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Florida looks for a miracle against Texas

This one’s pretty simple: Florida has almost zero shot if D.J. Lagway isn’t playing.

Texas comes into this game off of a bye week, fully rested, and ready to prove that its loss to Georgia and close call against Vanderbilt are flukes. Florida comes into this game banged up at WR (no Tre Wilson), QB (Lagway, hamstring) and defensive back (Trikweze Bridges and Cormani McClain were the starting corners by the end of the game against Georgia).

Texas has the best defense in the country by a wide margin, no matter what metric you choose to use. Here’s a list of various rankings for the unit:

• Allowing 3.7 yards per play against FBS opponents (#1)
• 94.6 overall defensive ranking according to PFF (#1)
• -0.353 EPA per play against the pass according to SIS (#1)
• 241.3 yards per game allowed (#1)
• 11.5 points per game vs. FBS opponents (#1)

Last week, I highlighted that Georgia’s defense wasn’t as good as those defenses have been historically. Well, the Texas defense is that good, particularly when it comes to stopping the pass.

So how did the Longhorns lose so badly (30-15) to Georgia?

Well, both teams had seven opportunities to score, defined as drives where the offense drove the ball inside its opponents’ 40-yard line. Georgia scored 27 points on those drives and Texas scored 14.

Texas also gave Georgia a bunch of those opportunities.

After Carson Beck drove the Bulldogs deep into Texas territory, he threw an interception that left Texas deep in its own territory. Quinn Ewers was sacked on the ensuing drive and Georgia had to go 13 yards for a TD.

On its next drive, Texas went three-and-out and after penalties and sacks, actually lost 7 yards. After a 46-yard punt was returned 19 yards to the Texas 28, Georgia only gained 13 yards before kicking a field goal.

And on the next drive, Quinn Ewers threw another interception on third-and-5, setting up Georgia at the Texas 34-yard line. Three plays later, it was 17-0 Georgia.

It didn’t get any better for Texas, as Georgia got a field goal on its next drive while only going 25 yards on offense and a field goal at the end of the half a fumble by Arch Manning that only required 4 yards on offense.

In total, Georgia scored 23 points on drives that totaled 89 yards. On its other drives, Georgia had two three-and-outs and two Beck interceptions.

The Quarterbacks

There are a lot of mistakes listed up above, mostly from Quinn Ewers, and that’s probably the one hope for Florida if Lagway can’t go.

Ewers has been bad this year. Not worse than last year. Not just taken a step back. He’s been statistically below average for the entire season.

The two stats I usually use to illustrate that are QB rating and Yards Above Replacement (YAR), my proprietary stat that takes both running and passing efficiency into account. For reference, a YAR of 0.0 is average, 1.0 is Jake Fromm-ish, 2.0 is Heisman-worthy, and anything negative is below average.

Ewers had a QB rating last season of 158.6, which is above average (~147) but not great. His YAR was in the same category at 0.80, which is above average, but not great. With Texas’ defense, that was enough to make the playoff.

But this season, Ewers’ performance has dropped off. His QB rating has dropped to 149.4, which is just average QB play. That would be fine if he had kept his running efficiency where it was the year before (1.3 yards per rush), but that hasn’t been the case. Ewers has been sacked a lot more and is averaging -2.4 yards per rush, pushing his YAR to -0.79.

If you want to know why Texas’ offense has looked stagnant at times, that’s the number to focus on.

When Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian has gone to 5-star backup QB Arch Manning, he’s gotten much better results. Manning has a QB rating of 191.6 (elite) this year in 84 throws and has a YAR of 3.05 (also elite). It is absolutely true that Manning has played against worse competition and at times when games have been non-competitive, he also lit up Mississippi State as a starter (83.9%, 10.4 YPA, 193.2 QB rating) when Ewers was hurt.

This is really reminiscent of Clemson in 2018 with Kelly Bryant at QB. Bryant had waited his turn to start after Deshawn Watson had led the Tigers to a championship in 2016 and had led Clemson to a 12-2 record in 2017 with a playoff loss to eventual champion Alabama. Then in 2018, Bryant shared time with phenom Trevor Lawrence until the fourth game of the season when Lawrence took over and led Clemson to another championship.

