Florida falls short versus FSU

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When Trevor Etienne broke free for a 45 yard TD run, Florida had finally been able to even up with an opponent who had raced ahead. That hasn’t happened much this season when the Gators have fallen behind.

The Gators fell behind Tennessee and could just never quite get over the hump. The same thing happened against LSU, Georgia and even Vanderbilt. When the ‘Noles went up 38-24, it looked like it would be the same old story.

And it did turn out to be the same old story, except that this time Florida’s offense was able to catch the opponent, only to watch them race out in front again through Florida’s porous defense.

Make no mistake. Anthony Richardson was awful in the second half of this one. Billy Napier made a bunch of questionable timeout and clock management calls. The undisciplined penalties and errors continue to be frustrating.

But you aren’t going to win a lot of games when you have to score 40 every time out.

The Gators offense averaged 31.5 points in losses against the Vols, Tigers, Bulldogs and Seminoles. Unfortunately, the defense surrendered an average of 42.5. That number right there is why Billy Napier finished the year 0-4 against Florida’s main rivals.

We’re going to talk a lot about Anthony Richardson, his development, Napier’s play calling, timeout usage and clock management this offseason. All of those things need to improve.

But none of that matters if every time you punt the ball away, the opponent goes right down the field.

Defensive struggles

If I could pick one play to summarize the 2022 Florida Gators defense this season, I don’t think they could have come up with one quite as on the nose as this one against the ‘Noles.

Florida had just called a timeout because they only had 10 men on the field for the fourth down try (ugh!). FSU had been showing a bunched set prior to the timeout but now spread the Gators out. Somehow, Florida thought it would be a good idea to have Gervon Dexter (#9) – a very good interior defensive lineman – be a spy against FSU QB Jordan Travis.

This isn’t Dexter’s fault at all. He’s doing his best to execute what’s asked of him, but what’s being asked just isn’t fair. Dexter is listed at 312 pounds. Travis is an elusive QB who had been running away from Gators defenders much faster and quicker than Dexter all night.

So what you have is a gifted player doing something he’s not good at. You have a defensive end (Antwaun Powell-Ryland, #52) rushing up-field to give Travis a wide open running lane. And you are playing a coverage that bails the linebackers out of the center of the field to ensure Travis gets the first down.

This is coaching. Your job as a coach is to put your players in a position to succeed, and Napier and defensive coordinator Patrick Toney have spent all year doing just the opposite.

I don’t have all kinds of time on my hands to review film, so I only watched a couple of games of the ‘Noles before this one, but studying the film made one thing pretty clear: you had to play zone against FSU and risk getting beat in the run game or Travis would eat you alive.

So what did Toney, Napier and Co. do? Not zone.

You can see that here, where Trey Dean (#0) creeps up into the box before the ball is snapped. That gives Florida eight men in the box and three in coverage against two receivers. It’s man-to-man coverage with deep safety help.

I’m not sure what Florida was doing up-front here. Lloyd Summerall (#99) immediately crashes. But Amari Burney (#2) is completely faked out and runs himself out of the play. Dean gets run over by FSU’s left tackle and Travis has a free run.

Here it is again.

Granted, Florida should have gotten home here. They bring Jaydon Hill (#23) on the blitz and Antwaun Powell-Ryland (#52) wins his matchup up-front. Any of Hill, Powell-Ryland or Princely Umanmielen should have brought Travis down. But once they missed, he had nothing but open space to run to and got the first down.

And Toney didn’t back down from this strategy. He actually doubled-down.

On this third-and-11, Toney dials up a blitz with both Miguel Mitchell (#11) and Ventrell Miller (#51). Yet again, the blitzers flush Travis but aren’t able to contain him or bring him down. And once again, the Florida secondary is in man coverage and so unable to recover and stop Travis in time.

You could say that I’m cherry picking plays here, and you would be correct. The problem is that in the case of the last two plays I’ve shown, Florida was in cover-1 and blitzing on second down the play before. In both cases, the Gators just barely escaped disaster as they were able to tip a throw on an RPO that was going to be a TD and were able to just barely push Travis out of bounds. They weren’t so lucky on third down.

