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Napier’s Gators embarrassed in the Swamp by Miami

Gator Nation is angry, and they should be.

The Gators just got humiliated on their home field. After an offseason of hearing Miami fans chirp about how the Swamp wasn’t a tough place to play, Florida fans had to hear Miami QB Cam Ward make comments about how it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as USC or Oregon.

Bill Parcells’ famous quote of “You are what your record says you are,” really does apply here. Billy Napier is now 11-15 at Florida. He is now 1-8 against Tennessee, Georgia, LSU, FSU and Miami…..you know, the teams Gators fans actually care about. He’s 0-2 against Kentucky and 1-1 against Vanderbilt.

Perhaps most damning, Napier is 9-5 at the Swamp, 7-5 if you eliminate FCS opponents and 5-5 if you eliminate non-Power-4 teams.

The hope was that those trends would turn around this year in the opener against the Hurricanes. Instead, Florida’s defense was a sieve, the offense was inept, and Napier is left grasping for something that won’t be seen as an excuse at yet another press conference where his team looked unprepared for the opening game of the season.

What happened?

People will point to Florida’s defensive ineptitude, and that is warranted given the numbers. The Gators defense surrendered 11 explosive (20-plus yard) plays to Miami and gave up 7.7 yards per play. For reference, the Gators defense ranked 124th last year vs FBS opponents giving up 6.5 yards per play, so this was worse than last year’s unit.

However, Florida’s defense had every reason to be gassed. Already without injured Jamari Lyons on the front-four, and going up against a Miami offensive line that I had profiled as one of the best in the country, the Gators offense opened up with a 4-play drive that ended in a punt, a 5-play drive that ended in a punt, a 6-play drive that ended in a field goal (after an INT) and a 5-play drive that ended in a turnover on downs.

The defense was playing a bend-but-don’t-break style prior to that turnover on downs. It had actually been successful as the Gators stopped Miami on its opening drive if not for a roughing the passer call on Justus Boone. Then they actually did stop the Hurricanes on a great play by Pup Howard in the red zone to keep the game at 10-3.

But after that turnover on downs, the dam broke and they couldn’t stop the Hurricanes anymore.

Florida actually had its chances to keep this one close, but they got just an awful performance from starting QB Graham Mertz.

Mertz’s stat line – 11-20 for 91 yards, 0 TD and 1 INT – pretty much sums up his day. We had been assured all offseason that the Gators offense was going to go downfield a lot more often in 2024. They did try to do that somewhat, but Mertz missed every time they had an opportunity.

Florida has exactly what they want on this throw. They have Tre Wilson (#3) running a crosser that makes the Miami safety (circled) have to decide to come up to take away Wilson, or drop deep to help on a post by Elijhah Badger (#6). The safety decides to come up to help with Wilson.

Because Chimere Dike (#17) is running a little square in, that leaves a ton of space to the field side for Mertz to lead Badger with the throw. This is one where you put a ton of air under it and just let Badger run underneath. Instead, Mertz throws it behind Badger, forcing him to run back into the defender.

This has to be a touchdown. Instead, Florida punted two plays later.

Ok, but that’s a deep ball. Mertz has struggled with those before. But he’s a great decision-maker, so if we put him in situations where we’re not relying on his arm but his ability to read the defense, Florida should be okay, right?

This is a perfect play call. It’s a third-and-10 and Napier has a route combination where Badger (#6) runs a hitch to the sticks with Arlis Boardingham (#8) running an out behind it. Miami has three defenders for two receivers and Mertz’s read is the corner on the outside.

If that corner sinks back to Boardingham, Mertz fires it in to Badger to the outside (away from the linebacker) for a first down. If the corner plants his foot in the ground to take away Badger, Mertz hits Boardingham on the sideline.

Mertz makes the right read (the corner takes away Badger so he throws to Boardingham), but he’s probably two ticks late getting the ball out. When I paused the video, Boardingham had the deep safety taking away the inside and had 2-3 yards of separation. But he has to wait for the throw on the sideline, which allows the safety to catch him and break it up.

And while it didn’t make a difference at that point (the Gators were down 38-10), Mertz’s last throw was a a tough one too, illustrating his endearing toughness, but also his limitations.

