Defense steps up in Gators second-half domination of Kentucky

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Just win, baby.

That was what I said earlier in the week that the Gators had to do in order to keep all of their goals in front of them, and that’s exactly what they did in a 34-10 win over Kentucky.

It wasn’t the prettiest win you’ll ever see. It’s hard to win pretty when you only possess the ball for 6:37 in the first half. It’s also hard to win pretty when you turn the ball over twice on fumbles.

But eventually what we all expected to happen happened, as Florida pulled away in the second half when they weren’t really threatened by Kentucky.

I say this because the Gators started the game in the first quarter averaging 10.7 yards per play against Kentucky’s 3.1. That indicated that Florida was clearly the better team. Kentucky was able to push the Gators in the second quarter, averaging 5.2 yards per play and putting together a couple of solid drives, even taking a 10-7 lead late into the second quarter.

But then Florida made a couple of special teams plays, first on a punt that pinned Kentucky at its own one-yard line. Then, on a punt return where Xzavier Henderson faked out the entire punt return defense and left Kadarius Toney free to run it back for a backbreaking touchdown.

At that point, Florida was up 14-10 and was well on its way.

I know some fans won’t be happy with a 34-10 win. It isn’t as flashy as the 63-3 demolition Alabama put on the Wildcats last week.

But a relatively stress-free win over an SEC opponent isn’t something to scoff at.

Defense

The Florida defense is clearly the weak link of this team. But the defense actually played well in this one, and that’s before they seemingly turned things up in the second half.

Fans are going to want to divide this one into the segments before and after Mullen lit into defensive coordinator Todd Grantham on the sideline, but here’s the reality. The Gators only surrendered 3.1 yards per play in the first quarter and 3.6 yards per play for the entire game.

That number is significant because Kentucky came into the game averaging 4.9 yards per play and the Gators came in surrendering 5.8.

I mentioned in my preview that the 2007 Florida defense gave up 28.0 points per game in SEC play, very similar to the 2020 team coming in. Well, after only surrendering 10 points to Kentucky, this squad is now down to surrendering 25.9 points per game. That’s certainly not the 15.8 of 2006 or 13.3 of 2008, but it is progress.

Terry Wilson was completely limited, only throwing for 62 yards and a Yards above Replacement (YAR, my proprietary stat to evaluate QBs where zero is average, 1.0 is good and 2.0 is Heisman-worthy) of -2.76. This is the fourth time the defense has held a QB to a negative YAR lower than 2.0.

Opposing QBs have now posted a YAR below zero (-0.29) overall for the season against the Gators defense. Considering the team with the better QB play usually wins and Florida has Kyle Trask on its side, it’s no surprise that the Gators have been able to go 7-1.

The issue for Florida’s defense the past couple of games has been big plays. Feleipe Franks hit a few in the Gators win over Arkansas and Vanderbilt was able to hit its share as well last week.

Well, the Gators cleaned that up, allowing zero plays of over 20 yards for the entire game.

A lot will be made of Mullen’s animated dressing down of Grantham, and for fans who have been calling for Grantham’s head, I’m sure it was satisfying. From my perspective, it looks like Mullen was upset at the defense Grantham called on a previous third down where Kentucky QB Terry Wilson ran for a first down.

On this play, Grantham calls a blitz up the middle with linebacker Amari Burney (#30). Burney gets cut by Asim Rose (#10) and doesn’t get up fast enough to fill the gap left by Marlon Dunlap (#91) trying to beat his man to the outside. Mohamoud Diabate (#11) can’t quite stop fast enough to trip up Wilson and it’s a first down for Kentucky.

But this is really an anomaly. Florida actually did a good job holding up in coverage even though it was blitzing. And you would normally expect a 5-man defensive line to be able to contain a QB better than a 4-man line.

I suspect Mullen was mad though because they had game-planned to go with lots of zone defense on third down against Wilson, precisely to guard against the QB scramble. Mullen’s explosion actually came after the next third down – a stop – where the Gators did just that.

Here the Gators play a zone behind a 4-man rush. Wilson can’t find a receiver but also doesn’t have anywhere to scramble and has to throw the ball away. The defensive line does a better job staying in its gaps, but even if Wilson had gone by the line, he was going to run into linebackers ready to stop him short of the goal line.

That was the theme in the second half. Wilson threw two interceptions in the second half. Both were against a 3-man rush with a linebacker playing spy to make sure he didn’t scramble. It wasn’t just on those plays either as Florida dialed back the blitzing considerably in the second half and forced a bunch of stops.

Look, this isn’t ever going to be a great defense. The only hope for championships rests in the offenses ability to outscore the Gators opponent with a defense that can get a stop or two on occasion. That’s a difficult path to a championship.

But it can be done. Excluding the SEC Championship Game last season, last year’s LSU squad gave up 25.5 points per game against SEC opponents. So there is a template.

Offense

If you want to point towards why this felt like such a slog, don’t look at the defense, look at the offense.

