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Where does Florida’s defense need help?

Alabama ranked 16th in the country in yards per play allowed against FBS opponents. Florida ranked 124th. There are a lot of reasons for that, but I thought it would be interesting to take a few minutes to try and understand why that’s the case.

To do so, I took numbers from Pro Football Focus (PFF) that ranks every play for every team with a -2 to +2 rating, then converts to a 0-100 scale. I then took that ranking and averaged it for players who met PFF’s snap thresholds for ranking broken up into their position group (i.e. edge rusher, LB, etc.) to get an average score per unit.

Theoretically, that should give us a way to compare, say, Alabama’s linebackers to Florida’s linebackers in a way that tells us on a unit-by-unit basis how those teams are doing.

So here’s Florida’s defense compared to Alabama’s (the grey line is the average across Power-5 teams).

Not a surprise, but Florida’s defense compared to Alabama isn’t that great. But perhaps more telling is that Florida falls short of the Power-5 average at corner, safety and especially linebacker. Napier and Co. have clearly identified that as a gap given their 2024 recruiting class (Myles Graham and Aaron Chiles) as well as the transfer addition of Grayson Howard.

But here’s the thing. Alabama isn’t getting transcendent linebacker play, at least they didn’t in 2023. Instead, they’re getting about average play from their interior defensive linemen and linebackers with excellent play from their defensive ends and elite play from their safeties and corners.

Three SEC defenses finished in the top-20 of yards per play allowed vs. FBS opponents in 2023 (Alabama (16th), Georgia (14th) and Texas A&M (19th). So the question is do these defenses have anything in common?

The answer is yes and no. Georgia is above average in every category but truly elite at safety. Texas A&M has a few spots where they come in slightly below average, but the Aggies are getting great play from its linebackers and good play from its safeties and interior linemen.

I suspect that the connection isn’t so much between one particular personnel group excelling, but instead that there is at least one personnel group that is excelling while none are truly weak. The thinking would be that just being “good enough” or “average” at most spots is sufficient if you’re elite at one spot where that spot can truly make a difference.

This seems supported when we look at LSU.

The Tiger’s defense finished 100th in the yards per play allowed metric, and if we look at the same radar chart for them, we see that they grade out as above average at edge, interior DL and linebacker, but just slightly so. Then they are slightly below average at safety and have a huge hole at corner.

So let’s go back to Florida’s chart.

The Gators have three areas that are below average. While I’d love to see an edge rusher flying around to hit the QB or an interior lineman getting push up the middle, what this suggests to me is that Florida could improve a ton if they just get to average at the corner, safety and linebacker spots.

Just keeping Devin Moore healthy (78.3 PFF rating on 194 snaps) would probably go a long way at the corner position. And if transfer corner Trikweze Bridges can revert back to his 2022 form (76.4 PFF rating), that adds nicely to Jason Marshall (68.7).  You can say something similar at the safety position, where the hope is that the experience Jordan Castell (75.7) just got as a true freshman is a preview to a major leap that will be aided with the additions of transfers D.J. Douglas from Tulane (70.7) and Asa Turner from Washington (72.4).

But perhaps more importantly is who will not be on the field. Miguel Mitchell (55.8), Kamari Wilson (55.7 in only 20 snaps), Jaydon Hill (63.9), Teradja Mitchell (51.4) and Scooby Williams (42.1)  were below average players last season and save Wilson all got major snaps. You don’t need to replace those snaps with All-SEC caliber guys everywhere to get better. You just need average play.

Of course, average isn’t the standard at Florida and that weighs heavily in the background. Add to that a monster of a 2024 schedule and it’s easy to see why fans (and the media) are pessimistic about Florida’s 2024 prospects. But there are some reasons for optimism, particularly on the defensive side of the ball (more on that later this week).

Perhaps none more so than the fact that the new additions to the roster on the defensive side of the ball seem to be right where the Gators need them most.