How can Florida upset the Dawgs?

A Florida win in this year’s version of the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party would be gigantic.

Not only would it knock Georgia from the ranks of the unbeaten and put Florida in the driver’s seat in the SEC East. But it would also be a signature win for Billy Napier, ensuring at least a .500 record against rivals Tennessee, Georgia, LSU and FSU this year and setting the stage for this rivalry to get even more bitter in the years to come.

Of course, getting to that place requires getting the win. Nobody’s done that to Georgia in the past 24 games. And the only non-Alabama team to defeat the Bulldogs since 2019 is this very Florida program in 2020. Of course, that team featured first round draft picks at wide receiver (Kadarius Toney) and tight end (Kyle Pitts) and a second round pick at quarterback (Kyle Trask).

This Florida team isn’t where that one was offensively, but I think there are some things the Gators can do to keep things close. So let’s examine how Florida and Napier can get the job done on Saturday.

Overall Statistical Profile

Let’s get the obvious out of the way to start with: Georgia’s statistical profile is that of a much, much better team.

Against FBS opponents (i.e. without FCS cupcakes), the Bulldogs rank 8th in points per game scored and allowed and 7th in yards per play gained and allowed. That level of balance is a big reason why they’re good week after week. If the defense were to falter, it’s not like the offense can’t pick them up or vice versa.

Conversely, in the same rankings the Gators rank 68th in points per game scored and 49th in yards per play allowed. These two numbers have come much closer over the past couple of weeks as the Gators have started to convert in the red zone. On the defensive side of the ball, the Gators rank 40th in points per game allowed but 95th in yards per play allowed.

The differential between those two stats on the defensive side of the ball is a huge red flag.

I’ve written extensively about how yards per play correlates highly with scoring. When there’s a disconnect between the two, you usually see a regression towards the yards per play ranking as a season progresses. That would mean that Florida’s defense is going to continue to struggle and potentially is going to give up many more points than it has given up thus far as those numbers come into line.

You can see what I mean if we look at the yards per play stats for Florida and Georgia’s three common opponents: Kentucky, Vanderbilt and South Carolina.

What we see is that Florida deserved to get blown out by Kentucky and was lucky to beat the Gamecocks. That tracks with my feelings in both of those games. It also suggests that Florida’s win over Vanderbilt was a solid win but not a dominating performance.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s annihilation of Kentucky looks well-deserved while it’s relatively pedestrian victory over Vanderbilt (37-20) probably could have been by more. The only one that’s even close out of these three is the win over South Carolina, but that was a game where the Gamecocks shot out to a 14-3 halftime lead and then where completely overwhelmed by the Bulldogs in the first seven minutes of the third quarter. It also matches the Gators best win out of the three.

Collegefootballdata.com has a stat I like called post-game win expectancy. It essentially tells you based on the statistical profile of the game who you would have predicted to win the game and by what percentage.

For the three shared opponents, Florida would have been expected to beat Kentucky 2 percent of the time, South Carolina 11 percent of the time and Vanderbilt 100 percent of the time. Georgia would have been expected to beat both Vandy and South Carolina 98 percent of the time and Kentucky 100 percent of the time.

The silver lining in this is that last season, just about every game Georgia played was a 100 percent proposition. This team isn’t unbeatable, but it is clearly better than Florida.

That means the Gators are going to have to find some edges to exploit. Where might those edges be?

Quarterback

This is always where you start when you examine any matchup. Had you told me before the season that Carson Beck vs. Graham Mertz would be an even matchup, I would have assumed that both Beck and Mertz had flopped.

That hasn’t happened, as Mertz has greatly exceeded expectations, but Beck hasn’t been a slouch either. Both of them sport almost identical QB ratings (163.7 for Mertz and 163.8 for Beck). Beck ranks much higher in my Yards Above Replacement (YAR) stat because he has averaged a positive yards per rush (1.8) compared to Mertz (-1.4).

Some of that is attributable to the offensive line, as Georgia is only allowing 0.86 sacks per game compared to 2.71 per game for Florida. But as we’ve discussed here before, sacks are sometimes on the QB and that has been an area where Mertz has struggled.

Mertz finally broke away from tendency against South Carolina, taking way more deep shots. And it wasn’t just one or two extras. In his first six games of the year, Mertz attempted 13 passes more than 20 air yards from the line of scrimmage. He attempted 12 against the Gamecocks. His average depth of target coming into the game was 5.53 yards. His ADOT against South Carolina was 11.43.

Beck has actually had many of the same issues as Mertz this year and it’s a big reason why Georgia has gotten off to some slow starts.

Beck’s ADOT this season is only 8.03. It has increased over the past two games to 8.74 so he is taking a few more shots downfield, but when he does, he isn’t being much more successful than Mertz. Beck is averaging 12.4 yards per completion (compared to 11.2 for Mertz) and is completing 37 percent of his throws 20-plus air yards downfield (43% for Mertz) for an average of 11.7 yards per play (9.6 for Mertz).

All of this to say that these QBs are really evenly matched. That means I think the key to watch for is going to be sacks.

Neither of these QBs is going to play well behind the sticks. Second-and-15 is essentially a punt for Florida and with Brock Bowers out, it may be for Georgia as well. But if Mertz is going to outplay Beck, it’s going to have to be from in front of the chains. That means throwing the ball away when Georgia wins a play and living to fight another day.

He hasn’t done that well thus far in 2023, but he’s going to have to if Florida is to gain an edge behind center.

Running Backs in the Passing Game

In 2020 when Florida beat Georgia, they ran the ball 37 times for 97 yards. Last season when Ohio State nearly knocked off the Bulldogs in the Peach Bowl, they ran the ball 32 times for 119 yards. When Alabama beat them in the 2021 SEC Championship Game, the Tide ran the ball 26 times for 115 yards. None of those are what you would call dominant rushing performances.

