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Lots of people (including me) have picked Florida to make the playoff this season. That means a 9-3 or 10-2 record minimum, and based on Florida’s schedule this year, no slip-ups along the way against beatable teams.
And make no mistake, USF needs to be a beatable team if Florida is going anywhere good this season.
USF Overview
Despite its 34-7 win over then-ranked Boise State, there are some statistics that point towards that not being quite the beatdown that the final score indicates.
First, the Bulls were actually outgained in the game (378-372). Boise State also had a higher offensive success rate (42% to 33%), which resulted in seven scoring opportunities (times inside the opponent’s 40-yard line) compared to five for the Bulls.
The Bulls basically won this game on explosive plays and turnovers.
USF had eight explosives (20-plus yard plays) for 309 yards. They gained 63 yards on the other 45 offensive plays (1.4 yards per play). Compare that to Florida against LIU this weekend where the Gators had seven explosives for 199 yards, but averaged 3.8 yards per play on their 67 non-explosive plays.
And while Boise State did only have three explosive plays against the Bulls, each play resulted in zero points (a punt and two fumbles). It’s really unusual for explosives to not turn into points, and the sequencing of the fumbles occurring after those plays is a big reason that this game wasn’t closer.
Going back to the Bulls’ explosives. One was a 45-yard completion on a fake punt, something that Florida’s gamechanger unit should be fully prepped for this weekend. Six of the others were directly tied to QB Byrum Brown.
Brown was fantastic in the game, completing 66 percent of his throws and an 8.8 yard per pass average. But just as important, Brown contributed 43 yards on the ground on 14 carries (3.1 yards per attempt). That gave Brown a Yards Above Replacement (YAR, my stat that measures QB efficiency) of 0.80, which is good-but-not-great.
Interestingly, Brown had two explosives running the ball for 62 yards. That means on his remaining 12 carries, he totaled -19 yards, indicating the feast-or-famine nature of USF’s offense started with him.
Florida’s defensive approach
This makes Florida’s approach here fascinating to me. In our preseason magazine, Nick and I highlighted how Ron Roberts made the defense more conservative after the first bye week last season and allowed the linebackers to play free. Well, that becomes really important when it comes to stopping the QB run game.
On this play, Boise State only rushes four guys and has two linebackers drop into coverage. The Broncos show poor rush-lane discipline and allow Brown to step up in the pocket with a clear path forward. But Boise State also has a linebacker (#53, Marco Notarainni) who has room to make the tackle, or at least force Brown outside, but instead allows him to blow right by him.
Compare that to the linebacker play that we saw from Florida on Saturday.
On this play, Myles Graham (#5) is responsible for the running back on a handoff. He comes up to meet the back in the hole but quickly realizes that the LIU QB faked the handoff. He then turns and takes a perfect angle to meet the runner 4-yards downfield. One thing to notice is that when the LIU tight end (#8, Jaiden Dozier) peels off to block Jordan Castell (#14), STAR Sharif Denson (#0) immediately heads to the outside to force the LIU QB to cut back towards the inside of the field where Graham is coming.
The other thing to notice is that Florida rushes its four down linemen while the linebackers sit in the middle of the field reading what is happening. This is what I’m talking about when it comes to Ron Roberts’ defenses. If the defensive line can keep the linebackers clean, they’re fast enough to stop the QB run game.
Lagway’s “redemption”
I have redemption in quotes here because Lagway wasn’t truly bad in the game against LIU. His QB rating of 194.3 is currently ranked 17th in the country (3rd in the SEC). PFF had him rated at 83.3, which qualified for 5th in the SEC. The place where Lagway struggled was with explosives, as his 6.7 yards per attempt ranked 12th in the conference.
Perhaps none raised Gators’ fans concern more than this one.
There’s no doubt that Lagway misses this throw, but I actually think this is encouraging. Tre Wilson (#3) draws double coverage. Hayden Hansen (#83) is covered out in the flat. After the pass goes long, we can see that J. Michael Sturdivant (#9) was double covered deep. But do you know who was wide open? Vernell Brown, Jr., the guy Lagway threw the ball to.
