Keon Zipperer suffered a serious knee injury last week in practice. Based on comments he has put on social media it appears that he’ll be out for the season.
On its face, this doesn’t seem like a huge deal for Florida. Zipperer is obviously at a position that Billy Napier has historically emphasized, but he’s also a player who has averaged 12 catches over the past three seasons. Normally, losing someone like that is horrible individually for the player, but easy enough for the team to move on.
But there are a few things about Zipperer, the Florida roster, Billy Napier’s offense and the direction of college football that I think suggest the Gators may miss him more than a tight end with his profile would otherwise indicate.
Zipperer
Zipperer was a huge get for Dan Mullen back in 2019. He was the 104th overall player in the class, but the number two tight end in that class. 247Sports had him pegged as a 4-7th round draft pick coming out of high school, so an impact player, but probably not an NFL star.
He played in one game in 2019, but then jumped up to seven games in 2020, with one of the biggest catches of the year as part of his portfolio.
Kyle Pitts was the star in 2020. But Zipperer won this one-on-one battle with the Gators down 14-0 against its most-hated rival in the Gators’ last win in the series.
That seems a long time ago, but those flashes of ability have shown up repeatedly. I probably don’t need to remind you of the play he made against Tennessee – and in many ways his abilities are overshadowed by Anthony Richardson on the play – but Zipperer finished off that run in a way that most Florida receivers have been unable to do.
The take-home is pretty clear. Zipperer is the most physically gifted player at the tight end position on the Gators roster. He certainly had the best high school profile, and he’s shown explosiveness on the field. What we were waiting for was for him to put that together consistently.
The Florida Roster
If Florida had a ton of experience at tight end, it might not be a big deal that Zipperer went down. But that’s just not the case.
Jonathan Odom came in as the 769th player overall in the 2020 class, and emerged late last season. But he has seven catches in his entire career thus far at Florida and suffered a serious knee injury in the bowl game against Oregon State.
Beyond that, it’s all redshirt freshmen.
Arlis Boardingham has the best profile, as he was the 488th overall recruit in the 2022 class and had offers from Oregon, Texas, Arizona and Arizona State. Boardingham actually seemed poised to get playing time last year before suffering an upper body injury and averaged 16.1 yards per catch in high school, setting himself apart as the most explosive of the prospective redshirt freshmen.
Hayden Hansen was added to the 2022 class late, and is a big boy at 6’5” and 250 pounds. But he was the 1,869th nationally ranked player in that class and had 38 receptions for 369 yards (9.7 yards per catch) as a senior in high school. Not exactly the explosive receiving threat the Gators are looking for.
Andrew Savaiinaea was the 678th ranked player in the 2022 class, but of course that comes with the caveat that he was a defensive line prospect at the time. He actually had 25 receptions for 328 yards (13.1 yards per catch) as a senior in high school and so seems more explosive than Hansen.
One or more of these players is going to get major playing time. But I wouldn’t have laughed at you had you told me Zipperer was poised for a 40-catch season in 2023 with the change at QB and the pure number of snaps he was going to get. I think it’s highly doubtful Zanders, Boardingham, Hansen or Savaiinaea is able to achieve that in 2023.
Billy Napier’s offense
It’s no secret that Billy Napier likes his tight ends and would like to run “12” personnel (one running back, two tight ends, 2 wide receivers) as opposed to “11” personnel (one RB, one TE, 3 WRs).
But that’s what makes it surprising when you look at his teams from Louisiana and last year at Florida that his best tight ends have averaged 15 catches for 164 yards over five seasons, with a high of 22 catches and 287 yards from Neal Johnson in 2021.
That could be for two reasons.
The first is that being in two tight end sets isn’t about the passing game, but the running game. Over those five seasons, Napier has run the ball 58 percent of the time, with every season coming in at 58 percent except for his first at Louisiana (61 percent) and his first at Florida (56 percent). It’s pretty clear that the dude wants to run the ball and is going to sit at around 58-59 percent running plays regardless of his personnel.
Of course, the other reason could be that he hasn’t had a tight end as gifted as Zipperer.
Matthew Barnes (2-star, 2186 nationally) led the 2018 Ragin’ Cajuns in receiving at tight end. Neal Johnson (3-star, 1964 nationally) led Louisiana tight ends in catches in 2019, 2020 and 2021 with 11, 13 and 22, respectively.