So what do I make of all of this? The Gators defense came into this game allowing 6.0 yards per play against FBS opponents and surrendered 6.7 to Florida State. That ensures that the defense will likely finish around 110th in that statistic for the season. There have been a lot of bad Florida defenses in the past few years, but this one is the worst of them all.

That doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up on Patrick Toney, but you can’t have a season like this and get a very long rope. Defenses shouldn’t be this bad at Florida.

Jekyl and Hyde offense

I’m not sure what we just watched on offense, to be honest.

The unit was both inept and unstoppable all within a few drives of one another. Ricky Pearsall was running wide open and getting dimes dropped right in his lap two plays before Anthony Richardson missed guys who were wide open 10 feet away.

None of those misses was bigger than this one. This was Richardson’s eighth throw of the game. He was riding high after hitting Pearsall for a 43-yard touchdown pass on the previous drive. Then Montrell Johnson had ripped off runs of 16, 3 and 13 yards to get Florida into FSU territory.

Billy Napier decided to call a deep shot. Richardson decides it’s not there and looks to run but sees Montrell Johnson (#2) at the last second. AR isn’t in any trouble. There isn’t anybody near him. But he rushes because he just doesn’t have the pocket presence to understand where the defenders are.

Had he taken the time to throw the ball overhand to Johnson, this is a huge play. Instead, Florida ends up settling for a field goal later in the drive.

And that’s really the story between the first and second half to me. You can illustrate it in these two plays.

On this third-and-5, Florida State decides to only rush four men. They’re unable to make Richardson uncomfortable and he completes an easy throw to Ricky Pearsall.

On this third-and-8 to open the second half, Florida State brings two blitzers, but also drops a defensive lineman into coverage. The blitzer gets into the backfield so quickly that Richardson can’t set his feet. That causes an errant throw to Dante Zanders (#18) who wasn’t going to get the first down anyway.

And on the last Florida offensive play of the game, FSU decided to push all of its chips in the middle.

FSU has seven defenders at the line of scrimmage with the remaining four just a few steps in front of the first down marker. Florida isn’t going to dump the ball short over the middle so there’s no reason for any of the threatening rushers to drop back into coverage. This is a cover zero blitz, meaning Richardson has man-to-man across the board.

Yes, his facemask gets grabbed. And yes, he is able to extend the play and get a throw off. But Florida State was betting on Richardson getting rattled and being inaccurate the minute they made him uncomfortable. That’s what they did the entire second half and it’s why he struggled so much.

Takeaway

I had a few people whose football knowledge I really trust reach out after the game and suggest that Florida isn’t that far away.

You can certainly take it that way. After all, this is probably the best team that Mike Norvell is going to have in Tallahassee and is likely the worst team Billy Napier will ever have at Florida. The fact that it came down to a fourth-and-12 from the 26-yard line is pretty remarkable.

The team fought so hard to come back after falling behind. And it fought so hard in the first half to have a lead. But it also was often fighting itself repeatedly and costing itself points. All of that was true in this loss to FSU, but this season as a whole as well.

Half of the Gators games this season were of the one-score variety. In those 6 games, the Gators went 3-3, which is what you would expect. With improved talent, discipline and consistency, the program certainly could improve significantly from year one to year two, not because they will do better in one-score games, but because they will have less of them.

But it all starts with the defense. Dan Mullen was roasted for his loyalty to Todd Grantham, and rightly so considering Grantham’s defenses surrendered 30.8 points per game in 2020 and 26.8 in 2021. But Patrick Toney’s unit has now surrendered 28.8 and the only reason it is that low is because of all of the turnovers.

Yes, I think Billy Napier needs to get better at clock management. Yes, I think Florida needs to rely on the running game a lot more. And yes, I think there is some validity to people who question whether Napier should be calling plays and managing the game at the same time, particularly as he keeps having clock management issues.

But none of that matters if against Tennessee, LSU, Georgia and FSU, his defense gives up more than 40 points per game. That needs to be fixed by next season.

And even with a bowl game to go, that season starts now.