The main lesson from Florida’s blowout loss to Texas
Missing its top two quarterbacks and a host of defensive backs, Florida got demolished by Texas on Saturday.
The Longhorns were going to be a formidable matchup regardless of whether Florida was at full strength. But Texas coming in off of a bye week after Florida laid it all out the field the week prior against Georgia meant it was pretty easy to predict this one would get ugly.
To be honest, it was probably going to be a blowout even if Florida played perfectly. But after two turnovers (a fumble for Ja’Kobi Jackson and an INT for Aidan Warner) were turned into 14 points for the Longhorns, this one was a laugher at the half.
Given Scott Stricklin’s vote of confidence for Napier earlier in the week, he’s apparently not going anywhere. That means any improvement this season is going to come from the guys who decide to give full effort in the remaining games.
As we’ll see in this recap, that full effort wasn’t always there for the Gators against Texas.
The Defense
The only hope that Florida had coming into this game was that Florida’s defense would continue to show the improvement that it has ever since its first bye week and that D.J. Lagway would somehow be able to play.
Lagway wasn’t able to go, and Florida’s defense definitely did not continue its upward trajectory.
Quinn Ewers had been inconsistent (a kind description of his play) all year long, with a QB rating of 149.6 and a YAR – my proprietary stat that measured a QBs contributions in the run and pass game – of -0.79. That completely flipped in this game as Ewers threw for 5 TDs, had a QB rating of 235.1 and a YAR of 4.11 (Heisman-level).
Ewers certainly was able to do some things well, but it’s not that hard when your receivers are running completely free.
Jordan Castell (#14) is going to get roasted on this one, but I’m not sure he’s completely at fault here. I’ve paused the play right after the snap where Florida has Texas outflanked. The Longhorns have two running backs going out into the flat and the two wide receivers run a switch release (the outside receiver drives inside while the slot receiver loops to the outside).
The slot corner (Aaron Gates, defender #2 on the diagram) and linebacker Pup Howard (defender #5 on the diagram) both shoot towards the line of scrimmage to take on the two backs. That leaves Castell (defender #3) and Trikweze Bridges (defender #1) to navigate the switch release. Both players take the inside receiver and it’s an easy TD for Ewers.
Castell is the one who looks like he’s in the wrong initially, but you can’t know without knowing what Florida teaches here. My suspicion is that Bridges is supposed to stay with his guy since he’s up in bump-and-run coverage. Regardless, these are two guys who’ve gotten a ton of snaps this year, so inexperience isn’t exactly an excuse here.
But that wasn’t the only time the Longhorns targeted those two.
Florida gets caught in a blitz here and Texas has the perfect play called. The screen out to Bond allows the Longhorns to get all of its blockers downfield. You can see where I pause the video that Texas has two guys set up to block both Castell and Bridges.
Castell plays this perfectly, shooting like a missile at the outside Texas defender. This screens the second blocker away from Bridges, leaving him in a one-on-one matchup with Texas receiver Isaiah Bond. Bridges misses the tackle, but worse than that, isn’t able to slow down Bond at all, preventing the other safety (Bryce Thornton, #18) from being able to get over and make the tackle.
But Bridges and Castell were far from the only culprits when it came to tackling.
Yes, it’s 42-10 at this point, but it’s indicative of what went on the entire game. Corner Dijon Johnson (#27) does a nice job of getting inside the Texas blocker, which should force the running back inside. But Johnson’s effort from that point is…limited…as he barely gets a hand on Longhorn’s running back Jaydon Blue.
Meanwhile, Aaron Gates – who has been a bright spot on defense for the past few weeks – comes shooting up and hits Johnson hard as he completely misses Blue. It’s unclear to me what Gates was doing here, as Johnson had Blue turned back to the inside and Gates just overruns the tackle.
The micro result was that Texas ended up with a 45-yard gain rather than an 8-yard gain. The macro result was that Florida gave up an average of 8.8 yards per play in the game and 10.1 (!) yards per play in the first half.
With Lagway and Mertz out, the Gators needed its defense to step up. Instead, it looked even worse than it did against Miami and Texas A&M.
