Finish Them: Florida looks to maul FSU on its way to 7-5
Coming into this year, the Gators annual matchup with Florida State on the Saturday after Thanksgiving looked to be the end of a brutal five-game stretch that would make-or-break Billy Napier’s tenure in Gainesville.
Well, it turns out none of that is true. Billy Napier has already secured his gig for 2025 and has discovered his QB of the present and future in D.J. Lagway. Meanwhile, Mike Norvell’s squad has taken a nosedive, unable to replace Jordan Travis and others who left for the NFL Draft.
The result is that the tables are turned on what we thought we might have coming in. While some may have doubted D.J. Uiagalelei’s ability to replace Travis, nobody could have imagined that FSU would be looking to avoid double-digit losses coming into this game. And after two straight wins over ranked opponents in The Swamp, the Gators travel to Tallahassee with the opportunity to beat a rival, secure a 7-5 record and keep momentum going for a program that has had precious little over the past decade.
The win over Ole Miss was supposed to be a sign that this team is different than others in the Napier era; that this team can handle success and keep its focus. But the last two weeks have been at home, and Florida has been the underdog.
Will they be able to keep it going on the road and the favorite?
The Stats
Florida State has earned its 2-9 record. The ‘Noles have been outscored by its opponents by 131 points. If you remove the 41-7 victory over FCS Charleston Southern from last week, the Seminoles have been outscored by an average of 16.5 points per game.
Whenever you’re losing by more than two touchdowns consistently, it’s a complete system failure, but the failure for FSU has definitively been on offense.
The ‘Noles rank 133rd (out of 134 FBS teams) in yards per play gained, rank 133rd in yards per rush and 127th in yards per pass. Their average of 4.0 yards per play is just a tick better than Florida’s offense when Aidan Warner was the QB against Georgia and Texas (3.93 yards per play).
So as helpless as you felt watching Warner lead the Gators against the Longhorns is as helpless as FSU fans have felt all season long.
You could say that futility is because the ‘Noles are on their third QB, but that belies the fact that Uiagalelei wasn’t any good when he was in there either. The Seminoles’ D.J. had a QB rating of 112.0 before going out with an injury. His replacements – Brock Glenn and Luke Kromenhoek – have QB ratings of 91.5 and 116.6, respectively. Kromenhoek is getting the start because he’s been the best of the three, and he’s been terrible thus far.
Even when Travis went out last season, FSU was able to rely on a strong defense to keep things going until the annihilation by Georgia. No so this season.
The ‘Noles defense ranks 80th in yards per play allowed, 94th in yards per rush and 83rd in yards per pass. While this is bad, it actually isn’t that much different than Florida, who ranks 74th, 66th and 88th in those same stats. There are some advanced stats that suggest Florida’s defense is better, but this isn’t really a major advantage for the Gators.
But the Gators do have a huge advantage on the offensive side of the ball. While Florida only ranks 57th in yards per play this season, the Gators have been a top-10 offense since D.J. Lagway took over full-time at QB.
Prior to Mertz’s ACL injury against Tennessee, the Gators averaged 5.95 yards per play, which would rank similarly to Iowa St. or Memphis (37th and 38th) over a full season. But since the second half against Tennessee (and omitting any plays led by Warner), Florida has averaged 6.6 yards per play, which would be tied at 9th with Oregon, Louisville and Notre Dame.
Yes, the Lagway effect is real. The Gators have a top-10 offense with their true freshman phenom at the helm.
FSU’s Quarterback
It actually makes sense for FSU to start Kromenhoek. They’ve determined that Brock Glenn isn’t the future, and Kromenhoek was a highly-rated recruit.
Out of Benedictine Military School in Savannah, Georgia, Kromenhoek was the 59th overall recruit in the 2024 class according to his 247Sports Composite ranking. That is the profile of a player who works out about a quarter of the time.
If we look deeper at Kromenhoek’s high school stats, we see a player who only got significant playing time at the position as a junior and senior, completing 65 percent of his throws for 9.8 yards per attempt in 2022 and 63 percent for 9.7 yards per attempt in 2023.
This suggests two things. First, Kromenhoek is on the low end for both completion percentage and yards per attempt for recruits at this typical level. This suggests to me that he is a guy who is ranked where he is because of his arm talent and not his ability to read a defense.
That’s exactly what we see here. Kromenhoek has a man wide open on the back side of the formation but never comes off of his initial read. He is able to fit the ball into the space, but if the linebacker had tipped this or if he had overthrown it just a little bit, it turns into a pick.
