Florida beats Missouri

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Florida beat Missouri 24-17, but that was about as frustrating a win as I can remember.

I say that because it felt like Florida had a chance to put the game away when it was 10-0 and they had third-and-4 from the Missouri 32-yard line. Instead, Etienne ran for a one-yard loss and then Adam Mihalek missed a 50-yard field goal attempt, and Missouri was still in the game.

Then the Gators were up 24-10 and the defense had a tackle for loss, a Brenton Cox sack and a Missouri false start to force a third-and-22 from the Missouri 42. Again, with a chance to put the game away the Gators left the door open as Missouri QB Brady Cook completed a 27-yard pass to Cody Schrader, giving a drive momentum that turned into a touchdown.

By the time the inevitable Anthony Richardson turnovers started to come, it felt like Florida might end up giving away a game that they’d been ahead in from the jump.

But Florida didn’t fold. The offense finally started running the ball and was able to put some distance between the Gators and the Tigers. And the defense – a much maligned unit that was as bad as Vanderbilt coming into the game – pulled out a stop at the end to secure the win.

Was it perfect? Absolutely not.

But Florida was able to get the job done with Anthony Richardson playing poorly. They were able to do that against USF but weren’t against Kentucky. Now they’ve done it against Missouri and we wait for whether good AR or bad AR will show up against LSU next week.

But at least now we know, Florida can get a win when Richardson isn’t at his best.

The Return of Jaydon Hill

Jaydon Hill was in his second start since coming back from an ACL tear last season. Last week, there were plays that were available for Hill to make and he didn’t necessarily do it. He took full advantage this week against Missouri.

Missouri’s game film against Kansas State indicated that Brady Cook was a one-read QB. It also indicated that he struggled against zone defenses, though admittedly what I saw on film was that he would see a route wasn’t open and run rather than throw into it.

But against the Gators and Hill, Cook just wasn’t able to solve their defense on his favorite route, a slant to his outside receiver.

Florida has two deep safeties shaded towards the bottom of the screen. This suggests that Gators are leaving Hill one-on-one against Missouri’s best receiver (Luther Burden). Except the Gators are dropping Ventrell Miller (#51) in coverage, who throws Burden off-stride. They also have Hill (#23) reading Cook’s eyes and closing on the route instead of dropping and playing things safe as the deepest player.

This is a great play by Hill, but it only happens because he’s willing to step in front of the route and take a chance. I kept waiting for Missouri to run a slant and go to try to catch him on his heels, but that adjustment never came.

Instead, Missouri kept going back to that same well. On third-and-8 early in the second half after Florida had just missed its second field goal, Mizzou had an opportunity to move the ball past mid-field. Again, Florida had two deep safeties and Hill 10 yards off of the line of scrimmage. Again, the Tigers ran the slant – though this time they ran a second receiver across the formation – and again, Ventrell Miller dropped into the flat to disrupt the route.

Again, Hill was ready to jump the route as Cook loaded to throw but this time Cook saw him. He pump faked that direction rather than letting it go and came back to his running back as a check-down and Tre’Vez Johnson (#16) made a big-time tackle to allow the Gators to get off the field.

Missouri did the same thing again on perhaps the biggest play of the game. This time they ran the second receiver at Ventrell Miller, who knocked him down but didn’t affect the outside receiver running the slant. Instead, Hill identified what the route was and jumped in front of the receiver, obstructing his path. Cook saw that he had one-on-one and so delivered the ball.

This isn’t a bad throw, as was indicated by the announcer on the broadcast. Instead, this is Hill knowing what Missouri was trying to do and beating the receiver to the spot.

Defensive Improvement

It wasn’t just Hill who improved this week. The defense as a whole was way, way better.

The Gators defense surrendered 17 points, forced four punts, two turnovers and a turnover on downs on 10 drives. The field goal surrendered was on a short field after the Anthony Richardson fumble at the end of the half.

I’ve been harping on plays that range from 10-19 yards for the past two weeks. That’s because Florida had given up 18 percent of all plays in that range and it was really hurting them in their inability to get off the field. Missouri ran 72 plays, which at the 18-percent clip would have meant 13 plays in that range. Instead, the Gators only gave up 7.

That meant the defense could weather surrendering five plays in the 20+ yard range. It also meant that Florida had four drives where Missouri ran 5 plays or less and gave the ball right back to the offense.

Beyond just Hill, the reason for this success was an increased ability to beat their man one-on-one up-front. Yes, this is a Missouri offense that hasn’t been very good all season, but this is also a front-seven that couldn’t win one-on-one battles against Eastern Washington.

