Yes, Florida’s offense is a problem
With Billy Napier’s announcement that he isn’t going to have massive staff shake-ups on the offensive side of the ball, those hoping he would go outside the organization to get a dynamic offensive coordinator have been disappointed.
In many ways, I admire Napier sticking to his guns with the folks that he has on staff. If he believes in them and believes they can help the offense take the next step, then his tenure will rise and fall on that belief. Whether it is misguided belief is something we’ll find out in 2024.
But when folks defend Napier’s offensive performance, you often hear them say that the defense was the problem in 2023, not the offense. While that’s true to the extent that the defense was definitively worse than the offense, that argument misses some key context.
Operational Excellence
The first and main reason some have called for an outside offensive coordinator hire is not just about having a better offense. Florida’s special teams, clock management and game day execution were awful in 2023.
You can live with a missed kick or a shanked punt every once in a while. Those things happen. But repeatedly having the wrong number of players on the field, having players with the same number on the field and committing stupid penalties that are clearly against the rules are all things that go back to operational design that either should be handled or delegated by the head coach.
Perhaps the nadir of that dysfunction occurred in the Arkansas game, when Florida’s special teams ran onto the field after a completion to Arlis Boardingham and cost the Gators five yards for an illegal substitution penalty because the offense was trying to spike the ball to stop the clock. This was out of a timeout, where presumably someone would have been telling the special teams what to do. It was also second down, so it’s not like a short completion was going to eliminate the ability to spike the ball and stop the clock.
The concerning thing for Gators fans is that after the game when Napier was asked about the special teams gaffe, he indicated that a player was responsible for making the call for whether the field goal unit should go onto the field. He would later walk that back somewhat, but this isn’t the only time operational excellence has fallen short for the Gators.
How about the Utah game, where the Gators only tried 13 rushing plays the entire game despite it being relatively close throughout. They also had two illegal formation penalties that wiped out critical first downs because wide receivers didn’t line up properly. And when the Gators took over down 13 points with 5:40 to go after a missed Utah field goal, they proceeded to eat up more than four minutes of clock before turning the ball over on downs. This included using a timeout to ensure that even if they scored, an onsides kick would be necessary to win. Ask Lions fans about that one.
Billy Napier’s entire value proposition when he came to Gainesville was operational excellence. Repeatedly he talked about being prepared, having a process and using data to make decisions. He talked about discipline and hiring an army to make sure that everyone knew what to do at all times. And repeatedly on game day in the past two seasons, that has not been the reality.
The logic to bringing in an outside play caller is that it would allow Napier to focus on his own shortcomings in these areas and on holding his staff accountable for theirs in their own areas as well. It doesn’t have a whole lot to do with improving the offense specifically, but it has everything to do with enabling Napier to fully embrace being the CEO instead of delegating CEO responsibilities to others so that he can retain responsibilities of an offensive coordinator.
Scoring points helps (earth shattering, I know)
The other reason some have called for an outside offensive coordinator is because it turns out, scoring points is a good way to win games.
I get that the defense was worse than the offense, but let me show you a chart. This chart shows how many points per game an offense scores or a defense gives up relative to its ranking against FBS opponents.
The chart is linear between the 10th ranked offense and the 100th ranked offense, or between the 10th ranked defense and the 100th ranked defense. That suggests that there is just as much value improving from 50th in points scored to 10th as there is to improve a defense from 90th in points allowed to 50th.
But that’s not actually true. Interestingly, there’s more value in improving 40 spots on offense than 40 spots on defense because of the slope of the line. I left the equations on the chart on purpose and you can see the slope of the offensive line is 0.1584 while the slope of the defensive line is 0.1429. This says that each ranking spot a team moves up on offense is worth ~0.16 points whereas each ranking spot a team moves up on defense is only worth ~0.14 points.
You might argue that difference is small, and it is only the matter of a couple of points in aggregate. But even without the difference, it tells us that improvement on offense is at least just as valuable as improvement on defense. The idea of “well, the defense can’t be worse so improvement should be easier” may sound good, but it isn’t any more valuable than improving the offense as well.
