Toss Up: Can Jordan Travis carry FSU again in 2023?
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series called Toss Up (see the first part about Utah here and the second part about Tennessee here), because in our preseason magazine (order a digital copy), Nick and I picked whether Florida should be expected to win, lose or if it would be a toss up. This series will look at why some of those games are toss-ups (especially when the Gators are being picked to be so bad by many this season) and an acknowledgment that while the Gators have questions, so do a lot of their opponents.
Jordan Travis was great in 2022.
He had a QB rating of 160.1 (well above average) and averaged 5.1 yards per rush, giving him a Yards Above Replacement (YAR) value of 1.72 (note: YAR is my proprietary QB stat that takes a QBs passing and running ability into account). That was on-par with Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker in 2022.
Travis is back for 2023, Florida State is coming off of a 10-3 season and the ‘Noles beat Florida last season. This should be considered a win for Florida State easily going into the season, right?
Well, that is probably true when you think of Jordan Travis vs. Graham Mertz. But what if by the time Thanksgiving comes around the QB matchup is actually Tate Rodemaker or Brock Glenn vs. Graham Mertz?
I say this because Florida State ranked 84th in tackles for loss allowed last season (77). In the ‘Noles game against the Gators, they surrendered 7 TFLs to a team that ranked 70th in the country in getting them. This is a big part of why Travis went 13 for 30 against the Gators defense. He was constantly in third-and-long situations that he was able to win, but that isn’t how you make a living in a football program.
FSU head coach Mike Norvell has tried to address some of those concerns this season. Maurice Smith started 12 games at center and received honorable mention All-ACC. D’Mitri Emmanuel was third-team All-ACC at right guard. And Norvell has brought in Colorado transfer Casey Roddick and UTEP transfer Jeremiah Byers to play left guard and right tackle, respectively. Both of those players have considerable experience at their previous stops.
Perhaps this version of the Seminoles offensive line will be better. But that’s also a lot of turnover up-front for a team that wasn’t very good in that department to begin with last season. There’s a lot of pressure on OL coach Alex Atkins to get this unit to gel and protect the guy who makes things go: Travis.
And that matters a lot when you start looking at how FSU achieved it’s 10-3 record last season.
That team feasted on also-rans (6-0 vs. teams with a losing record). It also went 4-2 in one-score games. That record isn’t out of line really, but the number and profile of the one-score games would concern me if I were a Seminoles fan.
Jim McElwain went 7-1 in one-score games in his first two seasons in Gainesville. Dan Mullen went 6-1 in his first two. Those results helped bolster the records of both coaches early on, but it was the volume of one-score victories that concerned me at the time. The fact that you’re playing so many close games is indicative that if one thing goes wrong, things may fall apart quickly.
Indeed, I wrote about Mullen that his one-score victories were different than McElwain’s because Mac had some against inferior opponents (20-14 vs. FAU, anyone?) while Mullen seemed to only have them against better teams. I thought that might portend a higher floor than McElwain (boy, was I wrong).
Alas, the magic fairy dust that coaches enjoy in one-score games eventually wears out when you’re skirting that sort of razor’s edge. Florida went 2-3 in one-score games in 2017 and 1-4 in one-score games in 2021, both seasons that ended the tenures of its head coach.
Norvel went 3-4 in 2021 in one-score games and 4-2 in 2022. He’s walking that same edge that Florida’s previous two coaches walked while recruiting at a level lower than either of them did (class average of 21st from 2020-2023).
If you were making an argument in favor of Norvell, you’d probably do the same thing I did with Mullen after the 2019 season. In the six one-score games in 2022, the average 247 Composite Ranking for those teams is 22.0. The average FPI for those teams is 22.7. FSU’s composite ranking was 17th and its FPI ranking was 11th. In its other six games (excluding FCS Duquesne), the ‘Noles opponents had an average 247 Composite Ranking of 51.3 and an average FPI of 66.7.
Kudos to Norvell for taking care of business against inferior teams, but it suggests that even with great QB play from Travis, Norvell was fighting in a close game if his opponent was as talented as his team and having even a decent season.
And this brings me back to the QB position.
