Gators try to avoid a letdown against Arkansas and Feleipe Franks

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Florida comes off of a huge, emotional win over Georgia and has another emotional moment this week as Feleipe Franks returns to the Swamp as Arkansas’ starting QB.

It’s an interesting dynamic. Franks is clearly going to want to play well in his return to a place where he started for nearly two full seasons. Florida’s defense has also struggled against the pass.

But nobody should know Franks’ strengths and weaknesses better than Dan Mullen. After all, it was Mullen who took Franks from a tentative QB, shellshocked by a 2017 season where everything went wrong, to the leader of the team who was blowing the doors off of Michigan in the 2018 Peach Bowl.

A lot has changed since Franks went out with a gruesome ankle injury against Kentucky.

Kyle Trask came into the game, led Florida to comeback victory, and has emerged as a Heisman contender this season. Florida has gone from a team that relied on its defense to win games with a game manager at QB to a team with an offense that can’t be stopped, and a defense that sometimes makes the opposing offense look the same.

On the Arkansas side, things have changed too. New head coach Sam Pittman has the Razorbacks at 3-3, with three SEC wins in this weird season. Those three SEC wins are three more than previous head coach Chad Morris had in his two seasons in Fayetteville.

Morris’ teams were McElwainian on offense (21.7 ppg in 2018 and 21.4 in 2019) and equally bad on the defensive side of the ball (34.8 ppg in 2018, 36.8 in 2019). Pittman hasn’t improved the offense a ton in 2020 (24.5 ppg), but the defense is way, way better (26.2 ppg).

But Arkansas’ defense isn’t on the same level as Georgia, even with all of the injuries the Bulldogs had last week. So that means the key question for this game is this:

Can Franks and the Arkansas offense keep up?

Game Preview

A quick answer to that question is that it’s unlikely.

That isn’t a shot at Franks. It’s actually more of a shot at Arkansas’ running game.

The Razorbacks are ranked 97th in the country in yards per rushing attempt at 3.4 yards. That just isn’t a very effective running game. That’s reflected in the fact that Franks actually has the most carries on the team, with 72. Much of that is due to the offensive line, which according to Football Outsiders advanced stats, just isn’t very good.

That offensive line is also bad in pass protection, as the Razorback offensive line ranks 100th in sack rate, 101st in standard down sack rate and 96th in pass down sack rate. Now, certainly some of that is due to the offensive line, but I also suspect some of that is due to Franks, who had a tendency to hold the ball in his time in Gainesville.

So if the Razorbacks don’t have a very good running game, how does Franks compare to Trask? Well, not well (not that any QB compares well to Trask).

2020 YAR for Feleipe Franks and Kyle Trask. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Franks only has one more attempt than Trask this year, but Trask has nearly 400 more yards in those attempts. Yes, Arkansas doesn’t pass as much on a per-game basis, but Trask is so much more efficient that he’s averaging 10 yards per throw whereas Franks is down at 7.8.

You can get away with that sort of average if you’re a true dual-threat QB. For example, Miami’s D’Eriq King is slightly better at 8.2 yards per attempt, but King also has 82 carries for 406 yards. By contrast, Franks has only 174 yards rushing on his 72 rushes, which is below average efficiency.

The result is that despite a QB rating of 154.7 – higher than King’s 152.6 – Franks has graded out using my Yards above Replacement (YAR) stat as essentially average (0 is average, 1.0 is good, 2.0 is elite). On the other hand, King has a YAR of 1.08.

That points out how impressive Trask has been. Because while King has been good, Trask has been more than twice as good by YAR. Part of that is that Trask rarely runs the ball, but even when he has this season, he’s been more efficient than Franks (3.2 yards per attempt). And the 10 yards per attempt that he’s putting up is elite.

And that’s perhaps the thing that separates these two QBs. You can really see it if you look at their YAR as a function of games played. I started this analysis in 2018 because that 2017 season under the McElwain/Nussmeier regime shouldn’t be held against Franks and because this looks at what Franks and Trask both did within Dan Mullen’s offense. Trask’s chart starts with his entrance in the Kentucky game last season.

Feleipe Franks’ and Kyle Trask’s YAR versus games played. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

What you see in the chart above is that through the first nine games of their careers both QB’s performances bounced around quite a bit. Then at game 10, both Franks and Trask saw a significant uptick in their play towards the end of the season.

Franks looked to have taken a step forward in 2019 before getting injured, but has basically returned to the QB that he was in 2018 now that he’s at Arkansas. Trask – on the other hand – has continued improving, with his best two games as a Gator coming against Missouri and Georgia.

It is something I wonder about. Would Franks have shown the same trajectory had he not been injured? Or would Trask have gotten a shot quickly anyway if Florida had lost a second straight game to Kentucky?

What this analysis tells me is that on a raw numbers basis, there is no reason to believe Franks is going to be able to keep up with Trask. That means his offense has to keep Trask and the Gators offense off of the field.

But that’s a problem because on third-and-long (10+ yards), Franks is 11 of 15 (73%) but Arkansas has only converted two first downs. In fact, if we sort (thanks www.secstatcat.com) by third down at any distance, Franks is 32 of 49, but only 16 first down conversions, so half the time Franks completes the ball, the receiver doesn’t make it past the sticks.

The result is that Arkansas has only converted 36.4 percent of its third downs.

One thing I pointed out in my Georgia preview was that while Florida’s defense had struggled to get off of the field on third down, they did so against Ole Miss and Texas A&M, who are both in the top-10 in terms of conversion percentage. Georgia ranked in between South Carolina and Missouri coming into last week’s game and promptly converted on two of 13 third-down attempts.

Arkansas is converting 10 percent less often than the Bulldogs.

Takeaway

All of that points to an inevitable conclusion.

When the Vegas line came out (Gators favored by 17.5), I was a little bit surprised. After all, Florida hasn’t beaten anybody by that much except for Missouri. And I do suspect Florida may end up being a little bit less explosive if Kyle Pitts is unable to go due to the concussion he suffered last week.

But Arkansas can’t run the ball. They can’t convert third downs. And Franks – despite his good QB rating above 150 – has been about an average QB by my metrics.

Maybe that’s due to his offensive line being terrible in pass protection, but regardless, there isn’t a lot that points towards him coming in and lighting up the Gators. Chances are, he’ll be able to hit a few plays, but being able to keep Trask off the field consistently seems unlikely.

Add to that Arkansas’ defense. It certainly has improved under Sam Pittman in his first season. But part of that is because the Razorbacks have 11 interceptions and 3 fumble recoveries. That’s a heavy reliance on turnovers to keep the opposing offense down.

But those turnovers aren’t coming from pressure. Arkansas only has 11 sacks and 34 tackles for loss this season, despite facing over 500 plays. Florida’s defense has only faced 338 plays and has 13 sacks.

That means that what we’re looking at is a defense that doesn’t get any pressure against a QB who has pinpoint accuracy. That’s a problem.

Normally, coming down off of an emotional victory over Georgia, I’d expect Florida to come out flat. Maybe they still will.

But the factor of their close friend coming back to campus is likely to get everyone juiced from the get-go. And while Franks is going to be motivated to prove to everyone that he is just as good as Trask, I suspect Trask is just as motivated to put on a show against the guy he struggled to beat out in camp.

So if the Gators aren’t flat and Arkansas can’t get pressure on Trask, the question is who can hold up in the Razorback’s secondary against Kadarius Toney for four or five second. The answer to that question, is nobody.

Gators win (-17.5), 49-14.

Predictions this season: 4-1, 3-2 against the spread.

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