The first drive ended up in a big touchdown throw to Kyle Pitts, but required a fake punt deep in Gator territory to keep the drive going. The second drive ended in a fumble on a little bubble screen to Justin Shorter. The third drive ended after Kyle Trask threw a ball a little bit high to Malik Davis on a slant and it went through his hands. And the fourth drive was basically dead in the water after Stone Forsythe was called for a facemask on a screen pass to Trevon Grimes.

Against a better opponent, this game could have gone a lot different.

Instead, Florida’s special teams finally made a difference for really the first time this year. First, it was the fake punt that set up the deep throw to Pitts. Next, it was the coffin-corner punt by Jacob Finn that pinned Kentucky at its own one-yard line. Then it was the punt return for a touchdown by Kadarius Toney set-up by Kentucky punter Max Duffy punting the ball to the wrong side of the field.

If it felt like Kyle Trask was dumping the ball off more than usual, that’s because he was (h/t secstatcat.com for the searchable database).

Trask frequency of distance against Kentucky and overall. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Compared to throwing the ball behind the line of scrimmage only 16 percent of the time so far this year, Trask threw behind the line 26 percent against Kentucky. He threw at a depth of 0-10 yards at the exact same percentage, but those throws only netted 5.4 yards per attempt compared to 9.8 yards per attempt all season.

They did that by getting pressure with only four rushers and by changing coverages on the back-end of the defense to confuse Trask. You can see both of those things on the opening third down of the first quarter.

Prior to the snap on this play, you can see that the two safeties are lined up parallel, indicating they’ll both be back in some sort of zone. But at the snap, the strong safety (Chris Oats, #22) comes forward with the free safety dropping back into the middle.

The initial read for Trask is to go to Pitts, but he double-clutches (wisely) concerned he might lay one out there for Kentucky to take the other way for a pick-six. By the time he gets to his second read (Toney), he has Kentucky linebacker Jamin Davis (#44) in his face. The throw is a little bit behind Toney and Oats makes a good tackle to prevent the first down.

Without knowing the play call, it is impossible for me to know, but I suspect that Trask’s first read here is Pitts/Grimes to the left side if Kentucky is playing cover-2. Bringing the safety forward changes that first read but Trask had already locked-on and so Kentucky won this play.

That kind of thing only works for so long against a player as good as Trask. But the real key to all of this is that Kentucky only had four men in the box. To start last season, Feleipe Franks would have run the ball here. And as much as fans want to criticize Jean Delance, it is Richard Gouraige (#76) who gets confused and allows Davis to come free.

I know people were disappointed in the second half that Mullen went “conservative”. I certainly would have liked to see some more fireworks just for the fun of it. But Mullen was doing something important.  Florida has to start establishing some sort of running game to help out Trask.

Otherwise, the windows that were much tighter against Kentucky are going to get even tighter moving forward.

Takeaway

This game against Kentucky is what it is, a 24-point win against an overmatched squad.

It could have been much more than 24 points had Florida wanted it to be. The score was also suppressed because Kentucky had so many long, time-consuming drives in the first half.

Certainly, some of that is on Florida to get off the field. But some of that is a Kentucky strategy that worked to keep games close against more talented teams like Georgia earlier in the year.

I suspect the score tells us what we already kind-of know. Florida is a better team than the Bulldogs, but not quite on the level of Alabama, who eviscerated the Wildcats just last week.

The good news is, there’s still time to improve.

And the defense is improving. Khris Bogle is getting playing time that had been reserved for Jeremiah Moon and is bringing considerable pressure. Tedarrell Slaton made multiple plays in the backfield to thwart Kentucky drives on what should have been pretty easy first down conversions. And James Houston and Mohamoud Diabate really flew around at linebacker.

Diabate, in particular, really looks to be growing into that linebacker spot and is only going to get better with time.

The offense looked sluggish at times, but part of that was what Kentucky was forcing them to do. Without being able to run the ball much in the first half, the Gators found themselves in a lot of third-and-longs are weren’t able to convert as often as they’d like (1-4 in first half).

The Toney return seemed to wake everyone up and from there, the game got out of hand quickly for Kentucky.

Was it the best win Florida has ever had? No.

But is a 24-point win against a quality SEC opponent anything to turn our nose up at? No to that as well.

I get it. We’re all looking ahead and measuring Florida against the Alabama juggernaut on the horizon. But you have to imagine that Florida’s players are as well. When you know you have your shot at the Tide coming up, I can understand why it would be hard to concentrate against Vanderbilt and Kentucky.

“But championship teams don’t do that!” is the refrain I suspect I may hear from some fans. Well, Florida has victories of 16, 14, 24, 16, 28, 21 and now 24 points. Those are blowouts folks.

I know we’ve gotten used to it this year, but let’s not take them for granted. Florida had SEC wins of 8, 11 and 11 last year, along with losses by 14 and 7. The only loss this year was by three on the road and the rest have been laughers.

If you think that’s something to complain about, I suggest you speak to your Georgia friends, who were ecstatic last week after beating Mississippi State at home by a touchdown.

Featured image used under Creative Commons license courtesy arctic_whirlwind