Florida Gators Football: Austin Armstrong not as chaotic as metrics indicate

Austin Armstrong has been tabbed to come to Gainesville to lead the defense for Florida Gators football and the one word that is associated with him is aggressiveness. Armstrong loves to blitz and his defenses at Southern Miss were some of the best in the country at getting to opposing QBs.

But an actual analysis of the scheme reveals a calculated approach that still has some structure to its chaos.

Florida Gators Football: Blitz with a safety net

The raw numbers for Southern Miss last year paint the picture of a team that always sent pressure. With a blitz rate of 40%, Southern Miss was 7th in the country by sacking opposing QBs on 9.7% of passing attempts.

The Golden Eagles were also very good at forcing QBs into mistakes, as they picked off 4.3% of opponents’ passes, the third-highest rate in the country.

The idea of an aggressive defense draws parallels to former defensive coordinator Todd Grantham, which led a defense that had the 17th-best sack percentage in the country in 2021. But where we remember Grantham for dialing up big, multi-man blitzes, Armstrong typically only sends one guy off the edge while playing a Cover-3 on the back end.

Of course, Patrick Toney, the former head of the defense for Florida Gators football, also loved to use Cover-3. The difference is that Toney had no way to generate any pressure, so opposing QBs could easily pick apart his scheme.

The end result for Armstrong is a defense that doesn’t get beat over the top, and while they are vulnerable underneath and in the flats when they do blitz, it does just enough to consistently get off the field.

Southern Miss was 71st in opponents QB completion percentage (60.75%) and 87th in opponents passing yards per attempt (7.6 yards per attempt).

But, as indicated by the interception rate, the safeties for Southern Miss were very keen to jump routes when given the opportunity.

So the combination of sacks and interceptions had the Golden Eagles stop opponents on third down 63% on the time last year (54th in the country) and gave up 24.7 points per game (44th in the country).

Armstrong’s scheme is an upgrade over Toney’s scheme. It probably is an upgrade over Grantham’s scheme, given that there is structure on the back end.

But while the metrics paint a picture of chaos, it is a scheme that can be somewhat vanilla in the sense that one can get a read on what will happen and opposing offensive coordinators that get that read are able to find the soft spots in the defense.

And whether it is a scheme that can lead Florida to the promise land remains to be seen.