Gators take down the Utes

Every once in a while in college football, you get a game or a moment that takes your breath away. When you get both, it’s a reminder of why the sport truly is the greatest in the world.

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Whether it is the whipping of Ole Miss in 2015, the fourth-and-14 to Antonio Callaway, the heave to Cleve in 2017, the Burrow pick-6 in 2018 or the Lamical Perine run against Auburn in 2019, there have been a lot of special moments in the Swamp.

But I can’t imagine that any of those moments or games were any better than the opening salvo in the Billy Napier era, as Anthony Richardson proved to be everything we thought he could be and then much maligned Amari Burney came up with the interception that sealed Utah’s fate.

The Gators went 1-4 in one-score games last season. That included the early 31-29 loss to Alabama that set the tone for what was to come in the 2021 season.

In fact, as Ventrell Miller dropped what seemed like a sure-fire interception on the second play of the final drive, I had flashbacks to that Alabama game when Brenton Cox dropped into coverage against Alabama and dropped a Bryce Young throw that hit him right in the stomach. A few plays later in that one, Alabama scored to keep Florida on its heels.

But against Utah with overtime seeming like the best case scenario for the Gators, Rising went for the kill and Burney read his eyes and stepped in front. It was a cathartic moment for a guy who many Gators fans didn’t want to come back both because of the result, but also because it came against a former Gators linebacker (Mohamoud Diabate) who many Gators fans were upset to see leave.

Add that story to the emergence of Anthony Richardson as the player who you want leading a last-minute drive and Gators fans have to be over the moon. Richardson’s throwing stats weren’t spectacular, but he proved what we thought we knew about him last season: his upside isn’t just good, it’s truly special.

College football comes at you fast. Kentucky is coming into the Swamp next week and a loss in that one will make people forget the good vibes from this one pretty fast.

But that discussion can wait until later in the week. For now, the Gators can bask in the glow of a win over a top-10 team and the knowledge that they can hang with just about anyone in the country.

Not all one-score games are created equal

As I was sitting in the stands, to me it felt like two things were true: first, Florida was constantly playing from behind but second, it felt like Florida had the upper hand.

That seems weird to say for a game that was decided on an interception that prevented the opposition from forcing overtime, but if we take a look at the advanced stats, that’s exactly the story that they tell.

Collegefootballdata.com has a bunch of stats that I have started to follow much more closely the past couple of years. My favorite is a stat called post-game win percentage, which is a measure of how often a team would have won the game if the game was played again with the exact same stats.

The post-game win percentage in this game? The Gators would have won 99 percent of the time.

So why is that true? Well, I think we can point to a few very distinct things.

The first is that the stat takes the entire game into account and Utah wasn’t very good in the first half. The Utes had zero explosive plays, only had 134 yards of total offense and averaged 4.3 yards per play. Florida had two explosives, 248 yards and averaged 7.8 yards per play. The fact that the Gators only had a one-point lead at the half was not reflective of their dominance early in the contest.

That’s because the Gators couldn’t stop shooting themselves in the foot.

The obvious one is the fumble on the opening drive, which Utah returned deep into Gators territory and a potential 3 or 7-point lead for Florida turned into a 7-point deficit with Utah only having to gain 25 yards. But that wasn’t the only one.

After Utah drove 50 yards for a field goal and a 10-7 lead, the Gators pinned themselves deep in their own territory with a holding penalty on Jordan Pouncey. After a three-and-out and a 39-yard punt (returned 10 yards), Utah was able to tack on another field goal.

After the goal-line stand, Florida was ahead 14-13 and driving into Utah territory. But on third-and-5, Florida jumped offsides and forced Richardson into a third-and-10 opportunity he wasn’t able to convert.

But Florida did a couple of things really, really well. First, the Gators had four scoring chances (opportunities inside its opponents 40-yard line) and scored 22 points (5.5 points per opportunity). Conversely, Utah had seven possessions inside Florida’s 40-yard line and only came away with 26 points (3.7 points per opportunity).

Normally when a team gets inside its opponents 40-yard line three more times in a game, that means they dominated the game but that wasn’t the case here. Instead, the reason for this disparity is that Florida’s average starting position was 81.6 yards from the end zone while Utah’s was 67.3.

The end result is that Florida dominated Utah in predicted points added (PPA) by a significant margin (0.5059 vs. 0.2223) but the game was still close. That should be a significant confidence boon for Gators fans as it suggests that Florida didn’t skate by with this victory, but actually played way better than the score indicates.

Defensive improvement

The Gators defense was not great against Utah. You can’t ever call a defense great that gives up 446 yards and 6.3 yards per play. But you can acknowledge that while also acknowledging that this was a major improvement for a unit that struggled last season.

For the most part, the defense kept Cam Rising in check through the air. His QB rating of 129.5 was well below last season’s average (146.7). That was important because Rising was extremely effective on the ground, averaging 13 yards per rush and running for 91 yards.

The result was that Rising had a PPA for the game of 0.320, which is good but not great (last season, he was above 0.424) and a Yards Above Replacement (YAR) – my proprietary statistic for quantifying a QB’s value in the passing and running game – of 1.24, which qualifies as better than good but not elite.

As mentioned above, Utah didn’t have any explosive plays in the first half, but as the Gators defense wore down in the third quarter, those started to come. Utah had five in the second half, and those were a big reason that the Utes were in Florida territory for what seemed like the entire second half.

Of course, the biggest improvement for the defense came in the red zone, where the Gators of last year would have given up touchdowns multiple times to Utah that they didn’t give up on Saturday night. There is obviously the interception by Burney, but the one that sticks out in my mind as perhaps the play of the game is this one.

