Gators take on the Seminoles
After Florida’s 31-24 loss to Vanderbilt as a 14.5-point favorite, certainly the tone around the program has changed as the Gators travel to take on the Seminoles.
Gone is the hope associated with turning a 4-4 start into an 8-4 season. Gone is the confidence that the ACC schedule that Florida State has used to get to 8-3 is significantly easier than the road Florida has had to travel. And gone is a lot of the goodwill built by Billy Napier and his staff after large wins over Texas A&M and South Carolina.
Florida now enters Friday’s game against the Seminoles as a 9.5-point underdog. Given the statistics I’m going to lay out there in the following sections, it will probably seem like the Gators are completely overmatched. In many ways, that’s true.
But here’s what else is true. While Florida got beat as a 14.5 point favorite, that wasn’t even close to the biggest upset of the day on Saturday. South Carolina – the team that Florida just demolished a week earlier – eviscerated Tennessee 63-38 as a 22.5 point favorite.
Not only did that win kill Tennessee’s hopes at a playoff (and bring our beloved Steve Spurrier to the forefront with Citrus Bowl references), but it proved that in this up-and-down season in the SEC, anything is possible.
Including a Gators win over the Seminoles.
Statistical Profiles
If you just look at the stats in this one, Florida State deserves to be favored, and significantly.
The ‘Noles rank 10th in yards per play gained against FBS opponents and 7th in yards per play allowed. Florida ranks 23rd and 107th in those two categories. It’s just as ugly if we look at a more traditional metric like points per game, where Florida State has scored 34.2 points and allowed 19.1 vs. 29.1 and 28.3 for Florida.
If we look at advanced metrics like Predicted Point Added (PPA), Florida State is at 0.353 on offense and 0.125 on defense (higher is better on offense, lower is better on defense) while Florida is at 0.293 and 0.210. Florida State is also more consistent, with a 49 percent success rate on offense (42% for Florida) and a 45 percent success rate on defense (41% for Florida).
Florida State is a more explosive offense. The Seminoles have 80 plays of 20-plus yards compared to 66 for Florida. And while the Gators have made a ton of big plays this year (11 of 50-plus yards), the Seminoles have 9 50-plus yard plays as well.
On the defensive side of the ball, FSU has only allowed 28 plays of 20-plus yards compared to 52 for Florida. And the Gators have allowed seven 50-plus plays while FSU has only allowed two.
The only place where Florida has a distinct advantage is that FSU has allowed 65 tackles for loss compared to 45 for Florida. So while the Seminoles offense is more explosive, it also can be driven backwards as well.
That means that getting off of the field is going to be critical for the Gators. But that’s a problem too because Florida has allowed a 48 percent third down conversion rate while Florida State has converted 51 percent of its tries. That doesn’t go both ways though as FSU has allowed 32 percent of third downs to be converted while Florida has converted 40 percent.
The story is pretty clear when you look at the statistical profiles of these two teams. Florida State is the better overall team and should be favored.
Quarterbacks
A lot of why these two teams are different on the offensive side of the ball is because of consistency at the QB position.
Florida State’s Jordan Travis has a QB rating against FBS opponents this season of 159.7 compared to 124.8 for Anthony Richardson. He’s thrown for 21 TDs with only 4 INTs compared to 12 TDs and 7 INTs for Richardson.
Interestingly, Travis’ home/road splits are virtually identical, with a home QB rating of 157.1 and a road/neutral site QB rating of 163.1. You can’t say the same for Richardson.
AR has a QB rating of 103.8 at home, with stinkers against Kentucky, USF and Missouri all coming at home. Conversely, his road QB rating is 144.2. That leads to a Yards Above Replacement (YAR) – my proprietary stat that factors in a QBs running and passing ability – of 1.03 on the road. That compares favorably to Travis’ YAR of 0.87 (0.92 at home).
The home/road splits for Richardson are even more impressive when you factor in that two of the four games away from the Swamp were against Tennessee and Georgia. He’s played well on the road against good competition, which should give us hope he can do it again against Florida State.
The thing working against Richardson is his inconsistency. I showed this chart last week, but now we have another data point to look at.
This suggests that Richardson is due for a down performance against the ‘Noles. If that happens, Florida State is going to win big.
Travis has been a lot more consistent with fewer lows. He only has three games with a YAR below zero (compared to five for Richardson) and his worst game was a -1.02 YAR performance against Clemson. Richardson’s worst game was the -3.62 debacle against Kentucky.
Travis also has had a very high ceiling as well, with a YAR of 4.75 against Boston College and 5.03 against Miami. Normally in this space I suggest that Richardson’s ceiling is higher than Florida’s opponent and we just need to get the “good AR” to have an advantage at the position.
I’m not sure that’s the case in this one.
Film
So what can Florida do to stop Florida State? I think there are some clues when we look at the way Wake Forest played the ‘Noles (a 31-21 Wake win) compared to how Miami did (a 45-3 FSU win).
