Tennessee is no match for the Gators as Florida looks to clinch SEC East

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Florida comes into its game against Tennessee coming off of two ho-hum victories. Given, those wins have come by 21 and 24 points, but the Gators haven’t looked sharp even though they’ve been able to pull away.

They said all the right things this week, as they have the ability to close out the SEC East and guarantee a trip to Atlanta. But they’ve said a bunch of the right things coming into the last two games as well and while those have been wins, they have certainly not instilled confidence that a win over Alabama is imminent.

Memories of the late season loss to Tennessee in 2001 is still fresh in some fans’ minds, particularly mine. I was a student in the 2001 season and got to experience the Travis Stephens experience up-close.

In that game, Stephens went for 226 rush yards (11.9 yards per rush!) and Casey Clausen had just enough to hold off Sexy Rexy and the last shot at getting Steve Spurrier a championship.

But that Volunteers team had Stephens, Donte’ Stallworth and Jason Witten on the offensive side of the ball and John Henderson and Albert Haynesworth on the defensive side of the ball.

This is a very different Volunteers team and program. The only real similarity is that the game is being played in December.

So it really comes down to this: is a focused Gators team going to show up in Knoxville or are they going to mess around and give Tennessee some confidence to potentially pull the upset?

Tale of the Tape

Tennessee has had a disappointing season at 2-5 to be sure, but I don’t think I started to recognize how disappointing until I started looking deeper into the stats.

The Volunteers have played seven games, one less than Florida. Despite that, Florida has given up less points (207 to 219). Yes, Tennessee gave up 48 points to Alabama, but they also gave up 44 to Georgia pre-J.T. Daniels and 34 to the Kentucky team that we just saw could not throw the ball at all.

And while points per game is an imperfect measure for defenses, Florida grades out better on defense in yards per play as well, with the Gators giving up 5.5 and the Vols surrendering 5.7. So as down as you might be on Florida’s defense, Tennessee fans should be even more down on theirs.

That’s particularly true through the air, where Tennessee is giving up a staggering 8.8 yards per pass attempt. That’s worse than Ole Miss’ defense and ranks 116th overall.

So what we have is a Florida offense that wants to throw the ball against a Tennessee defense that gives up yards in spades through the air. Advantage, Florida.

On the offensive side of the ball, Tennessee hasn’t been much better. They’ve only averaged 4.8 yards per attempt on that side of the ball, scoring 141 points (20.1 ppg). That’s McElwain/Nussmeier-level output. To put it in perspective, Florida has scored 206 more points in 2020 than Tennessee. Yikes!

Jarrett Guarantano has been at QB for the Vols most of the year. My knock on Guarantano coming into the year is that he was decent (QB rating of 141.0 and 144.0) the past two years but he didn’t improve. Well, this year he’s been markedly worse (QB rating of 125.4).

His yards per attempt are down (6.7 vs. 8.4 last season) and while he has only thrown four interceptions, the ones he has thrown have been game changers.

None of that may matter though, as former Vol receiver Jayson Swain indicated on this week’s Gators Breakdown podcast that Guarantano is in isolation due to contact with a COVID-positive teammate and so is unlikely to play. That means that Florida will face true freshman Harrison Bailey.

Bailey has seen mostly mop-up duty, going 14-23 for 175 yards, 2 INTs and a QB rating of 107.4. That’s decidedly below average. But that’s a really small sample size, and if you’ve been reading my stuff for any time now, you know I like looking back at high school stats to try and project how QBs will perform in college.

Harrison Bailey high school stats. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

So here are Bailey’s stats in high school. They’re actually pretty good from a completion percentage standpoint, and that 44:9 TD to INT ratio in his senior year looks really promising. But this isn’t Joe Burrow.

Burrow completed over 71 percent of his passes his junior and senior seasons in high school and averaged 12.2 and 12.8 yards per attempt in those seasons. So he was more accurate and pushed the ball down the field much more.

The comparisons I can find from recent years closest to Bailey’s high school stats would be Mitch Trubisky (North Carolina), Jake Browning (Washington), and Kenny Hill (Texas A&M, TCU). Hill was an average QB (QB rating of 143.1) who had to transfer for playing time. Browning was better (QB rating of 150.5) with one huge year in 2016 when he led Washington to the playoff. And Trubisky was very good (QB rating of 157.6) in his one year as a starter with the Tarheels.

Interestingly, only Browning played as a true freshman and he struggled (QB rating 139.3) in his freshman season.

You might be able to get away with a young, but competent, QB if you were Tennessee and playing anyone else. But the Vols are going to have to catch-up to Kyle Trask and this Florida offense.

Trask had an “off” game for him against Kentucky last week, but still had a QB rating over 190. His QB rating of 196.8 ranks fifth in the country and his 10.3 yards per attempt ranks seventh. Trask’s 2020 season has been an absolute buzzsaw with no reason to believe Tennessee is going to be able to slow him down.

So that means that Tennessee is going to have to run the ball to control the clock, right?

Well, the Vols rank 86th in the country in yards per rush. But more than that, it’s where they rush the ball that I find interesting (thanks to www.secstatcat.com for the database of searchable stats).

Rush stats for Tennessee in 2020. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

As you can see, the Vols are really unsuccessful running outside and so don’t do that often at all, running the ball either inside left or inside right 81 percent of the time. That is a huge number when you compare it to Florida, who runs inside only 56 percent of the time.

But Tennessee running inside has huge implications. Think about what you would consider the strength of the Gators defense and I think you’d have to say it is the defensive line, particularly since Kyree Campbell has come back.

That was particularly true last week, as Kentucky only averaged 2.7 yards per rush inside left and 4.2 yards per rush inside right. The big plays came outside, as the Wildcats averaged 8.0 yards per rush outside left and 5.0 yards per rush outside right.

So you have an offense that wants to run it up inside a ton, isn’t very effective at doing so, and is going to want to do that against what is the teeth of the Florida defense.

That just seems like a recipe for disaster.

Takeaway

I know Gators fans are nervous about this one. Vegas senses it too, as the Gators head into the cold weather of Knoxville as 17.5 point favorites. Considering the Gators were 25.5 point favorites last week against a Kentucky team that blew the doors off this Tennessee team, that’s pretty surprising.

Yes, the Gators have had slow starts recently. Yes, there are certainly things we could criticize about Florida’s offense and its ability to put inferior opponents away. And yes, Florida’s defense has made QBs look very good this season.

But the Gators have beaten every opponent they’ve face by at least two touchdowns this season except for the loss to Texas A&M. So if the baseline is a Florida victory by 14, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched that the Gators are going to turn this one into a blowout given the imbalance between the two teams.

We also have to take into account the paths of both teams. Florida is still playing for something really, really big. Tennessee is just playing out the string in the middle of a pandemic.

Kyle Trask is better than Harrison Bailey and it’s not close. Kyle Pitts is the best player on the field, and again, it’s not close. Florida has a better defense (yeah, I know, that’s not something I’ve been able to write a lot this year). Florida has a much better offense.

And given their track records, I think we can safely say that Florida has a much better coach.

Since Mullen took over the Gators, he’s beaten Tennessee by 26 in Knoxville in 2018 and by 31 in 2019. That trend is going to continue, as I think a motivated Gators team is going to send a message.

Florida (-17.5) wins, 45-7.

Predictions this season: 7-1 straight-up, 5-3 against the spread.