In those one-score games last year, Travis only completed 59 percent of his throws for a QB rating of 140.2, or just about average. It was his legs that set him apart, as he rushed 53 times for 326 yards (6.2 yards per rush average). In games that weren’t close (one a loss), Travis was much less likely to run (25 rushes) and much less effective (3.2 yards per rush). He was also much more effective in the air (QB rating of 182.7).
What this says to me is that when the competition got better, Travis didn’t have time to throw but was able to make something happen with his legs. The fact that he was able to do that is a big reason why folks are so high on Florida State this season. But the fact that he had to win that way makes me wary of declaring FSU as anything but a toss-up against Florida.
The reason is simple.
Florida’s defense was historically bad in 2022. It was really bad at getting to the QB. Still, the indelible image stuck in my mind from last year’s game in Tallahassee is Florida’s defense missing Travis in the backfield time and time again.
One sprained ankle at some point during the year and Travis isn’t going to be able to do that. A little bit more discipline from the Gators defense and he isn’t going to be able to do that. Or perhaps the Gators will get more shots to bring him down because they’ll be exploiting an FSU offensive line that hasn’t gelled because (as Nick pointed out in a great piece in our preseason magazine) rarely do you end up getting multiple big-time impact players through the transfer portal.
Anthony Richardson played terribly in the second half versus the Seminoles last year. Travis made play after play to keep drives alive and Florida’s defense kept self-destructing at the worst possible time. But still, an FSU team that finished 11th in the AP Poll probably doesn’t win the game if Caleb Douglas brings in a throw inside the 10-yard line (I still don’t know how that wasn’t targeting) or had the facemask penalty been called against Richardson on the final play.
Compared to the Gators, everything went right for the ‘Noles in 2022 and still they were holding on for dear life at the end of a 7-point win. That’s the definition of a toss-up.
And this year, the game is in the Swamp.
Austin Armstrong and the R&R Preseason Magazine
Editor’s Note: Below is a section from an addition that Nick and I have put together for our preseason magazine. If you haven’t ordered yet (click here), you can get the original magazine and the additional content in pdf form. If you already ordered, you should have already received a link to the additional content. Thank you so much for supporting us, and I hope you enjoy a snippet of what we’ve put together.
I hope you like aggression. Because that’s what new Gators defensive coordinator Austin Armstrong is bringing to the table.
That makes sense when we look at his statistics while defensive coordinator at Southern Miss. He inherited a defense that ranked 57th in the country in surrendering 20-plus yard plays in 2020 and then promptly saw that decline to 80th and then 114th in his two years as DC.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Armstrong also improved the defense from 76th in sacks and 67th in tackles for loss to 4th and 3rd from 2020 to 2022. Combine that with a team ranked 7th in interceptions in 2022 and you see the recipe for success that Armstrong is going to bring.
He’s going to be aggressive. Sometimes he’s going to get burned. But if things work out right, his defense is going to make plays.
There’s probably not a better example of the sort of aggression that I’m talking about than Southern Mississippi’s game against Louisiana last season. Southern Miss won the game 39-24, but they also gave up 439 yards (5.8 yards per play), including 9 plays that went for 20-plus yards.
Let’s examine one such play.
This is a third-down in the first quarter with USM up 6-2 from Louisiana’s own 18-yard line. And notice how Armstrong brings seven defenders. Since there are four wide receivers – two on either side – that means there are only four defensive backs available to cover them. This is a cover-zero defense, and is a really high-risk strategy. Without any deep safety help, every single defensive back is one slip away from costing his team a touchdown.
Louisiana’s QB (Ben Wooldridge, #10) doesn’t understand that the house is coming because this ball needs to get out fast. The minute he decides to pull the ball down, he’s doomed and ends up getting sacked and fumbling the ball.
This is the kind of play that can change a game. Had Southern Miss recovered the fumble, they would have had a chance to go up 13-2 and really put Louisiana on their heels. Conversely, had Wooldridge just let the ball go and trusted his receiver to beat one-on-one coverage, it could have easily been 9-6 in a blink.
Louisiana tried to adjust after seeing that kind of aggressiveness. The adjustment was to get the ball out quickly anticipating the blitz on the next third down, helped by the fact that this time it was a third-and-2 instead of third-and-long.
Want more? Order the Read & Reaction Preseason Magazine at www.readandreaction.com/mag.
