Can Florida spoil Georgia’s season?

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As of Wednesday night, the Gators come into the Cocktail Party as 22.5 point underdogs to the Bulldogs. That’s probably understating how big the separation between these two teams is. But it also means Florida has a major opportunity to spoil Georgia’s season.

Kirby Smart has built a monster in Athens. His last four recruiting classes have brought in 18 5-star recruits out of 99 recruits total. In the same time-frame, Florida has signed 93 players and only 2 have been 5-stars.

That might be okay if Florida had supplemented that difference with high-level 4-star recruits, but that’s not what happened. Instead, Georgia has signed 58 4-star recruits compared to Florida’s 53 4-star recruits in the same time-frame. That means that the difference between the two teams is essentially Florida has substituted 3-star recruits (34 vs. 23 for UGA) for the 5-star recruits Georgia has brought in.

Of course, that talent gap isn’t why Florida’s defense has struggled against USF, Tennessee and LSU. But it certainly doesn’t help as the Gators defense tries to right the ship after getting embarrassed the last time out.

So do the Gators have a shot to shock the world (and give us awesome Twitter fodder for the rest of the year)? Or is this going to be a blowout much like the Bulldogs opener against Oregon?

November Sweepstakes

Before we get to the game, my friend Dan reached out to me about having a little bit of fun the rest of the season and has graciously donated the prize. The Gators schedule – especially now that Texas A&M is imploding – is a lot easier than what we saw in September and October. So will the Gators bounce back in November?

Enter the November Sweepstakes HERE and enter for a chance to win 2 tickets to a Gators home basketball game (you can pick any game other than Kentucky).

Now, on to the game.

Overall Statistics

If there is one figure that really tells the tale of these two teams, it’s this one.

This chart shows the winning percentage of every SEC team versus the difference in their Predicted Points Added (PPA) thus far in 2022. The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s a fairly linear relationship between the two stats, indicating that these two are correlated.

The second thing you’ll notice is that Georgia has earned its 7-0 record thus far, outperforming every other team in the SEC. It isn’t just the defense this year, as the Bulldogs rank 2nd (just barely behind Tennessee) in offensive PPA and rank 1st in defensive PPA. By comparison, Florida ranks 5th in offensive PPA but 12th in defensive PPA.

This correlates really well with the yards per play metrics, as Georgia ranks second overall in the country in yards per play and 10th in yards per play allowed. The Gators rank 25th on offense and 112th on defense in the same categories.

As you might have surmised from watching the team this season, the Gators have a major disadvantage on the defensive side of the ball. And unlike some of its other matchups coming up, Georgia has a defense capable of stopping the Gators offense, or at least slowing it down.

The Quarterbacks

Anthony Richardson has to be absolutely brilliant for the Gators to even compete in this game.

That’s a lot of pressure to put on Richardson, who has been just as explosive in 2022 as he was in 2021, but has also been just as turnover prone. His fumbles against Tennessee and Missouri completely changed the tenor of those games. His interceptions against Kentucky and USF cost the Gators one game and nearly cost them the other. It’s not rocket science to say that he can’t have any turnovers in this one.

With all that said, Richardson has actually been really good this year. His QB rating is 127.4, which is well below average. But that doesn’t take all of the value that he brings into account. He has also added 56 rushes for 391 yards (7.0 yards per rush average). When you factor that in, he ends up with a Yards Above Replacement (YAR) – my proprietary stat that takes into account a QBs running and throwing – of 1.07.

That isn’t Heisman-worthy, but it would be good enough to get a team to the playoff with an excellent defense. Unfortunately, we know that isn’t where Florida is at on that side of the ball right now.

If you focus in on just SEC opponents, that’s where things get a little bit concerning. There, Richardson has a QB rating of 116.4 and a YAR of 0.10 (essentially average). There is no way Florida can win this game if Richardson is just average.

On the other side, we have the mailman himself, Stetson Bennett.

Bennett wasn’t tasked with winning many games for Georgia last season, but when asked to throw was incredibly efficient. His QB rating of 176.7 in 2021 was outstanding, and his YAR of 1.98 is borderline elite.

Those numbers have come down somewhat this year as he has been asked to throw more. His QB rating is at 153.9 and his YAR is at 0.96. Yes, that’s right. When you factor in the value that they bring running the football, my metric actually has Richardson outplaying Bennett this year.

That’s a little bit misleading though because Bennett has been a lot more steady and Richardson absolutely torched Eastern Washington. If you focus in on just his SEC games, Bennett has a QB rating of 148.1 and a YAR of 0.87, just slightly down from his overall numbers.

But that’s actually the story of these two for both the season and this game. Bennett’s best YAR for the year is 3.78 against Oregon. His worst is -1.09 against Missouri. Richardson’s best YAR for the season is 18.44 against Eastern Washington, but his worst is -3.62 against Kentucky.

What that means is that the odds suggest that Bennett will outplay Richardson. But there is a chance that Richardson punches the gas pedal and makes this a game.

Five (or even six) is not enough

Florida defensive coordinator Patrick Toney likes running what he calls “creepers” and “simulated pressures”. The idea is pretty simple: you bring a bunch of people to the line of scrimmage and the offensive line doesn’t know who’s rushing. You then drop all but four rushers, but you often bring the rushers in an unbalanced way, making them difficult for the offensive line to pick up.