If you look at the FSU/Wake film, what you see is that Wake played a nickel and typically had one defensive back up in man coverage and then four of them way off of the line of scrimmage. The result is that FSU had an advantage in the running game.
However, Wake brought up a safety at the snap (black arrow) with responsibility for Travis. This meant the defensive end could crash and cause issues for the Seminoles in the running game, but because the safety was so far back, it also gave him time to recover if Travis decided to pull the ball and throw a pass.
There are some disadvantages to this strategy. If FSU had been able to run the ball with even numbers, Wake would have had to bring up a defender into the box. And that then opens up easy throws for Travis since the other defenders are playing so far off.
What we see here is that one safety walks up (giving Wake 7 men in the box). As Travis holds the mesh with his running back, he reads the other safety, who fills the outside just like on the earlier play.
The issue is that Wake has one less player deep and there’s no longer a safety in the middle of the field. This is about as easy a TD throw as you’re going to get, as Wake essentially played cover-zero but had its defenders nine yards off at the snap.
The lesson is pretty simple: if you’re going to play off coverage, you need to be able to stop the run with six in the box.
But it’s not quite as simple as that. Miami played with six in the box and then had the corners up on the line of scrimmage and still got burned.
The presnap look is that there will be two deep safeties at the snap. But note that Miami starts rotating when FSU motions its slot receiver into the backfield. The linebacker rotates back into coverage, the safety to that side rotates to the middle while the other safety rotates up to take the receiver in motion.
This is all fine except FSU occupies the deep safety with a crosser right in front of his face. He jumps that route, leaving the deep man out wide in one-on-one coverage because the linebacker isn’t fast enough to make any difference here.
Single-high looks, especially if the defense is moving at the snap, are going to get torched by Florida State. They have the speed on the outside the make you pay and Travis will make the correct read.
So what do you do?
What we see here is that Miami is in the Wake Forest coverage from up above. They have linebackers to take the running back and tight end one-on-one, but love when Travis decides to uncork one deep. That’s right into the teeth of the defense. Had he checked it down, it probably would have been trouble. There isn’t anyone to come make the tackle if the linebacker misses it, but that’s the price you pay for taking away the deep shot.
What do I do if I’m Florida? I’m not really sure. With Ventrell Miller out in the first half because of last week’s targeting penalty, it’s hard to advise Patrick Toney to dare Travis to dump the ball off to the tight end or running back. But I think that’s what he needs to do. Otherwise, you’re going to force your corners into difficult one-on-one situations, vulnerable to either deep shots if they’re up tight, or easy slants if they play off.
Takeaway
On this week’s Stand Up & Holler, I asserted that I’d rather be where the Gators are as a program than where the ‘Noles are, even after the loss to Vanderbilt. The reason why is pretty simple: recruiting.
FSU head coach Mike Norvell is about to complete his fourth recruiting class in Tallahassee. This one will likely have the highest average player ranking he’s had in his time there and right now that value sits at 90.25. His first three classes had values of 87.96, 88.53 and 89.54. In his time at Florida, Dan Mullen’s average recruiting ranking was 90.59.
So if you were one of those folks who was unimpressed by Mullen’s recruiting, Florida State has been worse under Norvell. That may work in the ACC (thought I doubt it since it puts the ‘Noles at 4th in the conference most years), but it isn’t going to work long-term against Florida.
Billy Napier still has work to do to catch Alabama, Georgia and LSU on the trail, but Florida’s average player rating for the 2023 class is at 92.09 after coming in at 88.88 last year. Basically, Napier has been able to make the recruiting leap that Norvell has not.
That means that this game is absolutely critical for Norvell and the Seminoles.
I’m not a big believer that on-field performance impacts recruiting all that much. If anything, it probably impacts things right on the edges. But Norvell is going to need every edge he can get if he wants to compete with Florida on a regular basis and one big edge would be able to brag that he beat both Miami and Florida in the 2022 campaign.
Norvell has the better team this season. Travis is a better QB than Richardson. Florida’s defense is a mess. Napier has been average-to-bad as an in-game manager.
But this is a rivalry game. And with it meaning so much to Norvell, I’m curious whether he’s going to really go for it in key situations, or whether he’s going to tighten up and “take the points” when he has an opportunity to really put the game out of reach by being aggressive.
If Florida was completely healthy, I might think that would be enough. But the Gators are missing almost their entire receiving corps. Florida State is going to dare them to throw the ball just like Vanderbilt did last week, and we saw how that limits what the offense can do.
I do think Florida keeps this closer than the 9.5-point spread. FSU is the better team, but rivalry games have a way of being closer than you think, and Florida is going to want to redeem itself after the embarrassing loss to Vanderbilt last week.
My heart wants to pick the Gators, but every statistical measure says this should be a blowout for the ‘Noles. I’ll go halfway, with the Gators covering but coming up short.
Florida State (-9.5) wins, 34-27.
Picks this year: 7-3, 4-6 ATS