You can see the same thing here, as Miami gives Kromenhoek a single-high safety look and he knows he’ll have the ability to get to the ball to his outside receiver. This is a laser that is perfectly placed for an explosive for FSU.
You might say that looks like a throw D.J. Lagway might make, and you’re not completely wrong. But here’s the thing about Kromenhoek: those throws have been few and far between.
Kromenhoek has a QB rating of 133.3 on deep (20-plus yards) throws and 94.7 on deep intermediate throws (11-20 yards). Compare that to Lagway who has a QB rating of 315.6 on deep throws (5 TDs, 1 INT) and it’s clear the Gators will have an advantage when it comes to creating explosive plays.
FSU’s Defense
The Seminoles defense hasn’t been a truly weak link, but as highlighted above, they haven’t been lights-out either.
One interesting stat I found courtesy Sports Info Solutions is that FSU’s use of man coverage ranks 14th in the country. However, the ‘Noles are helping out their coverage men by sitting in a two-high safety shell 78 percent of the time, ranked 6th in the country. They rarely blitz – 22 percent of the time, 101st in the country – and so Florida should expect to get a lot of man coverage underneath with deep safety help.
This plays right into the Gators hands.
There are two ways to attack this sort of coverage. The first way is to use motion to get defenders out of position.
On this play, FSU is in a two-high safety look. Miami sends its running back in motion, leading the slot corner driving on a potential swing pass to the outside. That leaves the middle linebacker (#28) to have to get out to cover the slot receiver. He doesn’t get over, the deep safety doesn’t come up until the ball is thrown, and the result is that you see one of the easiest 14-yard gains you’re ever going to see.
The other way to attack this sort of coverage is to put a defender in a lose-lose position of having to choose one man to defend, which leaves the other open. These are called high-low reads and are easy for a QB of Lagway’s skill.
This look at the All-22 film shows why this can be so dangerous. Watch the receiver at the top of the screen drive his route directly at the safety to his side as the slot receiver (Xavier Restrepo) does the same to the safety on the other side of the field. Because this is a man-under coverage, both corners are in what is called “trail coverage” behind their men, funneling them into the safety.
The problem for FSU is that Restrepo fakes going vertical (a weakness for these defenses as well) and instead breaks his route across the field. That safety at the top of the screen has to decide: does he follow the receiver streaking deep or does he break off and help cover Restrepo.
He chooses the deep route, which leaves Restrepo open on the crosser. Note that FSU’s other safety gets turned around on the play and actually leaves the backside receiver open on a crosser as well.
This isn’t exactly a flood concept like Napier and Lagway run often, but it has the same hallmarks. You’re trying to make the safety to one side have to make a choice. He can’t choose right if the QB throws to the correct receiver. And in the example above, if the safety had come up to help with Restrepo, that would have meant a receiver streaking downfield in one-on-one coverage.
Lagway doesn’t miss those.
Takeaway
The line on this game keeps moving. When I looked at it on Thursday morning, it was 14.5 points in favor of Florida. It is now up to 16.5 points as bettors are putting money on the Gators to walk away with a decisive victory in Tallahassee.
That is a lot of points for a team that only has two victories of more than that all season (17 against Mississippi State and 28 against Kentucky). Still, this FSU team is vastly inferior to those Bulldog and Wildcat squads, and Kentucky is the only time Lagway has started against an unranked team.
One of the hallmarks of a young player is usually inconsistent play. I think we can say that we still see that from Lagway in-game, but when we take his performances as a whole, they’re pretty consistent. He now has a QB rating of 163.5 (average is ~148) and a Yards Above Replacement (YAR, my proprietary stat that takes a QBs running and passing into account) of 2.42. That’s already playing at a Heisman level.
If we just look at his starts, he has a QB rating of 193.7 and a YAR of 5.31. That does include his performance against Samford, but if we subtract that from the ledger, his record in starts is still a QB rating of 155.0 and a YAR of 2.69. Florida is a top-10 offense with Lagway in the game because Lagway is playing like a top-10 QB, even on one leg.
Conversely, Kromenhoek has a QB rating of 116.6 and a YAR of -1.04 for the season. He can use his legs to do some damage, and if you give him single-high safety looks, he’s going to be able to make the throws. But Florida has been sitting in zone coverages and relying on its defensive line for a month now, and I don’t expect that to change in this one.
Florida would be a much better team than Florida State even if they just had an average QB. But Florida has a kid who is putting up Heisman-level numbers, albeit in limited time. That means there’s a reason why the Gators are favored by 16.5 points.
Florida (-16.5) wins, 45-6.
Picks this year: 7-3 (5-5 ATS).