Florida football: Gators’ defensive front needs to be more disruptive

Florida football has seen their defense take a major step forward under Austin Armstrong, and has had plenty of new faces make an early impact.

But while that unit as a whole has provided some refreshment to Gator fans, there are still a couple of areas that they need to improve in.

The front seven and defensive line that the Gators have has plenty of notable names and major contributors, but they haven’t put it all together yet to form a dominant group.

Florida’s defensive front is lacking in a couple of key areas which they need to improve on as the season continues.

Florida football: Not enough big plays

The Gators D-line has made their fair share of plays this season, but they haven’t made many game-changing, momentum-shifting plays that have given UF a big boost.

Among the SEC, they rank dead last in sacks per game at 1.4. The havoc rate of their front seven is 10.6%, which isn’t bad by any stretch but isn’t high enough where we can quantify this unit as elite.

The Gators’ stuff rate is also in the middle of the pack, but that number took a big hit after what Ray Davis did to them this past weekend.

The defense as a whole has been prone to explosive plays, allowing 1.47 PPA on successful run plays, which goes back to the front seven not being able to stop the ground game before it gets started.

So not only have they been unable to consistently blow up plays and set the offense behind the chains, but they’ve allowed a good bit of chunk plays as well that allow the opposing teams to get rolling.

If Florida wants to avoid a game like Kentucky happening again this season, they’ll need that defensive front to play the way it did against Tennessee on a consistent basis.