Florida Football: Patrick Toney simply wasn’t good enough

According to Zippa.Com, there are slightly over 40,000 football coaches in America. Being the defensive coordinator for Florida football is probably one of the top 200 most desirable coaching positions in the sport when accounting for the NFL.

So, Patrick Toney’s struggles during his first season as defensive coordinator in Gainesville doesn’t mean he is a lousy human being. Still, he wasn’t good enough to hold a position that 99.5% of football coaches in America would trade out their current job for.

There were a lot of problems with the defense for Florida football in 2022. This wasn’t all Toney’s fault, but there were definite red flags. It is a bit strange that the Arizona Cardinals would pursue Toney, but their gain might also wind up being their loss.

Florida Football: 3rd and Toney

The core metric that highlighted the failure of the defense was Florida’s inability to get stops on third down. Opponents converted third downs 50.3% of the time on Florida, the third worst rate in the country in 2022. As much as we memed “Third and Grantham,” Florida only gave up third downs at a rate of 34.7% in 2021.

And if we want to blame it on Toney not having the players, Vanderbilt still managed to only give up third down conversions 41.1% of the time. Missouri only gave up conversions 35.3% of the time.

Are we supposed to believe that Vanderbilt and Missouri had players and Florida didn’t?

In fact, Florida football took a step back under Toney in a number of meaningful defense metrics compared to the 2021 squad:

• The Gators went from 39th in yards per play in 2021 to 105th in 2022.
• Opposing QBs completed passes on 60.5% of attempts in 2022, compared to 55.9% in 2021.
• Florida’s defense was 98th in yards per rushing attempt in 2022 compared to 85th in 2021.
• The Gators were 85th in sacks per passing play in 2022 compared to 17th in 2021

It’s the final metric that highlights the ultimate problem that Toney had. While Grantham was reckless with his blitzes and teams that knew what they were doing could easily counter it, he at least had a vision and an identity. When his defense worked, his defense had an enormous upside.

Toney’s defense had no identity. Too often he resorted to safe, static zones that had his corners lining up 10 yards off the ball. There was little upside to what would happen even if the structure of the defense held.

In time this philosophy might work if you have players that are more talented than the opposing offense. But Florida didn’t have a roster of guys that could just line up and overpower an opponent, and as a result, teams constantly picked apart Florida because their defense was far too predictable because there was little attempt to disguise coverages.

If Austin Armstrong comes in, will he be an upgrade? Hard to say as he too in a young defensive coordinator that has yet to be tested in a power five conference. Florida’s roster is also very thin on the defensive side heading into 2023.

But when it comes to Florida football, if you are not the guy then you are not the guy and you need to try someone else.

And Patrick Toney was not the guy.