But one thing jumped out at me when I started looking back at the 2020 game in particular. Florida’s running backs caught 10 passes for 212 yards in that win. The Gators clearly wanted to exploit Georgia’s linebackers and did so in that game.

This should look vaguely familiar. While he does it in a little bit different way than Billy Napier typically does, Dan Mullen has essentially set up a flood concept to the strong side of the field. Kyle Trask (an immobile QB) fakes the run to running back Malik Davis (#20) and then bootlegs to his right.

This isolated Nakobe Dean (#17, a really good linebacker) on Davis on the wheel route towards the boundary. The flood concept got the entire defense flowing right, including Dean (circled). That gave Davis the step he needed to get open and Florida hit a big play down the sideline.

When Georgia was in straight man-to-man configurations, Mullen dropped all pretense of the fake to the running back and just sent them out into the route.

Here the boundary-side wide receiver (top of the screen, #15 Jacob Copeland) runs a slant right at the Georgia linebacker (Monty Rice, #32) responsible for covering running back Nay’Quan Wright (#6). Copeland does a fantastic job of rubbing Rice without actually touching him. That gives Wright all the time he needs to get past Rice for a big play.

I get what you’re saying right now. “Will, this is way back in 2020. Surely Georgia has figured out how to cover this sort of thing?” Undoubtedly they’re better at it than they were back in 2020. But this is a weakness that still shows up on film.

Ohio State designed this play to go to the running back, in this case Xavier Johnson (#10). The reason I say this is the route concepts they ran were designed to get each of Georgia’s safeties to bite to the outside. If they didn’t, then Buckeye QB CJ Stroud would have had an easy pass to the outside for a big gain. But if they did, then they had Johnson (who’s actually a receiver but lined up at running back) matched up one-on-one against linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson (#10).

Florida has had two weeks to put some wrinkles into its offensive package. This play, in particular, is one that should fit with Trey Wilson’s skillset really well. Get Wilson matched up on a linebacker and I don’t care how many stars that linebacker has next to his name, that’s a mismatch.

Running the Ball Outside

All year long, my and Nick Knudsen’s mantra has been, “Feed #2, Feed #7,” because when Florida runs the ball, they convert third downs and they put points on the board.

But there’s an issue with that.

The 2023 Gators are averaging 3.2 line yards per rush and 1.3 second level yards per rush. The first stat measures whether the offensive line is doing its job on an average running play and the second measures whether the back can break a short gain into a longer one. Both of those values are the exact same as 2022.

The issue is that Florida’s Power Success Rate in 2022 was 80 percent while it has dropped to 68 percent in 2023. Their Stuff Rate has also gone up three percent as well. Georgia’s defense has an elite stuff rate of 24 percent and a line yards per rush of 2.7. As with most Bulldog defenses, you’re not going to get a lot running inside, especially when it’s third or fourth-and-short.

So what’s Florida to do? Get the ball outside.

I suggested this a few weeks ago after the Charlotte game. The reasoning was that Montrell Johnson and Trevor Etienne were getting hit too often before they had an opportunity to really assess the hole. That was severely limiting their ability to maximize yardage after contact, particularly for Johnson.

So what did Florida do to open up the game against Vanderbilt?

It would be really easy to miss this as just a nothing play that ended with a drop. Certainly that’s how it looks in the box score. But this is the first time all year that I could remember Napier trying to get the ball to his running backs immediately after the snap in space.

Just look at where I pause the clip. Montrell Johnson has the ability to get a head of steam going before he takes on the safety. This was going to be at least an eight-yard gain had he not dropped the ball. And more importantly, it would have given him some time to set up the defenders to make them miss.

They also brought out another wrinkle against the Gamecocks.

Here the pitch is to Trey Wilson (#3). Montrell Johnson (#2) serves as a lead blocker, eventually stoning South Carolina’s weakside linebacker. The pitch obviously helps Wilson get outside. But having Johnson as the lead blocker rather than a tight end pulling across the formation like Florida typically does on a play like this allows Johnson to have better leverage for the block.

On one of these types of plays, the safety is going to slip or Wilson is going to be able to juke him and it’ll be an easy touchdown. But sealing off that linebacker is a key to getting it to happen and having Johnson already on that side makes that much easier.

Takeaway

These are just a few ways that Florida might choose to attack Georgia’s defense. There are wrinkles to each of these that Florida could choose to install as well. For instance, on the play above, they could leak Johnson (or whoever the running back is) out on a wheel route towards the weak side while faking the pitch to Wilson. The key is getting someone more physically gifted matched up one-on-one against a linebacker.

Of course, Georgia knows this too. They also have some of the most gifted linebackers in the country who will make you pay if there is even a millisecond of indecision. Florida doesn’t just have to play a clean game to score a lot, they’re going to have to play nearly a perfect one.

I chose to focus on the offense in this preview because I don’t have a lot of confidence that Florida is going to be able to stop the Bulldogs all that often. Not only are the statistics wildly in Georgia’s favor, but where they are strong also matters. For example, just look at where each team ranks offensively and defensively when looking at explosive plays.

That is an ugly chart for Gators fans.

When it comes to plays of 10-plus yards, both Georgia and Florida are pretty equivalent. Essentially, execution on a play-to-play basis is at a similar level. But both Georgia’s offense and defense stay pretty level as the plays get more explosive. They’re just very consistent.

Not so for Florida, as the Gators struggle to generate explosive plays compared to their FBS counterparts and give them up at a level much more often. When a play hits big, it’s catastrophic for Florida’s defense whereas Georgia is able to contain the damage.

How can Florida upset the Dawgs?