We can use something called the Pythagorean expectation to understand what each improvement will get the Gators. Florida ranked 62nd in points per game scored (26.5) against FBS opponents and 85th in points per game allowed (29.5) against FBS opponents in 2023. That gives an expected winning percentage of 45 percent. Also, those rankings are closer than I would have guessed before looking them up.
If Florida were to improve 45 spots on defense (29.5 ppg to 23.4 ppg) with identical offensive performance, we would expect Florida to win 56 percent of its games. If Florida were to improve 42 spots on offense (26.5 ppg to 33.3 ppg) with identical defensive performance, we would expect Florida to win 56 percent of its games. But if Florida were to experience the same improvement on both sides of the ball (23.4 ppg allowed and 33.3 ppg scored), the Gators expected winning percentage would rise to 67 percent.
That’s the difference between a team that wins 6.7 games and one that wins 8.0 games. I don’t think anyone debates that Napier would survive an 8-4 season with the gauntlet Florida is about to go through in 2024. But with a little bit of bad luck, does he survive 6-6?
There’s one other really interesting thing to note from the score differential analysis: being elite on one side of the ball really makes a difference.
This is the same chart from earlier, but now I’ve included the team ranked 1st for both offense and defense. What we can see is that in this case, the best defensive team is much better than the 10th and the best offensive team is way better than the 10th. What that implies is that you get way more value from taking a middle-of-the-road unit and turning it elite than you do seeing a movement from bad to good.
If the Gators defense could replicate Michigan’s 2023 performance (10.4 ppg allowed), we’d expect them to win 87 percent of their games even with equal offensive performance. Likewise, if the Gators offense could replicate LSU’s 2023 season (43.3 ppg), we’d expect them to win 68 percent of their games, even with last year’s terrible defense.
But let me ask you: if you were told one Gators unit would be elite next year, would you bet on the offense or the defense, especially with D.J. Lagway waiting in the wings?
Takeaway
I don’t hate Billy Napier’s scheme. I think the Gators over the past two years have struggled to execute that scheme, but it generally has answers for what various defenses are going to try to take away assuming the players execute.
But therein lies the problem. Napier’s players have failed to execute consistently, especially in big moments. Combine that with his sub-optimal game management and it becomes reasonable to ask the question whether that has to do with his focus being on play calling on gameday. Of course, with a new defensive staff, a new special teams coach and some rearranging of responsibilities on the offensive side of the ball, maybe all of the operational stuff gets fixed.
The defense was clearly the more frustrating unit last season and statistically was Florida’s weak link. But we’re not far away from being able to say the same for the offense, which while not as bad as the defense lacked any sort of explosion that is normally correlated to points (hence, the middle-of-the-road ranking on that side of the ball).
That’s particularly important given what I’ve shown here, which suggests that just improving on one side of the ball isn’t going to be enough to win without improvements on the other side as well. Florida just wasn’t good enough on either side to say definitively that it can do things the same way they did in 2023.
But beyond that, the offense is the side of the ball that is closer to being an elite unit. That’s how you win when you’re not great on one side. We saw that with LSU and USC in 2023 with two top NFL Draft picks leading the way. We experienced it more personally with Florida in 2020 with Kyle Trask at QB. Neither the Trojans (8-5) nor the Tigers (10-3) are exactly where the Gators want to be, but considering the last times Florida won eight games was 2020, that would be a big step forward.
I do think Florida’s defense will improve in 2024. That will be due to the hiring of Ron Roberts, gained experience by Austin Armstrong, new coaches at multiple positions, and most importantly, better players on the field given experience and transfer portal additions.
But Billy Napier’s tenure is going to come down to his offense. Maybe a second year in the system for Graham Mertz will generate another step forward (unlikely). Perhaps D.J. Lagway will come right in and prove himself the savior we all hope he can be. Or maybe Florida’s offense will stay stubbornly stuck right around where it’s been the past two years.
But if that happens, Florida’s going to max out at around a .500 team, and I’m not sure 6-6 in year three is going to be good enough.