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Florida looks to up the pressure against Arkansas

Florida should be feeling the pressure as it takes on Arkansas with its season at a crossroads. And pressure may be the key for the Gators against the Razorbacks.

Expectations for Gator victories over LSU, Missouri and FSU are muted. But 2-6 Arkansas, as home, is a game that fans expect Billy Napier and company to win and win handily. The consequences of not getting that win go beyond just fan expectations though.

A sixth win brings bowl eligibility and all the extra practices that come with it for a program that is one of the youngest in the country. It also guarantees at least a repeat of last year’s 6-7 record and the ability for program defenders to suggest things at least aren’t going backwards.

Of course, none of that helps Florida actually beat Arkansas. The good news is that the Hogs are struggling, have just fired their offensive coordinator and are winless in the SEC. The bad news is that most of those defeats are one-score losses, and those tend to even out over time.

These two teams are polar opposites. The Gators rank 53rd in yards per play but 112th in yards per play allowed. The Hogs rank 129th in yards per play but 60th in yards per play allowed. That means it’s weakness vs. weakness when the Razorbacks have the ball and average vs. average when the Gators have it.

I suspect that means the winner of the game will be which team’s weakness ends up hurting it less than the other. That means that the most important question to answer is why has Florida’s defense been so poor and why has Arkansas’ offense been so stagnant?

Arkansas Offense

Arkansas QB K.J. Jefferson was arguably the best returning starter in the SEC this season on the heels of a 2022 season where he averaged 8.8 yards per attempt and 4.1 yards per rush. He put up similar stats in 2021 as well, averaging 9.1 yards per attempt and 4.5 yards per rush.

But this season, Jefferson has been much worse. Not only is he averaging only 7.1 yards per attempt, but he’s also averaging only 1.8 yards per rush. That combination of a reduction in efficiency through the air and on the ground means that his Yards Above Replacement (YAR) – my proprietary stat that takes running and passing efficiency into account – has Jefferson at -0.73.

Compare that to 2021 (YAR of 1.57) or 2022 (YAR of 1.33) and it becomes clear how far Jefferson’s play has suffered.

Of course, that leads to the question that Arkansas was wrestling with before its bye week. Was Jefferson’s regression because of Jefferson or because of former offensive coordinator Dan Enos? They decided to fire Enos and now wide receiver coach Kenny Guiton is calling the plays.

There isn’t a lot of data I could find to see what happens when schools let go of their coordinators mid-season. The results certainly weren’t great for Florida back in 2021 when they let go of Todd Grantham and John Hevesy after the loss to South Carolina, but one data point isn’t exactly gospel.

However, there are plenty of examples of head coaches who were fired mid-season just since 2021. In 2021 and 2022, 13 coaches have met that fate. Those coaches had a winning percentage of 35 percent (27-51) before being let go. Their replacements didn’t do much better, going 29-53, which is also 35 percent – essentially no impact.

I suspect the same applies to offensive coordinators. Unless there was something just fundamentally wrong with what Enos was doing, the idea that Arkansas’ offense is going to improve significantly because of this change is unlikely. That also means that if the Hogs’ offense looks much better against Florida, our conclusion should be that it has a lot more to do with the Gators defense than the change in offensive coordinator.

But it’s still an interesting question. Was there something Enos was doing that was fundamentally wrong that impacted Jefferson? Well, there may be.

Jefferson has never been great at avoiding sacks, but this year has been in a special category. Similarly, the Arkansas offensive line hasn’t been great at avoiding tackles for loss. But if you subtract the difference in sacks from last year to this year from the total TFL from 2023, you end up with a TFL number more in-line with 2021 or 2022. This suggests that the offensive line performance hasn’t changed all that much, but that Jefferson’s behavior has changed.

That becomes clear when you look at more advanced stats for Jefferson (from www.secstatcat.com).

What we see is that Jefferson’s Average Depth of Target (ADOT) hasn’t changed much at all. However, his sack rate has increased along with his average time to throw, quite significantly. This suggests to me that Jefferson is holding onto the ball much longer than normal but isn’t going down field any more than usual.

This is an area where Guiton can make a difference. Jefferson is still going to take some sacks (assuming Florida can get there), but he can help fix this by encouraging Jefferson to get rid of the ball and putting in some reads that require it.

