is the kind of look you want to run against.

Instead, Florida doesn’t even fake the run. This was a pass from the start and Richardson is one of a few players with the arm to make this throw. It could have been a big play, but it isn’t the way Florida has moved the ball all season long.

This is a team that has run the ball on third-and-long multiple times all season but somehow ended up with a 2:1 ratio of passes to runs.

Still, I have a hard time blaming Napier for all of this. I mean, what is he supposed to do about this?

Florida caught Vanderbilt in a blitz. Richardson delivered the ball perfectly. Vanderbilt is in man-to-man, which means nobody picks up Johnson and he has an open run for a TD and at minimum, a first down. Instead, he drops it and the Gators settle for a field goal.

Takeaway

I get that fans want to blame someone for a loss to Vanderbilt. Certainly Napier gets a lot of the blame here because this is his team and his program now. And hearing Dan Mullen snicker about the Gators losing to Vanderbilt on the SEC Network in the evening definitely rubbed salt in the wounds.

But seeing the grin on Mullen’s face was a bit much for me. He’s the real reason that Florida is in this state. Napier may have screwed up some things in this game, but the bulk of the problems occurring on the field are because of the players that he brought in.

Should Napier have had his team better prepared? Absolutely. Should he have stuck with the run early instead of abandoning it for the pass? Yes. Should he have yanked his guys off the field after stupid penalties? I think the answer there is yes as well.

You can’t lose to Vanderbilt and escape culpability. There’s no doubt that it is an embarrassing loss, but in the grand scheme of things, this loss isn’t going to make or break the Napier era.

After a loss like this, I’m sure you’ll hear about the loss that Nick Saban had to Louisiana-Monroe or the loss Kirby Smart had to Vanderbilt in their first years. It is absolutely true that elite coaches struggle in their first year.

But if you’re going to cite those examples, then you also need to talk about Mullen’s embarrassing loss to Missouri in 2018. Or Tennessee’s Butch Jones losing to Vanderbilt in 2013. Or Nebraska’s Scott Frost losing to Troy in 2018.

The point is twofold. First, you can’t just look at poor results in year one and excuse them because someone elite had poor results as well. It has to be part of building something bigger.

Both Saban and Smart brought in the 3rd best recruiting class nationally right after their first season, but perhaps more importantly, they were ranked 2nd in the SEC. Mullen brought in the 9th ranked class (5th in the SEC). Jones brought in the 7th ranked class (4th in the SEC). And Frost brought in the 17th ranked class (4th in the Big Ten).

Right now, Billy Napier has the 8th ranked recruiting class nationally. That puts him at 4th in the SEC. He’s not going to catch Alabama or Georgia, but a big close will put him on-par with LSU. That is way more important to the health of the program than this loss.

But won’t a loss like this impact recruiting in a negative way? Luckily, I’ve looked at how on-field performance correlates with recruiting in the past and it doesn’t look like it does all that much. The story seems to be that whatever level a coach is recruiting at in August is going to carry through to signing day, regardless of performance.

Of course, none of that makes this any better. Florida didn’t lose this game because it has less talented players. They came in with a sub-standard game plan, sub-standard execution and sub-standard effort.

With just an average performance against Vanderbilt, Florida would be preparing to try to go 8-4 against a huge rival with fans feeling like the program is about to turn the corner. Instead, we’re left getting trolled by Florida State for the next week without any real response.

The narrative of the program has completely flipped with this one loss. Boosters are upset. Fans are apoplectic. And confidence in Napier is at an all-time low. I have people asking whether this is just the low point of the rebuild or if it’s the beginning of the end for Napier.

The short answer is that winning cures all ills. Win against the ‘Noles and confidence in the coach and direction of the program will return. But in reality, the result of next week’s game will have very little bearing on the direction of the program just as this loss to Vanderbilt has very little bearing as well. There’s only one real way to make sure the ship is pointed in the right direction long-term.

Recruit.