Florida was thoroughly outplayed against Kentucky last week no matter how you look at it.
The Gators were outgained 454-360 overall. The Wildcats averaged 8.0 yards per play versus 5.4 for Florida. Kentucky rushed for 303 yards versus 128 for Florida. Kentucky kept Florida in the game with two turnovers at the end of long drives and by committing 12 penalties for 114 yards (versus 6 for 55 for Florida), but at the end of the day, it just wasn’t enough for the Gators to overcome Kentucky’s superiority up-front.
The prevailing thought coming out of the game last week is that Florida is a long way off. I’d agree that the Gators have much to improve upon. But I think throwing dirt on their grave at this point may be somewhat premature.
Now obviously I don’t expect Florida to win the SEC. After all, I picked them to go 7-5 before the season started. And there are plenty of areas where Florida needs to improve and improve quickly.
But there may be one underlying metric that suggests that Florida could get better quickly. That stat is explosive plays.
Importance of explosive plays
It’s not rocket science to say that explosive plays are related to scoring points. But you might be surprised at how much they are related.
Red zone scoring gets a lot of attention, but it really isn’t that important. That’s because scoring doesn’t correlate very well with red zone conversion percentage. It correlates much better with yards per play.
Explosive plays certainly push that metric up, but I would submit that the reason yards per play is a good metric to look at isn’t because a team consistently is able to get 8 yards at a time. Rather it’s because all teams have a baseline of 4-5 yards per play and whether they are a pedestrian or elite offense is tied to the number of explosive plays that they generate.
For this analysis, I’m defining an explosive play as either a run or a pass that goes for longer than 20 yards. If we look at the Kentucky game last week, here’s the Wildcat’s ledger.
- QB Terry Wilson 31 yard run (drive ended in a TD)
- Wilson 29 yard TD pass (same drive as 31 yard run)
- RB Benny Snell 44 yard run (drive ended in INT)
- Wilson 24 yard TD run
- Wilson 54 yard TD pass
- Snell 20 yard run (ran time off the clock)
So all of Kentucky’s 21 offensive points came on drives with explosive plays. The Wildcats generated 202 yards on these six plays. But if you subtract that from its overall total, Kentucky averaged 4.9 yards per play on its other 51 offensive plays.
If we look at Florida in the same game, the Gators only generated two explosive plays. The first was a 30-yard pass to running back Jordan Scarlett down the seam that led to a field goal. The second was a 21-yard run by Franks on third-and-28 in the fourth quarter on a drive that led to a TD.
If we subtract the 51 yards from the two explosive plays from the Gators ledger, Florida averaged 4.8 yards per play on its other 65 plays.
The takeaway here is that Florida’s offense and Kentucky’s offense were identical except for the explosive plays. Now obviously Kentucky executed those plays and they count. But if Florida can prevent those plays from happening – or get more of them on the offensive side of the ledger – the Gators are going to see significant improvement.
If we look the Gators game against Charleston Southern, Florida had five explosive plays totaling 165 yards. If we subtract those from the overall total, Florida averaged 4.6 yards per play on its other 61 plays.
So basically, Florida’s offense played identical against Charleston Southern as it did against Kentucky. It’s just that the Gators were able to pop more explosive plays and so the scoring went way up.
Typically 4.6-4.8 yards per play is going to convert to 17-20 points per game, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Florida came up with 16 against Kentucky.
Application to Colorado State
Colorado State relies on explosive plays to score, just like every team. Last week against Arkansas, the Rams settled for a field goal after its first big play, were forced to punt after its second and fumbled after its third.
In the second half after falling behind 27-9, CSU converted all three of its explosive plays into touchdowns. Absent the six explosive plays, the Rams averaged 3.7 yards per play which would correlate to scoring 8 points. With the explosive plays added in, that expected total went up to 32 (they actually scored 34).
Colorado State has not run the ball well at all thus far in 2018, averaging 3.0 yards per rush versus 8.0 through the air. This likely favors Florida as the Gators have really struggled against the run, allowing over 200 yards to both opponents thus far. Additionally, the Gators defense has surrendered eight explosive plays, and six of them have been runs.