If you’ve read my work for any length of time, you know that I harp on completion percentage coming out of high school. The reason is that in high school and college football, the hashmarks are further apart than in the pros. The result is that defenses have to make choices which inevitably leads to players being in one-on-one coverage.
That means that if you have superior athletes, you should always have someone coming open…..if the QB can see it and get them the ball. In this case, Lagway was able to see it, he just was amped and put too much on it. But “seeing it” is where most QBs struggle.
That wasn’t true for Lagway in this game. I charted all of his throws, and other than a throw that he chucked into the ground to Sturdivant after a linebacker broke into his throwing lane, he was always throwing to someone who was open. The result was that the non-screen pass version of Lagway (he was 7-7 on screens for 14 yards) went 8 for 11 (73%) for 106 yards (9.6 yards per pass) with 3 TDs and 0 INTs.
My point isn’t to make excuses for Lagway. He needs to hit the throw I showed above, and he was critical of his play after the game. My point is that if what we wanted to see coming into this season was Lagway seeing the field better and making the right throw, he showed that against LIU.
Now he needs to tighten some things up and take some deep shots.
Prediction
USF is about to come up against a team that is a nightmare matchup defensively.
Florida under Ron Roberts plays a brand of defense that prevents big plays, and USF showed in the opener against Boise State that they are going to rely on explosives to score. Brown has shown in his career that he is a decent player (QB rating of 140.5, 316 carries for 1300 yards), but he’s going to see a different kind of athlete this week.
I know some Florida fans came away from the LIU game a little bit disappointed. It would have been fun to see Lagway put up 400 yards and throw for 6 TDs with a dominant performance from the offensive line. But sometimes it is good to get a solid win but still leave plenty on tape for the coaches to point out to prevent complacency. And given the way Florida has started the last two years against Utah and Miami, perhaps we shouldn’t expect perfection in week one.
I think we all want to see more from Lagway this week. His YAR was bad last week (-1.13) and ESPN’s QBR stat has him playing poorly as well despite some of the stats I cited earlier that show it wasn’t all bad. He had a similar game against FSU last year in a 31-11 Gators win, but preceded that one with gems against LSU and Ole Miss and won MVP of the Gasparilla Bowl afterwards. If you’re going to have a clunker, it’s nice to do it in a 55-0 win rather than against Texas.
I think Lagways gets going in this one, Florida’s defense gives up a few explosives (and a few points too) in this one, and Trey Smack gets back to nailing every opportunity he gets.
Florida (-17.5) wins, 41-13.
Picks this year: 1-0 (1-0 ATS)
William’s Positivity Corner
I want to brag on Nick Knudsen for a minute.
Nick reached out to me years ago about writing for Read & Reaction. I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me about writing for the site over the years. Usually I give them an assignment to read the first piece that I wrote for the site and tell me how they fit in with what I’m trying to accomplish.
I don’t actually remember exactly what Nick wrote back to me with, but the next thing I knew, he and I were on the phone talking about football. It was clear to me that Nick wanted to write for the site. But it was also clear to me that Nick was a fan of college football and a fan of what Read & Reaction provides.
Writing these columns – and putting out podcasts and magazines – takes a lot of work. A lot of that work goes on behind the scenes, and a lot of those responsibilities go to Nick. He painstakingly formats everything we write for the preseason magazine and makes it look like a decent product rather than the word document it would be if it were just me working on it.
But the most important role that he plays when it comes to the site is his continual encouragement and friendship. He’s good at busting my chops (yes, he has me listed as “the talent” in his phone after I said something arrogant during a heated discussion), but he truly cares about people, a rare quality indeed.
Florida football is great because football is a great sport. But it’s really great because of the friendships and connections that it allows. In a world where we have become more and more separated, how great is it that we follow a sport that ensures that we reach out to some of our best friends on a weekly basis for three months out of the year (four if Florida makes the playoff!).
Nick is one of those friends, and I’m honored that he has been a huge part of what we bring you here at Read & Reaction every week.
Note: If you like what we do, buy a magazine. If not for me, do it for Nick.