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Lagway shines as Florida blows out Kentucky

The Gators dominated Kentucky, 48-20.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written words like that about Florida and a fellow SEC program. The only time Billy Napier has had a bigger margin against an SEC opponent in his tenure was his 38-6 victory over South Carolina in 2022. Given that, I don’t want to take a win like this for granted.

The defense played a great game again for the third straight week. The offense was able to hit explosives all over the place. And given Kentucky’s three-game winning streak coming in, Florida was able to do something that the Gators haven’t done in a long while.

The trend is becoming clear. Kentucky is now 3-4. Central Florida is also 3-4. Mississippi State is 1-6. The Gators have lost to teams that are 7-0 (Miami), 6-1 (Texas A&M) and Tennessee (6-1).

But we also saw the one thing that will be necessary to turn that trend around against the Wildcats.

Lagway goes boom

For the last two seasons, there’s been a lot of talk about Graham Mertz’s accuracy. From a raw numbers perspective, Mertz has been accurate, completing 77 percent of his throws. Yet, Florida had still just averaged 24.6 points per game in his five starts.

After seeing Lagway’s performance in the second half against Tennessee, there were plenty of critics who brought out the “I told you so” takes about starting a true freshman QB. Until his final TD throw, he looked like a true freshman.

I can say the same thing about this game against Kentucky. There were many snaps where Lagway looked uncomfortable, held the ball, and/or threw the ball into traffic. But there were seven snaps where the guy he has the potential to be came shining through.

For the game, Lagway only had seven completions. But of those seven completions, six of them were for explosive (20-plus yard) plays. And they weren’t just 21-yard plays either, as Lagway hit throws of 40, 50, 58, 23, 44 and 40 yards. He also added a 27-yard run that helped set up a field goal early in the game.

With limited snaps in the second half, Lagway only had three pass attempts. He had three completions – all explosives – that averaged 35.7 yards per pass. But even in the first half (4-11), Lagway had three explosives through the air. The plan was simple: attack Kentucky deep when they gave the opportunity.

Before the snap, Kentucky has one deep safety, suggesting a middle of the field closed (MOFC) coverage. That’s exactly what Lagway gets, as the corners sink and Kentucky plays cover-3. Florida has the perfect play called with both inside receivers running seam routes to attack that deep safety.

I’ve paused the play at the moment Lagway decided to throw the ball. The deep safety has committed to Hayden Hansen (#89) streaking down the middle of the field. That leaves Elijhah Badger (#6) running against a flat-footed safety and a corner who is sinking to the outside.

This is about as easy a throw as you can get, but it’s not just knowing to make the throw that is impressive. Lagway throws the ball on a line giving Badger the ability to split the corner and safety.

When Kentucky gave Lagway these sorts of looks, he was able to take advantage.

Kentucky again has one deep safety. They respond to Florida’s motion pre-snap by shifting to have the deep safety come up to take the motion with the corner on that side dropping to protect deep in the middle of the field.

But that corner doesn’t get over quick enough and can’t get deep like a single-high safety should. The Kentucky corner covering Badger plays outside leverage (i.e. forcing Badger back towards the middle) because he thinks he has safety help, but he does not. That means Badger ends up with a free release and one-on-one coverage.

It’s actually not terrible coverage. But Lagway puts it right on his hands in-stride and Florida hits another big play.

Kentucky just didn’t learn its lesson from what had happened before in the second half.

This is a simple read. Kentucky has one deep safety who is going to drop. They are sending Dike (#17) down the middle of the field on a post. Unless the deep safety heads over to the outside right at the start, he won’t be able to get over there. If he does head over there, the post to Dike is open. There is no way Kentucky can win this play if Lagway throws to the right guy.

The safety drops straight back and Lagway throws to the right guy. The pass is perfect and Badger makes a really difficult catch, giving Florida another explosive.

According to Sports Info Solutions, Lagway came into the game with a 23.7 percent Boom Percentage (plays that have > 1.0 expected points added (EPA)). With 6 explosives on 14 throws (43%), that’s going to go way up. Those explosives almost broke my YAR stat, with Lagway scoring at 7.07 for the game (remember, 1.0 is Jake Fromm and 2.0 is Heisman-level). This was truly a special performance.

It wasn’t all perfect. On the second Gators drive, Lagway had Dike open on a crossing route, got happy feet due to mild pressure and overthrew him. On an interception, Kentucky showed cover-3 but dropped into a cover-4 coverage. Dike adjusted his route to the outside, but Lagway threw the same seam route I showed above and it was an easy pick. Lagway took a sack when he didn’t let the ball go on an out route on third down and didn’t have anywhere to run.

But Lagway showed us what Anthony Richardson showed us two seasons ago. You can be inconsistent if you’re explosive. Completion percentage is only important if you need third-down conversions to keep drives alive. And single-high safety coverage isn’t going to stop the Gators anymore.

Takeaway

It isn’t a coincidence that Florida’s running game opened up in this game as well.

Cover-3 is designed to allow you to put a safety in the box to stop the run. You’re forcing the offense to make precision deep passes, which typically advantages the defense because QBs at this level aren’t accurate enough to take advantage.

Well, we found out that D.J. Lagway is accurate enough, which means that defenses are going to have to make a decision: risk getting beat deep for explosives, or risk being outmanned in the box against the Gators running game.

Defensive coordinators understand this, which means that I suspect Florida’s offense is going to look pretty conservative at times; lots of running plays against light boxes because defenses don’t want to give up something huge. But defensive coordinators get impatient. They want to force turnovers. They want to hunt, not bend.

Lagway is going to hurt coordinators who decide they want to play that way. He isn’t going to be this accurate every week, but given what we’ve seen against Samford and Kentucky, he’s going to hit enough that you have to respect it. That means Florida’s offense is going to dictate to the defense rather than the other way around. That definitely hasn’t been the case in Gainesville since Richardson left.

With a defense that is improving (I’ll write more on that during the bye week), Florida now has a chance to be in every game. I picked Kentucky to win this game 23-20 because I thought Kentucky’s offense would be clunky, but the Gators’ would be too. Instead, Florida’s offense was dynamic and it turned into a Florida blowout.

There were still some tense moments. Had Kentucky cashed Lagway’s pick instead of the defense getting a goal-line stop, the entire tone of the game would have changed. And there were still the normal Billy Napier-ey moments. Just packing the ball in at the end of the half could have been disastrous, especially after Kentucky came out in the second half and pulled within seven.

But on the following drive – when a true freshman might have felt pressure as the Wildcats made their run – Lagway made two explosive throws to Chimere Dike to move the Gators right down the field and put Florida up by two touchdowns again.

More difficult games are on the horizon. This is still a flawed team. But they now have a game-changer at QB. That goes both ways. He takes chances Mertz wouldn’t take, which means that sometimes there are going to be bad interceptions. But he takes chances Mertz wouldn’t take, which means that sometimes there are going to be big plays.

And that means that Florida has a chance in every game, even against Georgia and Texas. I’m not saying the Gators will win those games, but I’m saying there is a way to talk yourself into the Gators being in those games with a chance to win.

And that’s a very different place than we were at just a week ago.