I’ve backed this video way up so I can illustrate that Miami has safety Mishael Powell (#0) right in the middle of the field. Again, Napier has a perfect play called as he has both Badger (#6) and Wilson (#3) attacking that safety. If the safety goes to Wilson, Mertz throws to Badger. If the safety goes to Badger, Mertz throws to Wilson.

But typically in these situations, you see a QB “look off” the safety. The safety reads the QBs eyes and body positioning to try to cheat to where the throw is going. Mertz stares down Wilson the entire time, giving Powell time to get over and not just break up the throw, but pick it off.

In my preview, I suggested that the QB position was going to be a tie in this game. After all, Cam Ward had a Yards Above Replacement (YAR) – my proprietary stat that calculates value of a QBs running and passing – of -0.27 last season at Washington State and Mertz was at -0.20 (zero is average, -1.0 is terrible, 1.0 is good and 2.0 is Heisman-worthy). I figured Ward might have a couple of running plays that would be valuable but that Mertz would beat him through the air.

Instead, what we saw was Mertz playing worse than any game since he came over from Wisconsin with a YAR of -2.95 and a QB rating of 83.2 while Ward put his name on the list of early Heisman favorites with a YAR of 3.68 and a QB rating of 189.3.

We can talk all we want about defense (and we will later in the week), but you aren’t winning anything when your QB has a QB rating below 100.

Takeaway

On the Gators second drive of the game against Miami, Graham Mertz completed a check-down to Montrell Johnson in the flat on third-and-7 to set up a fourth-and-6 at the Miami 41-yard line. Miami was up 7-0 and there was 4:24 left in the first quarter.

On the Gators fourth drive of the game, Graham Mertz handed the ball off to Treyaun Webb for no gain on third-and-5 to set up a fourth-and-5 from the Miami 42-yard line. Miami was up 10-3 with 8:05 left in the second quarter.

From an analytics perspective, these are essentially the same situation. But on the first one, Billy Napier decided to punt. On the second, he decided to go for it.

If you run a fourth-down model on these situations, I suspect that the better call is to go for it. But I’m less concerned about which call is better than I am that Napier definitely ended up with a suboptimal strategy because he chose the worse option on at least one of them.

You might say I’m being pedantic focusing on these particular situations. After all, Florida just got blown off their home field by a Miami team that is probably good, but not great. The offense looked terrible the entire game and the defense (somehow!) looked worse than it did last year. Why am I harping on a seemingly insignificant detail?

But that’s exactly why I am focusing on a little detail. Billy Napier came to Gainesville talking about process and detail. And when those details are missing – like the seemingly small detail of calling a timeout after receiving a kickoff as happened early in the second quarter – it makes me fairly confident in assessing that larger details are missing throughout the program.

This loss wasn’t about one play or one player. It was about all the little steps that Florida has failed to take over the past three years that were visible once the lights came on. Players and coaches can talk about “getting it fixed” but the harsh reality is that the time to fix it was when someone didn’t close the deal on a recruit, dogged a rep in March, dodged a workout in June, or missed a read in early August.

That was the time for Billy Napier to hold his coaches, his players and his staff accountable to make sure that the type of performance we saw on Saturday at the Swamp was unimaginable. Instead, that nightmare was all-too real for Napier and the fans in a game that really marks the end of the Napier era in Gainesville whether that comes on Sunday or at the end of the season.

Because the harsh reality of major college football is that when you don’t hold your program accountable for the small details, eventually you become the one who is held accountable.

Get Well Ricky Pearsall

Right about the time that the Florida game ended, news broke that former Gator Ricky Pearsall was shot in San Francisco. At time of this publication, Pearsall was in serious but stable condition with no life threatening injuries.

Pearsall was apparently the victim of an attempted robbery and a 17-year old has been held in custody, but not charged, in the altercation. The suspect was also shot in the altercation.

I’m sure there are larger conversations to have about guns, violence, juveniles and the political situation in San Francisco but I’m going to ignore all that for now, at least until we have more details.

Instead, I’m just going to wish Ricky Pearsall a rapid recovery, and that God uses this incident in a positive way in his life, and in the life of his assailant. And I’m going to use it in my own life to remember that there are more important things than who wins a football game.

Get well soon, Ricky!