The reality is that we probably know what Napier is going to do with his tight ends in 2023 without Zipperer (not much through the air). That’s because we’ve seen what he’s done with them in his time as a head coach thus far.
Direction of College Football
And now we arrive at what I think is the biggest reason that losing Zipperer is a big deal: what’s happening across the landscape of college football.
Georgia finally got over the hump in 2021 and 2022 because former offensive coordinator Todd Monken relied heavily on 12 personnel. It certainly helps that Monken had Brock Bowers and Darnell Washington at the position, but we’ve seen this concept thrive in the NFL recently and it is trickling down to the college ranks.
The idea is simple: if you have two tight ends on the field who can win one-on-one matchups and can block adequately, you can set up the defense to always lose.
The reason I say this is that 12 personnel is fundamentally a running formation (hence, Napier’s nearly 60 percent running clip as a head coach). If the defense decides to take away the passing game by playing a nickel defense (4 linemen, 2 linebackers and 5 defensive backs), you can motion your tight ends to the ends of the line and have an immediate numbers advantage in the box.
But no matter what the defense does to counter that, it loses. It could decide to counter by bringing up a safety into the box, but that ensures that you have a wide receiver in one-on-one coverage for either a come back or a deep shot. If the defense decides to counter by beefing up to a base defense (4 linemen, 3 linebackers, 4 defensive backs), then the tight ends can go win the matchup in the passing game against that extra linebacker.
That’s exactly what the Bulldogs did to LSU in last year’s SEC Championship Game.
LSU was getting run over by the two tight end sets up to this point, and so to both get Harold Perkins in the game and to try to stop the run, they decided to stay in the 4-3-4 base defense. That turned out to be an issue as Darnell Washington wound up one-on-one on the middle linebacker. This is about the easiest touchdown throw that Stetson Bennett is going to have.
If it were just Georgia executing this way, I wouldn’t use this as an example of what Florida is going to try to do, but it is the direction all of football seems to be going. Plus, it is a central tenant of Napier’s offense.
Back in 2005 when Urban Meyer came to Gainesville, the prevailing wisdom was that you needed to get players with track speed out into space. That’s how you wound up with Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps in the backfield. But the counter to that was recruiting smaller, faster linebackers and going to the nickel defense as a base concept.
As always, football schematics are cyclical, and so having 12 personnel is a counter to those smaller linebackers and/or bringing in the extra defensive back. Unless teams have multiple 3-down linebackers (those who can matchup against a tight end and excel against the run), they’re in a no-win situation.
Takeaway
My first reaction to Keon Zipperer’s injury is just to feel bad for the guy. He committed to Florida with much fanfare in 2019 and has struggled to stay healthy and on the field ever since.
But in the larger context, losing a player of his experience level and skill level is a major setback for this Gators team for a bunch of reasons.
I went over the schematic reasons above, but the additional reason is that Graham Mertz is likely to be the starting QB. Mertz has his warts (like most QBs do), but one thing that every QB who doesn’t have dazzling physical abilities relies on is the tight end as a security blanket, particularly on third down.
Zipperer was a guy who could potentially take a 7-yard third down conversion and convert it into a 30-yard explosive. Whether Dante Zanders or one of the redshirt freshmen can do that (or someone from the transfer portal) remains an open question that is going to need to get answered.
And given that in many ways, Billy Napier is trying to replicate what Georgia and Monken have been doing on offense the past couple of years, taking a player of Zipperer’s abilities out of the lineup limits his ability to put the defense in a lose-lose situation no matter what.
I suppose the silver lining is that this injury occurred early in the spring, so that the younger players are going to get a ton of reps heading into and through the fall. It also gives Napier the ability to mine the transfer portal for additional help.
But he’s going to need it. Last year, Florida ranked 29th in yards per play but 61st in points per game. This is the second straight year the Gators have had that sort of split. It suggests an ability to move the ball between the 20’s, but difficulty in the red zone. The tight end is a huge part of turning that around.
The last time Florida’s points per game ranking exceeded its yards per play ranking was in 2020 with some guy named Kyle Pitts at tight end.