This play came with Florida down 10-7 and clinging to keep things close because of all of its mistakes. My theme coming into this year was that Florida’s defense would be better if everyone just learned to do their jobs rather than trying to make the themselves. This play is a great example of that.

The first thing you’ll notice is that Tre’Vez Johnson is the player who is being blocked by the wide receiver on this play. Johnson not only takes on the blocker, but he drives him back behind the line of scrimmage. This forces the Utah receiver to stop and cut back towards the middle.

But he can’t cut back because of the pursuit by the Gators. That’s Gators – plural – because Rashad Torrence (22), Shemar James (6) and Ventrell Miller (51) are all coming to make sure Utah is going to have to kick.

The interception by Burney (and the drop by Miller) are obviously things that we’ll probably think of when this game comes up in our minds years from now. But this play by Johnson is indicative of the difference that the switch from Todd Grantham to Patrick Toney may portend.

The Anthony Richardson Experience

Anthony Richardson only threw for 168 yards and had a QB rating of 129.6, just barely better than Rising. Yet, anyone who watched the game knows that he was the difference between a Gators loss by probably two touchdowns and pulling out the win.

His PPA for the game was a staggering 0.657. His YAR was 1.78, which is just getting towards elite-level play and is higher than Kyle Trask’s YAR for the 2020 season. That comes both from his running ability (11 rushes for 106 yards) and the timing of those runs.

That’s how you end up with a 14-play game winning drive dominated by a QB who only throws the ball twice.

It’s pretty clear that Richardson is still limited in the passing game. The Gators weren’t doing anything all that exotic, and they were able to get a bunch of his passing yards on plays that utilize his running ability to open things up.

We’ve heard all offseason of the flood concepts that Napier’s offense likes to use and they used it extensively against the Utes. A flood concept is having a short, intermediate and long route all on one side of the field. That makes the read easier for the QB, but Richardson adds an extra dimension. Because he is a running threat, if the defense fails to account for him, he has the ability to take off for significant yardage.

This play is a great example. It’s actually right after they ran the exact same concept while backed-up at their own half-yard line. The wide receiver at the top (Ricky Piersall) runs a go-route (the long route). Tight end Dante Zanders (18) comes across the formation first pretending to block and then going out for the short route. Finally, Justin Shorter (4) is in one-on-one coverage and uses the official to maximize separation.

It’s an easy read for Richardson as Shorter is wide open for a first down.

The Gators running game took over in the fourth quarter, in particular Montrell Johnson. Johnson had four straight runs of 1, 17, 9 and 14 yards to put Florida up 22-19 early in the quarter. Obviously, Johnson has a lot to do with that, but Richardson is lurking in the shadows for why these plays are successful.

The Utah defensive end (#83, Jonah Elliss) stays incredibly deep to make sure Richardson doesn’t roll out (as he had pretty much the entire game). At that point, the offensive line forms a wall and Johnson does what we’ve talked about all offseason: puts a foot in the ground and cuts back into an open seam.

This run might work even if the defensive end had been able to crash the running back. But he’s nowhere near the play specifically because of Richardson.

Finally, there are just plays that make you go “wow!” Richardson did a lot of fundamentally sound things in the game, many of them unspectacular. But the two-point conversion shows the things he can do that nobody else can.

Again, the defensive end stays with Richardson rather than crashing to stop the running back. The intent of the play is to get the ball to Nay’Quan Wright running out into the flat. Wright is open and Richardson even thinks about throwing the ball to him.

But then the magic took over. Richardson brings the ball back down, twirls and then finds Jaquavion Fraziars (8) wide open in the end zone.

This isn’t a play you can teach. It isn’t a play that’s always going to turn out well either. But what it means is that the opposition is going to always have to account for plays that are outside the norm with Richardson in the game, which is going to open up the normal plays to hit bigger than they otherwise would’ve.

Takeaway

You couldn’t have asked for a better opening for Napier and the Gators.

It’s not often that a season opener takes place against a top-10 opponent. It’s not often that Florida plays a Pac-12 team. It’s not often that Florida is an underdog in the Swamp. It was not clear cut that Florida should come out on top, especially given the way these two teams ended 2021.

But as I wrote in my preview, these teams were way closer in 2021 than the final records indicated and the game pretty much played out the way I thought. Florida was able to run the ball late to put the game away. Rising was good, but not great. And Richardson played like a guy who has the ability to be not just an elite talent, but a player we talk about years from now to our grandkids.

What I didn’t expect was that the Gators would dominate the advanced statistics portion of the game. Mistakes kept Utah close, but this game could have been a runaway if Florida had been clicking on all cylinders.

That’s my big takeaway from this game. Yes, Florida got a big win over a top-10 team, but that could have been based in luck or been a fluke. But this wasn’t a fluke. Florida is a good team. I think Utah is a good team too. I don’t think they’re on the level of Alabama or Georgia, but then again, Utah doesn’t have Anthony Richardson and by the time Florida faces either the Bulldogs, Richardson will have six more starts under his belt.

A week ago, I would have said the Gators were definitively going to lose to Georgia. After their demolition of Oregon, I think that’s still likely the case. But the win over Utah – and even more, the way they got the win over Utah – gives me hope that this team has a ceiling that I’m not sure any of us imagined just a couple of days ago.

Billy Napier only has one game under his belt. It feels way too aggressive to start proclaiming the Gators arrival as a true SEC contender. But the win over Utah is a major step forward in that direction.

And more than anything, it has delivered a serious does of the thing that was missing the most at the end of the Dan Mullen era.

Hope.