Where will the Gators explosive plays come from in 2021?

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I typically post some form of this chart every offseason. The original impetus for posting was when Doug Nussmeier stated in the offseason before the 2017 season that the Gators were focused on red zone scoring because that was the cause of their scoring woes.

But that’s not what the data says. This chart is from the 2020 season, but it’s been the same in every chart I’ve made since that 2017 offseason. The best correlation to scoring out there is looking at yards per play for each team.

That means that explosive plays are critical to scoring because that’s the main driver to having a high yards per play average. So with Kadarius Toney (17 explosives), Kyle Pitts (15) and Trevon Grimes (10) moving on, where are those plays going to come from?

Year-to-year explosiveness

I was on the Kadarius Toney train early on in his Gators career.

You could see how explosive he was, but it wasn’t until I started looking at his statistics that it became clear how explosive. Toney was injured for much of 2019 and so only had 13 targets and 10 catches. But out of those 13 targets, he had 3 explosive (20+ yard) plays (23%).

In 2020, Toney was pretty much the same player in regards to explosiveness, with an explosive per target percentage of 20 percent. The difference is that he was targeted 86 times, which meant that his 17 explosives were a significant part of the offense.

Even more significant though, Toney had a catch per target ratio of 77 percent in 2019 and then 81 percent in 2020. I think this suggests that Toney was open often and the QB wasn’t having to squeeze the ball into tight spots where it could be knocked away.

The same analysis shows a similar trend for Kyle Pitts, who had a catch per target ratio of 68 percent in 2019 and 66 percent in 2020. The difference is that Pitts was more explosive (20% explosive per target in 2020 vs. 11% in 2019). I think this says more about how Pitts was being used in the offense in 2019 than his abilities.

This kind of analysis is what gave me a clue last offseason that Toney, Pitts and Grimes would be able to step in for Swain, Cleveland, Hammond and Jefferson. Those guys had been just as explosive and were getting just as open as their predecessors.

At that point, especially for Toney, it was just a question of health.

What about 2021?

So that naturally begs the question, what about the receivers Florida has coming back in 2021?

At first glance, it actually doesn’t look too bad. Yes, the Gators coming back are less explosive than Toney, Pitts and Grimes, but that should probably be expected since those guys were special. But in the important catch per target metric, the 2021 Gators look to be roughly equivalent; i.e. they’re going to get open.

But that might be a little bit misleading. A huge part of the “everyone else” column is attributable to the running backs (78 targets, 66 catches, 11 explosives). Without the backs, Florida’s receivers had only a 59 percent catch per target ratio and still just a 13 percent explosive per target ratio.

But Florida is expecting to get much more production at running back from players like Demarkcus Bowman and Lorenzo Lingard. If those two can’t replicate the success of Dameon Pierce, Malik Davis and Nay’Quan Wright in the passing game, having a more explosive running game may not be a net gain for the Gators.

The numbers at the receiver and tight end positions were pretty surprising, at least to me. Kemore Gamble (10 catches on 24 targets), Jacob Copeland (23 catches on 40 targets) and Xzavier Henderson (8 catches on 18 targets) all were well below what I was expecting. That’s a problem considering Gamble is likely to receive a lot of time as the starting tight end and Copeland and Henderson are two of the main candidates to be big parts of the offense at receiver.

Five-star transfer Justin Shorter did have 25 catches on 39 targets (64%), but only 5 percent of those catches were for explosive plays. While some of this is attributable to how he was used, I think this does suggest that expecting Shorter to be more than a possession receiver might be misguided.

The guys who measure out well with these metrics are Keon Zipperer (11 catches on 15 targets), Trent Whittemore (10 catches on 12 targets) and Rick Wells (11 catches on 16 targets). Those aren’t the names you likely expect to be the leaders in 2021, but they may well be the guys who carry the load. Whittemore, in particular, turned 3 of his 10 catches into explosive plays, a ratio very similar to Kadarius Toney in 2019 when he also was injured.

The point is that this suggests that when Whittemore was in the game, he was getting open. Maybe that changes when the defense doesn’t have to key on Toney and Pitts, but I think it may suggest that Whittemore is the break-out candidate for 2021.