That stuff doesn’t work against Georgia, at least not consistently. The Bulldogs offensive linemen are too gifted physically and are capable of winning one-on-one battles even if out of position. You could actually see this against Missouri (a much better defense than Florida). When the Tigers brought four or five rushers, Stetson Bennett has all day to throw.

Missouri kept that game close for two reasons. First, Georgia lost two fumbles in the first half, one after a 35-yard explosive run for Kendall Milton and another on a botched QB/running back exchange at midfield. The other reason was that they held Georgia to field goals when they were able to make their way into the red zone and they did it in a very specific way.

Missouri isn’t hiding what they’re doing here on third-and-10. They have four defensive backs all lined up in front of the sticks across from Georgia’s four receivers. Everyone else is in the box.

Often you’ll see this alignment and then the defenders on the line of scrimmage drop into coverage, but that’s not what happens here. Instead, Missouri sends the house (i.e. cover zero) and forced Bennett to make a quick decision because there are seven rushers and only six blockers.

The Missouri corner does an excellent job of taking away the middle of the field with body positioning and then breaking on the out route to disrupt the throw. He knows that Georgia is going to try to get just past the sticks and is ready to break the minute the receiver does.

This is a high risk, high reward proposition. If a Georgia receiver beats his man, or if the Bulldogs decided to throw a jump ball up to a superior athlete, this could be a disaster, but that just isn’t Stetson Bennett’s strength.

You can see that again here on a similar type of play/read.

This is a second down, but again it is with Georgia deep in Missouri territory and against the Tigers decide to send seven pass rushers. Georgia sends out five receivers and Missouri only has four defensive backs. Bennett sees the blitz and drifts away from the line of scrimmage, buying himself a little bit of time.

But what he misses is his receiver coming wide open over the middle. Instead, he rushes and throws a ball to a receiver who is covered and gets bailed out by a pass interference penalty.

Georgia scored touchdowns on its final two drives of the game and I think a big part of that was that Missouri backed off of its ultra-aggressive game plan.

I’ve circled Missouri’s deep safety on this play. This eliminates any possibility that they’re going to bring the house like they had in the red zone earlier. That opens up this screen pass because no matter what the defense chooses – man-to-man against Bowers or dropping into some sort of zone – Bowers ends up in a one-on-one matchup with a running start.

If you bring seven rushers, the linebacker in coverage would need to be closer to Bowers, giving him time to make the tackle. If you only bring four, perhaps you would be able to corner Bowers before he was able to make it through the traffic. But by rushing six, Missouri got caught with a linebacker on Bowers with a deep safety.

The point of that deep safety is to make sure nothing gets behind you. But that doesn’t make a lot of sense with Missouri up only three points. He certainly prevented this play from ending up longer than it would have been. The problem is that meant Georgia scored one play later from the one-yard line.

That isn’t the only play on that drive with the same problem. Multiple times, Missouri brought either five or six rushers, it was easily picked up by Georgia’s offensive line, and Bennett was able to connect with his receivers downfield.

The reality is this. You might be able to get to Bennett every once in a while with a simulated pressure, a five man rush or a six man rush. But you have to speed Bennett up because that’s when he makes poor decisions, and the only time I really saw that against Missouri was when they brought the house.

Takeaway

I may have missed it, but I have yet to see Toney truly bring the house against an opponent this year.

He’s played just about every other coverage known to man with limited success. I’m not all that confident that Florida is going to win a Trey Dean/Kamari Wilson matchup against Bowers or Darnell Washington with no deep safety help. But I’m also not sure having a deep safety – especially deep in the red zone – is doing the Gators all that much good.

But what I do know is that Florida has to speed up the clock in Stetson Bennett’s head. That is the only way they’re going to get the turnovers they need to turn the tide in this game. He has to be uncomfortable and considering that Florida has been unable to get home with four, five or six rushers consistently this season (averaging 1.8 sacks per game vs. FBS opponents), I think Toney’s going to have to go all-in in a couple of key moments of the game.

Anthony Richardson laid an egg last year against the Bulldogs. But that defense averaged 3.3 sacks per game against FBS opponents while this version is only averaging 1.0. Just like Florida wants to speed up Bennett, you could see the Georgia defense speed things up for Richardson in last year’s game amidst the cascade of turnovers.

Richardson can’t just be good in this game. He has to be special. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a guy who has that sort of ability, but has yet to be able to carry the Gators ala Kyle Trask in 2020. If he can prove he can do it, he’s going to have a real chance at a statue next year if he decides to come back.

And as much as my heart wants to believe the Gators and Napier are going to have something special up their sleeve coming off of a bye week, I thought Oregon would have the same thing to start the season. The Ducks gave up 49 points to the Bulldogs in the season opener and it wasn’t as close as the 49-3 score suggests.

That Oregon team has a defensive PPA of 0.224 (really bad), which coincidently, is the exact same defensive PPA for the Gators.

I actually think Richardson is going to play pretty well. But I don’t have a lot of hope that the Gators defense is going to be able to get off the field. Another day of third down conversions allowed and a couple of Richardson turnovers means Georgia salts this one away relatively easily.

Georgia (-22.5) wins, 35-17.

Picks this year: 4-2, 2-4 ATS

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