Florida Football: Four red flags for the Gators moving forward

One could look at the dismantling of Florida football on Saturday in Lexington in a couple of different ways. One could take the optimistic route that Kentucky isn’t a good matchup for the Gators, and the team’s overall direction is fine.

One could also sound the alarm that some deep-seated flaws were exposed on Saturday that are going to carry over for the rest of the season.

While we here at Hail Florida Hail try to take an optimistic view when we can, the following are four issues for the Gators that we don’t believe were just a one-time occurrence.

Florida Football Red Flag: Play design on offense

We don’t consider ourselves geniuses for stating that Billy Napier’s insistence to be the offensive coordinator isn’t working. Being a head coach requires a lot of side jobs to keep the machine running, and Napier has to dedicate a lot of his time to recruiting, media, managing his staff, etc.

And every time he does one of those things, he could be spending time working on play design and ways to shred opposing defenses.

We are one game away from officially being a year and a half into the Billy Napier Era, and it is not unfair to state that his structure on offense isn’t set up for long-term success in the SEC.

At its core, it dictates that the Gators “out athlete” the opposition. Go back to the Tennessee game in the first half when the offense was “clicking.” In reality, we saw some great individual efforts from guys like Trevor Etienne, Montrell Johnson, and Tre Wilson.

And to some extent, as Napier gets more talent into the system, Florida can win a bunch of games with that setup. But as the Gators go against the other teams that are also recruiting at a high level, Napier will need plays that don’t just depend on Etienne turning into Superman.

The Gator Nation Football Podcast does phenomenal breakdowns of Napier’s design, and the general synopsis is that Florida’s routes take too long to develop, receivers often occupy the same throwing window, and when receivers do stay short, it is usually an easy to read flat route or dig route that is short of the first down marker.

At least for the rest of this season, there is little reason to believe that this will change.