Florida Football wastes defensive gem in loss to Tennessee

In our prediction piece before Saturday's game against Tennessee, we predicted a loss for Florida Football. Originally, we had predicted Florida would score 17 points, but at the last moment, we tipped it down to 14 points.

We should have stuck with our instincts.

But what wasn't accounted for was the ability of the defense to put Florida in a position to win with just 17 points. And while there was a hint of good luck for the defense, the overall meta-strategy for the Gators was the perfect blueprint to give Florida a chance.

Florida Football: Defense Wins Championships

Football is a strange game. The Gators gave up 28 points to Mississippi State and were one yard away from giving up seven more. So the reason most predictions beyond just ours had Florida giving up at least 30 points in regulation was a lack of faith in the ability to slow down Nico Iamaleava for 60 minutes.

But when people talked about Arkansas giving Florida the blueprint of how to stop Tennessee, it required an overall strategy of allowing Iamaleava to take deep shots and banking on his inability to hit them.

Against Arkansas, Iamaleava was 4/14 on passes over ten yards.

Iamaleava wasn't much better against Florida, going 6/14 on passes over ten yards.

So, while Iamaleava missed some wide-open shots for a touchdown, in some ways, it was part of the plan for the Gators.

The end result was to allow Florida to neutralize Tennessee's rushing attack. Even though Dylan Sampson had 112 rushing yards on the day, it took him 27 attempts to get there.

The interior of Florida's line also held strong. On running plays, Cam Jackson led the way with four tackles. But the safeties for Florida were also far more involved in stopping the run, with Jordan Castell making three tackles and Trikweze Bridges making two.

Sharif Denson also got in on the run-stopping act as well as making a key interception of Iamaleava.

Add it all up and factor in that three of the points they gave up were from the field goal Tennessee got after picking off DJ Lagway, and the defense for Florida did all it could to hold the fort until they gave out in overtime.

Too often in the Billy Napier Era, we have had moments where the offense did its job only for the defense to be incapable of stopping anything. And it's part of what makes the self-inflicted wounds on offense so maddening is because of this defensive effort.