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Florida dominated by Kentucky, 33-14

For the second time in two tries, Florida just got dominated on the road.

I don’t say that lightly, but it’s hard to come to any other conclusion when your road record consists of getting beat by another team’s third and fourth string QB and then losing to a team whose QB threw for 69 yards on 20 attempts.

The offense looked anemic, putting up 313 total yards on 5.3 yards per play, but only 29 yards on 17 plays in the decisive first quarter. Not to be outdone, the defense got absolutely bulldozed by Kentucky running back Ray Davis who went for 280 yards and averaged 10.8 yards per rush.

And of course, Florida had the requisite special teams blunder that we’ve come to know and loathe as true freshman Dijon Johnson leapt into the punter’s protectors, giving Kentucky a first down they’d use to bury the Gators just one play later on a 75-yard Davis run.

It was a complete meltdown in a story that has become all too familiar in the Billy Napier era. Napier is now 1-7 in games away from the Swamp and after taking a step forward two weeks ago by beating rival Tennessee has taken two steps back by no-showing on the road yet again.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the issues.

Offense

In my Kentucky preview I wrote this about Graham Mertz.

“I think Mertz has acquitted himself well so far this season. But he has limitations that are severely hampering the Gators offense.”

That was on full display against the Wildcats, perhaps exemplified the most by this play.

The first limitation is that no one would dare show this defensive formation against the Gators last season. Kentucky has four men in the box against five offensive linemen. With Anthony Richardson at QB, this was an automatic QB draw. At second-and-9, I would have actually been okay with Mertz changing the play to that here.

But the second limitation is that Mertz has to see this blitz coming. Kentucky has defensive back Alex Afari (#3) out on Ricky Pearsall (#1) in the slot along with inside linebacker D’Eryk Jackson. Both Jackson and Afari come on the blitz, leaving Pearsall wide open. I’m a little surprised Pearsall doesn’t have a hot read when his guy blitzes to basically run 5 yards and turn around, but Mertz never even looks that way.

We saw something similar that Jesse Palmer pointed out on the broadcast on a fourth down later in the game.

Kahleil Jackson (#22) has corner Alex Afari (#3) lined up across from him right at the sticks. There’s nobody over there to give help, meaning a crossing route should get Jackson open. At the snap, Afari opens his hips and runs out to help on Pearsall, the receiver at the top of the formation.

Mertz is looking right at this happen. Yet he moves his gaze to his right searching for an open receiver, right before Jackson comes wide open over the middle. The only explanation for this is that Mertz was reading Pearsall and when he wasn’t open, came to the other side. This is a….strange way to teach a QB to make reads. Quite simply, this is something Mertz has to see.

The fact that this play eventually turned into a first down for Etienne only matters in that Florida lost by 19 instead of 26. But it matters in that it points towards bad process. You’re not going to have an explosive offense if you turn down easy conversions and require miracles instead.

Mertz’s numbers again look pretty good, as he finished 25-30 (83.3%) for 244 yards (8.1 yards/attempt) and a QB rating of 167. But the problem is that in the first quarter when Florida couldn’t get anything going, Mertz went 2-6 for 19 yards, 2 sacks and an interception.

That included plays like this.

This is a staple of Florida’s offense. The play action to Montrell Johnson (#2) brings up Kentucky’s linebackers (circled). That leaves a gap behind them that is filled by Kahleil Jackson (#22). If Mertz hits him, this is a huge play to get the Gators back in the game. Instead, Florida punts back to Kentucky and the Gators defense (and special teams) digs the hole even deeper.

Of course, this isn’t all Mertz’s fault. The offensive line was bad and got beat consistently (on the second sack I mentioned above, Mertz had zero time as multiple linemen got beat). But I also wonder how much of that is Mertz not checking to either the right protection or changing the play to something that gives Florida an advantage.

His throw distribution is what I am now going to call Mertzian, with only 3 of 30 attempts covering 20 air yards (one on a broken play to Pearsall) and 63 percent of his attempts and 72 percent of his completions coming within 10 air yards. Even though Mertz averaged 8.1 yards per attempt, he only averaged 9.8 yards per completion, which actually pulls his average in that category for the season down.

The predictable result was that Kentucky squeezed the Gators offense. With no fear that Mertz would make them pay deep (or even attempt all that many), they focused on shutting down the running game and sitting on any mid-range routes on third down.

Florida’s going to have to find a way to make the opposition pay for not respecting them deep. Or they’re going to continue averaging 19 points per game. Their choice.

Defense

Anybody else get 2021 LSU flashbacks in this one?

Austin Armstrong’s defense has shown growth, but it got exposed by a more physical Kentucky team that had a few wrinkles to exacerbate the difference. One of those wrinkles showed up right away, but didn’t really manifest itself until a little bit later in the first quarter.

I’ve circled Florida’s two safeties here, and then you can see the arrows from the two Kentucky wide receivers pointed at the safeties. Then watch as those receivers run right past the corner across from them and go straight for the safety. This isn’t an run-pass option (RPO). This is a straight smashmouth running play, except by going after the safeties, Kentucky is attacking Florida’s corners in the running game.

On this particular play, corner Jalen Kimber (#8) allows Ray Davis (#1) to get outside rather than turn him back inside towards the linebackers. Davis ends up gaining about 10 yards because of it.

