Florida Football: Three lingering questions following loss to Georgia

Losing to Georgia is never ideal for Florida football. The Gators were never reasonably expected to win, and Florida’s season will ultimately be defined by what happens in November.

That doesn’t mean that we completely burn the film and ignore what happened in Jacksonville. And there are three things on our minds we have questions about that will dictate whether Florida finishes with a flurry or with a dud.

Florida Football: Will the real Gator defense please stand up?

For the first six games of the season, Florida’s defense looked like the real deal for five of them. They shut down Tennessee, were mostly solid against Utah, and feasted on Charlotte and Vanderbilt.

The Kentucky game was ugly, but it felt like an anomaly relative to what the deeper analytics said.

Then they got lit up by South Carolina.

And against a Georgia offense that has been prone to slow starts, they once again got lit up.

One stat that was emblematic of Florida’s effort on Saturday is that Georgia came into the game averaging 7.0 yards after catch per reception. And if you remove Brock Bowers from that equation, Georgia was averaging 6.6 yards after the catch.

Against Florida, the Bulldogs averaged 9.2 yards after the catch.

So, heading into November, what should we expect from Austin Armstrong’s unit? It is fair to point out that Florida relies on two true freshmen at safety, two sophomores as their inside linebackers, and six of their eight most used defensive linemen are either freshmen or sophomores.

Jason Marshall started the year as a potential first-round draft pick. That’s not the case now. 

If we had to project out November, the Gators feel prone to get lit up by LSU, Missouri, and FSU while shutting down Arkansas this Saturday.

Is the two O-Line coach system working?

One of the well-noted oddities of Billy Napier’s staff is that he has two offensive line coaches among his ten paid assistants. In some ways, there is merit behind employing two coaches to a unit that comprises almost half the offensive players on the field every play.

But the unit has taken a definitive step backward this season after feeling solid last year. The tackles for Florida football just haven’t been able to hold up with consistency. The interior linemen have been better but not elite.

Part of the frustration is that Rob Sale and Darnell Stapleton aren’t recruiting at a level that matches the rest of the haul the Gators are bringing in. Roderick Kearney was a good pickup for the Gators last season, as well as Caden Jones.

Fletcher Westphal has the potential to be a solid player for the 2024 class, but for a unit that has five guys on the field at once, they need to be bringing in far more top-level talent to justify having two coaches for the unit.

Does Napier have more tricks up his sleeve?

Florida’s opening drive against Georgia felt like magic as Tre Wilson was unstoppable en route to the endzone.

Then, the Gators seemed to forget Wilson was on the team for the rest of the half as the game spiraled out of control.

It continues a trend we have seen with the Gator offense this season, where Napier comes out with some great scripted plays that seem to catch opponents off guard, but once forced to make adjustments, he can’t seem to keep the momentum going with consistency.

By the time Florida football did start to get the ball back to Wilson, Georgia had a clear read on how to defend the jet sweep, and even Wilson couldn’t break free.

The failed fourth down attempt felt like a play someone would draw up playing backyard football, but also highlights some of the conceptual flaws Napier has. Both Kahleil Jackson and Ricky Pearsall were locked up on the play, so even if Trevor Etienne didn’t have a guy in his face, the play was dead on arrival.

Where we have seen plays like this have success is finding a way to leak a tight end out the back. If Pearsall had crossed to the right side, and then Arlis Boardingham ran a crosser to the left, there is a pathway for the play to work.

But time and again, what it feels like when watching Napier’s offense is that guys are running routes that don’t seem to complement each other.

We can argue what the deeper data says and whether Napier is running more complex schemes than we give him credit for, but the ending reality we’ve seen in a year and a half under Napier is that if the opposing defense gets a read on him, he doesn’t seem to have adjustments.

In all three of Florida’s losses, the Gator offense was contained from the start. In four of their five wins, Florida’s offense had it going all game long.