Takeaway

None of this is to say that another one of the young receivers won’t step up in a way that these statistics don’t suggest.

But I do think it would be naïve to ignore the fact that Gamble’s and Zipperer’s numbers are so different, or that the inconsistency we all see with Jacob Copeland may not go away (58% catch per target in 2020, 54% in 2019).

Fortunately, Copeland still has the ability to convert that relatively low catch rate into explosives (14% explosive per target in 2019 and 20% in 2020). And if he can raise his catch per target ratio up into the mid-60’s, he’s going to be a real problem for opposing defenses this season.

What I do think this data suggests is that Florida shouldn’t rely on major steps forward from multiple players. Expecting a giant jump in explosives for Shorter and a massive jump in consistency for Henderson is probably an unsuccessful strategy.

Instead, leaning on guys like Whittemore and continuing to incorporate the running backs into the mix is going to be the way to keep the passing game moving the ball consistently. Adding Emory Jones’ running ability to the mix is going to help Florida keep its yards per play average up fairly high.

Dan Mullen has a well-deserved reputation for having an offense that can move the ball regardless of the personnel. The Gators lost four NFL-quality receivers after 2019 and the offense got better. There weren’t a lot of people who saw Toney coming in 2020, at least not to become a first round NFL Draft pick. And certainly a lot of people didn’t see Freddie Swain progressing like he did from 2018 to  2019.

Mullen deserves the benefit of the doubt, and I think he’ll have these guys ready to go.

But this is a very different level of turnover at wide receiver than the one that occurred last season.

Happy Independence Day

Recently, I’ve been trying to take a few minutes every holiday to read a little bit more about that particular holiday.

So yesterday, I read something new (to me) about the Declaration of Independence. It turns out that the Declaration was not referenced much early on after the Revolutionary War. It was seen as a document that proclaimed America’s independence but not a seminal piece of literature.

Perhaps that’s because it just wasn’t seen that way. But perhaps it was because those people who wanted to keep slavery recognized that they could not rely on its principles to win that argument, and so it was easier not to reference it than to deal with the cognitive dissonance of having to defend views that did not align with its clear moral guidance.

Indeed, the Declaration was instrumental in ending American slavery and helping build equal rights under the law for everyone. Lincoln referenced it in a foundation-changing way in his Gettysburg Address in 1863. Frederick Douglass’ famous “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” speech in 1852 addressed how the Fourth of July was not his because the Declaration had not been applied to him or his people. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the Constitution and the Declaration in his “I have a dream” speech as a promissory note to which every American was heir, but that had been withheld from Black people.

These speeches brought forth the moral indignation of good people of all races who demanded change because the principles behind the words of Lincoln, Douglass and King, Jr. are convicting. They draw on the ideals of the Declaration in a way that makes it clear to any person who opposes those words that they are in the moral wrong.

That’s why I worry when organizations like the New York Times suggest that the American flag is now a divisive symbol. That suggests that the Times believes that the undergirding principles of the nation are immoral rather than just the people empowered to apply them.

The problem with that is that institutions are always going to be comprised of individuals with varying morality, many of whom will apply their power to harm others. But it is the very existence of those founding principles that prevents that immorality from morphing into tyranny.

I’m not sure how you can read these words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and not appreciate their power.

My in-laws certainly appreciate them, as they immigrated here from Hong Kong in the 1970s and have now seen many western freedoms curtailed in Hong Kong as the Chinese regime has been more aggressive. Even as the instances of anti-Asian crimes goes up here at home, the value of living in a free society is clear.

That doesn’t mean this country is perfect. It doesn’t mean racism is non-existent or that everything is going to be fair in your – or my – life.

But it does mean something that my wife’s family wouldn’t go back to Hong Kong if given the choice. It does mean something that we met in college at UF while her mother and father worked blue collar jobs to fund her education. And it definitely means something that our kids are part of a new generation of children coming from 15 percent of all new marriages in the U.S. that are between spouses of a different race or ethnicity.

Good people can disagree about potential remedies or how to better live out the principles of the Declaration. But if we’re going to find common ground, we have to find it in those principles and then convince others that those provide a God-inspired framework by which we should live.

If not for us, then maybe for the Uyghurs.