We won’t get real-time average time to throw numbers, but we’ll see this pop up in another stat: yards per rush. If Jefferson is below 2.0 yards per rush then he’s taking too many sacks and Florida has been able to contain him. If he ends up higher than 4.0 yards per rush, then he’s reverted back to his 2021 and 2022 form and Florida is in trouble.

Gators Defense

Florida’s defense gave up an average of 5.2 yards per play vs. FBS opponents in 2021. That – along with a 2020 defense that gave up 5.8 yards per play – was reason enough for the vitriol that led to the firing of Todd Grantham.

But here’s the thing. Florida’s defense gave up an average of 5.9 yards per play last season in Patrick Toney’s only season as defensive coordinator and is currently sitting at 6.1 yards per played allowed in 2023 (with three top-20 offenses on the schedule still to come).

What that means is that the defense the past two seasons has been worse than either of the last two defenses that Todd Grantham fielded in his time in Gainesville. Yikes!

The decline in defensive performance is tied to one specific statistic: pressure.

Florida’s ability to get sacks and produce tackles for loss has been on a steady decline since 2019. It peaked when Jonathan Greenard and Jabari Zuniga were manning the edge of the defense and has declined ever since.

In fact, if we look at the top five defensive linemen for each year (2 defensive tackles, 3 defensive ends/Bucks), we get the following:

• 2018: 3.3 TFL per game, 1.7 sacks per game
• 2019: 2.7, 1.7
• 2020: 2.4, 1.3
• 2021: 2.7, 1.6
• 2022: 2.3, 1.0
• 2023: 1.9, 0.8

We see the exact same decline from the top five defensive linemen that we do from the overall defense. This tells us that the guys up-front are not getting into the backfield nearly as often. That wouldn’t be a problem if this was part of the defensive design, but this is kind-of what you get with Austin Armstrong.

In his two years as defensive coordinator at Southern Miss, his defenses ranked 80th and 114th in 20-plus yard plays allowed. His 2021 defense ranked 98th in yards per play allowed at the same time it ranked 90th in sacks and 85th in tackles for loss. It wasn’t until 2022 that his defense improved to 4th in sacks and 3rd in tackles for loss that the defense even reached average (51st in yards per play).

Sure enough, Florida is struggling to stop big plays. The Gators rank 31st in 10-plus yard plays allowed, 49th in 20-plus yard plays, 91st in 30-plus yard plays and 119th in 40-plus yard plays. Basically, when it goes bad, it goes really bad.

Earlier we talked about K.J. Jefferson’s rushing average as a key to watch, and that’s still true for Florida’s defense as well. If the Gators are getting pressure and get 3+ sacks, that will reduce that average.

But the other thing to watch will be Arkansas’ explosive plays. The Razorbacks’ offense ranks 122nd in 10-plus yard plays, 112th in 20-plus yard plays, 119th in 30-plus yard plays and 117th in 40-plus yard plays. The Hogs just aren’t getting any big plays at all but Florida’s defense is giving up a bunch of them.

Whichever unit wins that battle will go a long way to deciding this one.

Takeaway

Florida has the better team in this one, but only slightly. But the areas where the Gators do have advantages are really, really important.

Graham Mertz has outplayed K.J. Jefferson this season. That’s true whether you use traditional QB stats like QB Rating (161.8 to 139.3) or a stat like YAR (-0.22 to -0.73). Typically, teams that have better QB play end up winning most games, so that would make you lean pretty heavily towards the Gators.

Additionally, coaching changes rarely work. There are some things that Dan Enos was doing that likely kept Jefferson from playing at his best, but Guiton has been in the offensive meetings all year. If there was something obvious to change, you would think he would have told Enos about it and they would’ve given it a shot.

Finally, this game is in the Swamp. While Florida has struggled away from home, they’ve been very good in Gainesville. That includes their win over Tennessee, a much better team than Arkansas.

All of that may be true, but I don’t think it’s enough to expect Florida to win by a touchdown. Arkansas has lost the vast majority of its games by one score or less, and I expect that to continue. The Razorbacks are going to make a couple of big plays because Florida’s defense gives those up, but in the end, the advantage of Graham Mertz behind center and the home crowd will be too much.

Florida (-6.0) wins, 27-24.

Picks this year: 6-2 (3-4 ATS)