A good example of this is Princely Umanmielen.

I’ve circled Umanmielen on this play. Missouri put Luther Burden (#3) into the backfield to get him the ball on this play. The receivers are blocking right away, meaning this is essentially an extended run play. Umanmielen engages with the right tackle but maintains his leverage outside. Beyond that, he’s then able to disengage with the tackle and make a big-time tackle against Burden before he can really get going.

Look behind Umanmielen on this play. This is at least a 10-yard gain if Burden gets by him. Instead, it turns into a 6-yard loss for Missouri.

That sort of play continued throughout the game. On this play, Umanmielen is one-on-one with Missouri’s left tackle. He feels the tackle leaning outside and comes back inside with a spin move for a sack. This came right after a play where Brenton Cox beat the right tackle with a speed move for a sack on the play before.

These sorts of plays started to happen more regularly for the Gators against Missouri, where the Gator defender won a one-on-one battle to the benefit of his unit.

For example, just before the pick-6, Hill was actually isolated one-on-one with Burden and Missouri completed a 4-yard hitch. Last week, that exact play turned into a 14-yard gain for Eastern Washington but this week, Hill stood Burden up immediately and forced Missouri into a third-and-6 where Cook tried to sneak in that slant. Instead, it was 10-0 Gators.

On the play before Hill’s second interception, Desmond Watson got penetration on a running play that allowed Umanmielen to scoot across the formation and stop a run that looked like it was going to the end zone. Instead, Hill was able to step in front of the next throw.

There were still busts and you just can’t allow a third-and-22 to be converted. But Patrick Toney is going to turn on the film this week and start to see his players winning some battles. You can see that in the stat sheet where Cox, Umanmielen, Gervon Dexter, Chris McClellan and Jalen Lee combined for four sacks and 8.5 tackles for loss. The Gators defense had 8 total sacks coming into the game with only three from the defensive line.

That’s definitely progress.

Bad Anthony Richardson

Anthony Richardson has been very volatile this season. He’s either been really good or really bad with very little in between.

This game was a microcosm of that, where he went 4-9 for 46 yards in the first half and only ran the ball once for -3 yards. That one run wasn’t even a designed run (he scrambled to the outside after the Henderson punt return on third down) and the Gators offense bogged down considerably.

It wasn’t all Richardson’s fault though. The Gators rushed for 15 yards on 10 carries (1.5 yards per rush) and ran the ball 10 times vs. 9 rush attempts. That obviously switched in the second half, as the Gators rushed the ball 22 times against 5 throws and the offense looked much better.

Perhaps not coincidently, the offensive improvement came with Richardson starting to assert himself on the ground. There’s obviously the fourth down conversion when he ran for 32 yards down to the Missouri two-yard line, but there was more than just that.

On the previous drive (a missed field goal), Richardson ran the ball on third-and-13 to try and improve field goal position. On the second touchdown drive of the half, Richardson ran for five yards on a third-and-5 and kept the drive alive (along with a facemask).

What that meant was that while Richardson made very little impact in the passing game in the second half (5 attempts for 20 yards), he made a huge impact on the ground (4 rush, 48 yards). The passing numbers are also a little bit misleading, as Justin Shorter dropped a 33-yard pass down the sideline on the first touchdown drive of the half that would have improved his stats considerably.

Even the interception wasn’t terrible. Yes, the throw was high. And no, I don’t blame Ricky Pearsall for missing it, as a defender came across and chopped at his arms right as the ball hit his hands. But that kind of throw usually falls harmlessly to the ground, which would have allowed Florida to punt.

The thing I hold onto is that Florida was willing to put the ball in Richardson’s hands to make the throw, and that despite his poor footwork that caused the ball to sail high, Richardson went to the correct receiver and had Pearsall open for the first down had he just hit him in the chest.

Richardson had a Yards Above Replacement (YAR) – my proprietary stat that encompasses passing and running for a QB – of -3.13 in the first half, which is terrible. But he had a YAR of 1.80 in the second half, which is very good. For the game, he ended up with a YAR of -0.79, which isn’t good but was better than Brady Cook’s YAR of -1.01.

So while the perception is that Cook outplayed Richardson – and through the air, that is true – when we look at the impact that he actually had in the game, the Gators don’t win without Richardson at the helm in the second half.

Takeaways

If we’ve learned anything thus far in 2022, this Gators team is going to be maddeningly inconsistent. But for this game, inconsistency is actually a sign of progress.