Ewers was better last year than Bryant was in 2017, but the reality for Texas is the same. They have a higher ceiling with Manning at QB, so we should be glad that Ewers is the guy Sark keeps throwing out there.

The problem is that even if Ewers replicates this season’s play against the Gators, Texas is likely to have superior QB play in this one.

I feel bad for Aidan Warner. His first major playing time came against a good (not great) Georgia defense at a neutral site. His first start may come against the best defense in the country coming off of a bye on the road. Yikes!

Against Georgia, Warner went 7-22 for 66 yards and an INT. No doubt about it that line is bad. But if we put it in context of his first real game action and compare it to Anthony Richardson’s first start for Florida back in 2021 against Georgia, it looks a little bit better. In that game, Richardson went 12-20 for 82 yards and 2 picks.

But that’s probably the projection for Warner against Texas. The Longhorns are great against the pass but they’re also really good against the run (#11 in yards per rush allowed vs. FBS opponents). Florida is going to struggle to run the ball on the road against this unit, which is going to force Warner to win the game with his arm.

I don’t suspect that will turn out well.

The Lagway Factor

Of course, that all assumes that Warner is the starter. There have been rumblings this week that D.J. Lagway may give it a go, and he has been out at practice this week.

But we have to be realistic about performance expectations for Lagway as well. In a best-case scenario, he’s going to be severely limited to making plays just in the pocket and isn’t going to be any threat with his legs. Given what we’ve seen thus far from him, that makes him much easier to defend.

After Lagway burned Georgia on the deep ball to Mizell, the Bulldogs changed their strategy to contain him, which ironically, led to his injury.

On this play, Florida has five receivers out wide. Georgia responds with six defensive backs, including two safeties in a middle-of-the-field open shell. They then shade their WILL linebacker out towards the three receiver side and have their MIKE linebacker set up 5-yards from the line of scrimmage with only three down linemen. Florida has a huge numbers advantage up-front.

You can tell this is Lagway’s call because Tank Hawkins (#10) and Marcus Burke (#88) are running routes, not blocking as Lagway takes off. Cutting this outside was actually a mistake by Lagway because of this. Had he just gone up the middle, he might have had a huge gain.

But the reason Georgia is in this look is because it allows them to drop a ton of guys into coverage. Lagway can hit the deep shots, so you put two safeties deep. Lagway struggles with underneath throws against zone, which is what he was going to get on this play. Georgia was essentially saying that they would give up the QB draw but they were going to make short throws difficult and deep throws the wrong read.

Texas is going to do this too. They know Lagway wants to go deep. If he decides to do so into double coverage against the best coverage team in the country, they’ll accept that. If he decides to go underneath against the best coverage team in the country, they’ll accept that. And if he decides to run a QB draw on a bad hamstring, they’ll accept that too.

Takeaway

I don’t think Lagway is going to play in this one. I think if he does play, it’s going to take some real magic for him to 1) make it through the game and 2) be effective given what are likely to be severe limitations.

Had he not been injured last week, this game would definitely have a different flavor. It would be an opportunity for him to prove himself to be the heir to the Tebow, Wuerffel, Spurrier throne against a truly elite defense. But the injury just saps this game of that kind of meaning.

Florida’s defense has been better recently, but the interceptions against Carson Beck did cover up that they surrendered an average of 6.2 yards per play against the Bulldogs. Once Beck stopped turning the ball over, the defense just couldn’t hold up. And while I’m sympathetic to the argument that once Warner came in, they ended up gassed, that overlooks the fact that they gave up 6.0 yards per play in the first quarter when Lagway was the Gators QB.

This was a game that everyone had penciled in as a loss to start the season. That was true with Graham Mertz or Lagway at QB. That’s certainly true with Warner back behind center. I wish I had better knews, but that preseason prediction is going to be a reality on Saturday.

Texas (-22.5) wins, 48-13.

Picks this season: 5-2 (3-4 ATS).