Florida Football: Three benchmarks for Gators to hit against Vanderbilt

Florida football is favored by 18.5 points over Vanderbilt this Saturday. While we learned last season that anything is possible, simply winning the game won’t be enough to ease the fears Gator fans have coming out of the Kentucky game.

It is with that in mind that there are three metrics we here at Hail Florida Hail would like to see the Gators hit on Saturday to help put the team back on solid ground heading into South Carolina next week.

Florida Football: Seven or fewer missed tackles

According to Pro Football Focus, the Gators have 44 missed tackles on the season, an average of almost nine per game. It is better than last season when Florida was averaging over ten per game, but prior to the Kentucky game, Florida’s missed tackles per game were under seven.

However, the Gators were credited with 17 missed tackles against the Wildcats.

Some of it was poor technique, some was being slow to react, some was bad angles, and some was just not being physical enough against Ray Davis.

We would like to think Kentucky was an anomaly as Florida gets back to the defense we saw in the first four games of the season.

15 passing attempts of at least 10 yards

On his weekly radio show, The Head Ball Coach, former Florida football head coach Steve Spurrier chimed in on whether he thought the Gators needed to be throwing the ball downfield more often than they have been.

"“I think we do need to air it out a little bit more,” Spurrier said. “And then if you’re successful doing that, Etienne will have more rushing yards also I think.”"

We chronicled yesterday that part of the preseason the Gators are so bad at third down conversions is their refusal ever to throw it past the first down maker.

On the season, Florida has only attempted 43 passes that have been at least 10 yards. And the thing is, Florida has had decent success when going deep. Graham Mertz has a 67% completion rate when attempting passes at least 10 yards down the field.

And as Spurrier points out, the more they can push the ball down the field, the fewer teams will load up the box to stop the run.

Zero special teams penalties

One can dream, right?

As pointed out after the Kentucky game, it is hard to tell if the continued flaws on special teams is a by-product of Chris Couch himself or a by-product of the fact that he is limited with what he can do because he is an off-field analyst.

Either way, with South Carolina and special teams guru Shane Beamer looming, this unit needs to get cleaned up before it is too late.