This is the first game that Anthony Richardson has been able to right the ship in the second half. He wasn’t great, but he didn’t fall apart the way he did against Kentucky or USF. Napier still trusted him to make important throws and he was throwing it to the right guy even when it wasn’t working out in his favor.

I get the calls for Jalen Kitna given what he showed against Eastern Washington. But Richardson lit up the Eagles as well – better than Kitna – and what is bringing in Kitna going to really achieve? Even if you do get slightly improved play, it doesn’t actually accomplish anything long-term. It will make the fans feel better if he plays more consistently than Richardson, but unless you think Kitna or Max Brown have the capability to be an elite SEC starter, Richardson is your only hope both this year and next year.

In my opinion, you’re better off playing through when Richardson is struggling and seeing if he can become more consistent. Because Kitna can’t make the touchdown throw he made to Pearsall. He also can’t make the run on fourth down. Those sorts of plays matter and if he can improve how often he does the simple things well, he’s going to be a heck of a QB.

You can say the same thing for the defense. Prior to this game, it felt like they were inconsistent on every play. Whether it was missed tackles, missed assignments or complete busts, the Gators were giving up chunk plays all over the field.

Those didn’t end in this game. The Gators struggled to get off the field on third down (9-17) yet again. Even when they got Missouri into situations where they should have had an advantage in third-and-long, the Tigers were able to convert.

But, the Tigers were in third-and-long.

It’s easy to look at the third-and-22 conversion and third-and-15 conversions on Missouri’s last touchdown drive and throw up your hands insisting that it’s the same exact defense as it was against USF.

But the long third down conversion by the Bulls came after a holding penalty on a running play, not because the Gators drove them back there. That wasn’t the case here, as the Gators had three sacks and a TFL that drove Missouri into those situations.

The third-and-22 was converted because Jadarrius Perkins didn’t redirect the receiver back to the middle of the field and Rashad Torrence and Tre’Vez Johnson took bad angles and gave bad effort. The second conversion happened because a wobbler just barely got past Jalen Kimber after Tyreak Sapp put pressure on Cook up the middle.

This defense is still a work in progress. But coming into this game, the Gators had the absolute worst defense in the SEC. They weren’t perfect and still had some major hiccups in this one, but they weren’t the worst defense in the conference against the Tigers.

The same inconsistency can be applied to the head coach of the Gators as well.

His perplexing decision to call a timeout when Missouri had to rush onto the field to make a field goal at the end of the half probably didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but for a guy who talks about process all the time was a pretty glaring mistake.

He also seemed really conservative against the Tigers. It wasn’t just settling for a field goal in Missouri territory. It was not allowing Richardson to throw the ball past the sticks multiple times when there was an opportunity to potentially keep a drive going. That field goal drive sticks out (the Etienne run on third-and-4) but the other that sticks out is the swing pass to Henderson on third down after the Henderson punt return.

So what do we have? We have an inconsistent offense led by an inconsistent QB who can be otherworldly but also ghastly, but showed he can right the ship when he starts out ghastly. We have a defense that couldn’t tackle anybody for the first five weeks starting to make plays, but also blowing a few along the way as well. And we have a coach who is very much into process doing what felt like straying from his process at times in this game.

All of which is to say that the Gators are a 4-2 team with flaws, just like any other 4-2 team in the SEC. The good news is that had you told me coming into the Georgia game that Florida would be 5-2, I probably would have taken it given the schedule. That’s the opportunity Florida has next week with LSU coming to the Swamp licking its wounds after getting blown out by Tennessee.

And I’m reminded of another 5-2 team that wasn’t playing good enough for this very fan base. The head coach had an offense that seemed out of place with his personnel and stagnant in a way Florida fans weren’t used to. It had a QB who had shown flashes of being very good the year before but at times felt like he had taken a step back.

Chris Leak and Urban Meyer were holding up the ultimate trophy the next season.

I’m not saying Billy Napier is going to achieve that. I’m not saying Anthony Richardson is going to achieve that. But what I am saying is that drawing conclusions about either of those men in their sixth game together against Missouri is doing so without enough data points to actually draw such conclusions.

Your eyes see the ugly plays and are drawn to them. I’m starting to see progress within the ugliness, though it’s admittedly still pretty ugly at times. Is it going to be enough to take this team where the fans want it to go? That I’m not sure of yet. That need for immediate gratification is part of why the ugliness is so frustrating.

But it’s also why patience is a virtue.