However, that does not mean that Colorado State isn’t a threat to the Gators defense. Florida’s linebackers really struggled in coverage last season, and as much as the defense struggled against Kentucky, they still haven’t been tested in the passing game much. That will change with Colorado State.
This play is just a drop down to an outlet receiver, in this case the running back in the flat. However, Arkansas’ linebacker does not force the running back to cut back inside, and he is able to gain significant yardage on the sideline.
If this looks familiar, it should. Florida’s linebackers struggled with this all last season. But it’s not just the linebackers.
On this play, Kentucky throws the screen out to a wide receiver. The Florida cornerback (Trey Dean) allows the receiver to get to the sideline rather than forcing him back to the middle of the field. That turns what may be a 5-yard gain into a 15-yard gain.
The other place where Colorado State should be able to challenge Florida’s defense is by using tight end Cameron Butler. Butler is 6’2” tall and 238 pounds, but he has some pretty obvious skills as a receiver.
On this play, Colorado State motions Butler out into the slot and gets him isolated one-on-one on a linebacker. He immediately beat the linebacker on a slant and is able to create an explosive play just because of his superior athletic ability.
That athletic ability was on display again on this play, where Colorado State ran a little bit of a rub route at the line of scrimmage. But in this situation, the rub was used to get Butler open deep rather than typical rub routes that get someone open nearer the line of scrimmage.
This play really displays Butler’s speed and you have to wonder how Florida is going to cover him. Chauncey Gardner-Johnson probably isn’t big enough to hold up against Butler in the run game. But any of the Gators linebackers likely isn’t fast enough to stop him in the passing game.
Prediction
Florida’s offense struggled against Kentucky, but the game was lost because the defense couldn’t stop Kentucky. I do believe that had Florida been able to get a few more punts from Kentucky – or at least been able to stop the Wildcats a little bit – Mullen could have relied on the run more in the second half had he not felt the game slipping away.
Colorado State can certainly put up points, and just showed it can do so against SEC teams. However, the Rams have also fallen behind early in each of its three games. Against Hawaii and Colorado, they were down 23-7 and 28-10 at the half and in the third quarter against Arkansas they were behind 27-9.
You can’t rely on comebacks as a consistent way of winning games. And Colorado State will have to be really careful about falling behind Florida because this is a team low on confidence that is going to be dangerous if it can catch a couple of breaks early and can get up two scores early like the Rams other opponents.
You have to imagine that Florida defensive coordinator Todd Grantham has emphasized fixing some of the issues that led to explosive plays against Kentucky. Additionally, Colorado State isn’t going to get those plays on the ground based on how it has played thus far in 2018.
That means that Florida has to hold up in the passing game. Arkansas gave up six explosive plays last week but only gave up 3.7 yards per play otherwise. If Florida can limit Colorado State to just four explosive plays, that means Florida should give up 23 points.
So the question is whether the Gators offense can put up 23 points. While Florida hasn’t been very effective on offense in years, Colorado State’s defense has been a sieve this season, allowing 38.3 points per game. It has also given up an average of 6.3 explosive plays per game.
If Florida maintains its 4.6 yard per play average and adds six explosive plays, the Gators will score 42 points. I think that’s unlikely, but even if Florida only gets three explosive plays, the Gators should score 31 points.
On Saturday you can watch for whether there is push from the offensive line, whether linebackers are making or missing tackles and whether Feleipe Franks is always making the right read. But the thing that’s going to determine the outcome of this game is whether Florida’s defense can clean up the things that led to big plays last week and whether Florida’s offense can take advantage of a Colorado State defense that typically surrenders quite a few.
Florida’s offense is limited and so to expect six big plays is likely a lot. But I think we can expect three. And if that’s what we can expect and if the defense can play just a little bit better than last week, Florida will win the game.
Florida wins: 31-23.
Picks this year thus far: 1-1 straight up, 1-1 ATS
