Florida football: Three areas of improvement for the Gators

Florida football locked down an opening win against the Canes, but there’s still room for improvement. Where should head coach Dan Mullen focus his efforts heading into next week’s home opener against UT-Martin?

There has been plenty of cautious hype around Florida football heading into 2019, but the looming question marks have centered around overall consistency.

Nobody is questioning this team’s talent. Florida football head coach Dan Mullen has elevated the program since his arrival last season.

The talent showed up on Saturday night, but so did the inconsistency.

"“Our focus has to be on where we’re at as a team, what we see, and are we getting better? Right? Because that’s what we can control and worry about.”Dan Mullen, Thursday press conference"

Here are the three areas of improvement the Gators should focus on going into the bye week:

#1. Pursuit angles and tackling

Florida’s defense led the way to a victory on Saturday and 10 sacks demonstrated how dominant the defensive front can be in 2019, but both facts helped cover a few ugly warts on the night.

A sack on first down forced Miami into 2nd-and-19, Hurricanes’ running back Deejay Dallas caught a screen in the backfield and broke three tackles en route to a 40-yard gain along the right sideline. Linebacker James Houston IV took an overly aggressive angle that left him off-balance and caused a missed tackle.

Another Dallas special, this time from a direct snap in the wildcat formation. After slipping a LB Ventrell Miller tackle around the line-of-scrimmage, Dallas lowered a shoulder on CB C.J. Henderson three yards later, CB Marco Wilson and LB David Reese II proceeded to miss tackles and Dallas took off down the sideline for a 50-yard touchdown.

The secondary had a few poor angles on the night as well.

Missed tackles will never be fully eliminated, but the Gators defense can take a big step forward if they clean up the sloppy play going forward.

#2. Quarterback consistency

There has been a lot written and said about QB Feleipe Franks‘ performance on Saturday night.

We’ve had this conversation before – no need to dwell too heavily on it, but the fact remains, Franks needs to gain more consistency if the Gators are to be a threat to contend this season.

Franks finished the game with three total touchdowns. Each of his three touchdown performances has come under Mullen.

On Thursday, Mullen remained positive by stressing Franks’ numbers. The junior quarterback finished with a stat line of 17-27 passing with 254 yards and 2 touchdowns but finished with two interceptions including a late interception that left Steve Spurrier bewildered.

Quarterback consistency will be a key storyline to follow throughout 2019 Florida football season.

The defense helped out against Miami, but there will be weeks where the team will need Franks to put the game away.

As Franks goes, so goes the Gators.

#3. Penalties

One of Mullen’s best quotes from the postgame press conference centered around a question about penalties.

A reporter asked, “At the end of the game, though, were you kind of going crazy on the sidelines? There was one penalty after another?”

Mullen replied:

"I must say, honestly, it felt my life clock was going probably at about a thousand times faster, right? I mean, every second was probably like a thousand minutes or days. I don’t know. The last five minutes of the game I think I aged like ten years."

The Gators had 9 penalties for 100 yards on the night.

The last four penalties all came in the fourth quarter and all were of the 15-yard variety:

• Unsportsmanlike conduct (Campbell) – gave Miami a first down after a 4-yard loss and Dallas took off for the 50-yard TD on the next play.
• Unsportsmanlike conduct (Houston) – late hit out of bounds.
• Pass interference (Wilson) – gave Miami a first down on 4th-and-34.
• Pass interference (Dean) – gave Miami a first down on 3rd-and-12.

The Gators were clearly the better team on Saturday night, but sloppy mistakes allowed Miami to hang around.

Florida needs to improve in each of these areas if the Gators expect to live up to their potential in 2019.