Why do I point this out? If you’re guessing it’s because Kentucky did the same thing on Davis’ backbreaking 75-yard touchdown, you would be correct.

The goal of a running play if you have even blockers and defenders is to get your running back one-on-one with a safety in the hole. You then hope your back can make that guy miss and turn it into a big play. By sending the wide receiver out to block Florida safety Miguel Mitchell (#10) on this play, Kentucky is switching the unblocked man from Mitchell to corner Jason Marshall (#3).

Marshall takes a circular route towards the hole, Kentucky’s tight end blocks down on Gators linebacker Shemar James (#6) and Davis is off to the races.

This is a really smart design by Kentucky offensive coordinator Liam Coen. He was betting that Florida’s corners were going to shy away from contact and try to go around the blockers rather than take a straight line and initiate contact.

This wasn’t the only way Kentucky beat Florida, of course. There were plenty of times that Florida’s safeties had a chance to make a tackle on Davis and were unable to do so. But the thing that concerned me more than that was the complete lack of adjustments the Gators made as the game went along.

Florida started the game with two deep safeties, presumably worried about big plays by Kentucky through the air. But as they got shredded on the ground, they refused to bring a safety up into the box to give themselves a numbers advantage up-front.

That certainly would have left them in man coverage on the back end. But considering they were on their way towards giving up more than 300 yards rushing, it seems like a compromise worth making. That’s especially true given Armstrong’s penchant for being ultra aggressive.

Coaching and Takeaways

Perhaps no play sums up Florida’s performances against Utah and Kentucky than this one.

On first-and-goal, Florida gets the one-on-one matchup I was talking about earlier as Scooby Williams (#17) fills the hole to take on Davis. Williams misses the tackle and Davis scores. But why was Williams able to shoot through a gap in the line? Well, it might have something to do with the Gators’ 13 defenders on the field at the snap, or, two more than is legal.

To be fair to Florida, you only get 40 seconds between plays to get defenders out on the field and given that it was first-and-goal at the two-yard line, you really don’t want to waste a timeout at that juncture.

Except the play before was a pass interference penalty on Jason Marshall and the officials paused the game to announce the penalty.

And except a Kentucky player was injured on the play too and Kentucky’s trainers came out to attend to him long enough for ESPN to plug both the Texas/Kansas and Notre Dame/Duke matchups later in the day.

In all, there were 105 seconds between time the ball hit the ground on the third down pass interference and the snap on the touchdown run and yet the Gators still couldn’t get the appropriate personnel out on the field.

This is why fans are criticizing Billy Napier and his staff. You spend all offseason and during the week repping who will be in the game for goal line situations. Then when one comes up during the game, your entire damn defense thinks it should be in the game.

That might be tolerable had they shown fight the entire game, but Shemar James said afterwards that he thought the noon start had an effect on the team and that they came out flat. That’s a big problem for two reasons, the first being that if you keep getting smoked like this there will be a lot more noon kickoffs in the Gators future.

But the second reason that’s a problem is much more big-picture.

The story Gators fans have been telling themselves is that this rebuild is going to take time. It’s been that Napier inherited a mess from Dan Mullen and he needed to change the culture. But when you have a player saying that the team wasn’t ready to play for a big-time SEC road game, that doesn’t speak well of the culture at all.

We expected this team to struggle at times. We even expected some losses might be lopsided. What we didn’t expect was that in year two of this rebuild that Florida would look more disorganized than it did in year one. That lack of fire and desire, that lack of urgency, and the repeat of the same types of mistakes week after week fall directly on Napier.

And at some point, Gators fans (and boosters) are going to stop telling themselves stories.

Homecoming, family and football

That wasn’t very fun to write, but I have to remind myself how quickly things change.

Just two weeks ago the Gators were coming off a huge win against Tennessee and everything was headed in the right direction. But after two sub-par performances, Florida is sitting at 3-2 and at a crossroads.

I often remind fans (and in some ways, myself) that we only get 12 or 13 of these games every year and we shouldn’t take them for granted. The losses are aggravating and disappointing, but every fall is a special time where we celebrate a connection to friends that has only happened because of this team and this school.

My daughter is a freshman in high school and went to her first homecoming dance on Saturday night. As we took pictures right before she left, the Gretchen Rubin quote, “the days are long but the years are short,” passed through my head. It had passed through my head earlier in the day as well as I watched the Gators game with two of my sons and they peppered me with questions that distracted me from what was happening on the TV.

The point of relaying this story is that I’m trying to get better at recognizing that these are special times and I need to make a point to stop and appreciate them.

That 14-year old girl has been a challenge at times, as her three brothers are on a fairly regular basis. But it’s the challenge – the fact that I care about them so much that I allow them to drive me crazy – that makes the experience ultimately the most rewarding one I’ll ever have in my life.

Because at some point, they’ll have families of their own and my work will be done. I will have either squandered that time by worrying about every little thing or I will have embraced the challenge and cherished every moment. My record is not perfect when it comes to that binary.

In many ways, rooting for a college football team isn’t all that different.

Certainly we can critique and analyze, and I’ve spent plenty of words doing that here. But I’m working to embrace even the down times and cherish every moment. Because even in a loss, you sent text messages to friends, called relatives, drank beer with a buddy or just spent time with your sons.

One day, hopefully soon, the Gators are going to be back on top again. And the only question that will matter is which son you hug first when it happens.