Opponent Quality
We always knew this would be the toughest part of the schedule. But that’s why it was such a kick in the jewels when Florida lost a winnable game against Tennessee. Given the results to this point, that was a game Florida had no business being in, yet they took it to overtime.
Here’s the EPA differential of Florida’s schedule (minus Samford) and their expected win percentage based on point differential.
The first thing we see is that there is a definitive correlation between EPA differential and point differential. But the other thing we see is that Florida beat Kentucky, Mississippi State and Central Florida, who are worse or relatively close to the Gators in EPA differential. I suspect if we took strength of schedule into account, Central Florida would be behind Florida.
But if we look at Florida’s five losses, all five of them are to the right of the Gators on the chart, with Texas, Tennessee and Miami all significantly so. That leaves FSU (wow, ‘Noles) and LSU as the only teams who are beatable by this particular Florida team.
I guess if we’re trying to look at the positive side of things, Florida has beaten the teams they should have beaten given their performance. The problem is that an EPA differential of zero isn’t where Florida teams should be, or at least shouldn’t be where they were prior to Billy Napier’s arrival.
The Gators now have an EPA differential of 0.004 this season after having EPA differentials of 0.037 and 0.039 in 2022 and 2023. That number was at 0.103 for the Gators in 2011.
LSU isn’t a great team. But neither is Florida.
Takeaway
Anybody who picked Florida to win this game before the season started or last week is crazy. There’s a reason Texas was more than a three-touchdown favorite.
After Lagway threw that laser to Aidan Mizell last week against Georgia, I tweeted this.
— Will Miles (@WillMilesSEC) November 2, 2024
For the first time since the Tennessee game in 2022, I could see something that Napier had that others didn’t. I tweeted that at 4:42pm. I’m almost certain Lagway got hurt before 4:50pm. So clearly, this is all my fault.
Given that, and that I love my school, I’m going to analyze what Napier needs to do to turn things around even if I’m holding my nose at the decision to keep him around. And despite my tweet, Lagway’s the hope. Get him experience when he’s healthy, then build a competent defense around him.
I’d love to see the Gators make a bowl game, but mission #1 has to be to determine which defenders are going to be a part of a defensive turnaround in Gainesville next year and which ones need to be jettisoned to make room for better players.
That’s because Florida’s defense is now ranked 87th in yards per play allowed and 103rd in pass yards per play allowed against FBS opponents. We had been excited because the defense was competent for a few weeks, but the full body of work shows that this is still a bad defense.
Plus, competent isn’t going to get the job done, even with Lagway slinging the ball around. Florida needs to build a tougher, more athletic, defense. That starts this week, as practice and the games against LSU, Ole Miss and LSU should now be open tryouts. Effort matters. Tackling matters. Assignment football matters. But that’s the lesson from this blowout loss to Texas.
Any hope of fixing this starts the minute the portal opens on December 9.
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notusedexer
The main lesson is that Napier can’t coach. I mean, how many more games does he have to lose? By the time he leaves, we will be much worse off than when Mullen left. If FSU loses to Charleston Southern then beats Florida, will that be enough to fire Napier???
Clyde
Given the quality of opponent, a road fame, the injuries and the difficulty of getting “up” another time after the competitive Georgia game, i thought the outcome would be about 27-3 or 34-3. Scoring touchdowns against the Longhorns defense was more than we should have expected. I did my own preliminary picks in March and had Florida upsetting Miami, TAMU and Tennessee with serious pushes against UGA and LSU. But I believed even then that Texas would win the SEC and Georgia would lose at least twice ir even three games. As for Florida, Stricklin’s letter left some leeway, never mentioning 2025 or using the words “next year”. Sticking with Napier, no matter the implied thoughts of a fourth season, could turn out to mean only through the FSU game. So far we’ve seen no evidence our coach has what it takes to succeed at a competitive level in the SEC. If hoping by keeping him that the core of quality younger players will stick around the outckme will not likely improve next tear. It seems as likely or more so that ghe bigger motivations are financial (buy-outs of Napier and staff on 2-year contracts seemingly would be upwards of $40 million right now, much less in a year), and since Stricklin and the UAA have known about the Todd Golden mess since September 2), Napier’s personal decency can be seen as a plus right now. So he stays, maybe a sensible decision under the circumstances.