We here at Hail Floria Hail have been very critical of Florida’s defense six games into the season under defensive coordinator Brad White. At the core of what we mused about was that Florida seemed content to play back, with the thesis of preventing explosive plays no matter what.
The problem is that Florida was still giving up explosive plays even with that thesis.
Part of Florida’s success on Saturday against Texas was their game plan to say “screw it” and blitz with almost reckless abandon. Sumrall admitted after the game that the shift to the approach and the deeper data indicate this was a game plan that White has almost never taken in his own career.
Florida blitzed Texas at a rate that Brad White never likes to do
Florida had been musing that their players weren’t playing with enough aggression. The problem is that Florida’s defense wasn’t set up to play with aggression. After Florida’s win against Texas, Sumrall noted that part of what helped was a switch to a more aggressive defense by nature:
“I think our corners also play with less fear today. They played with a little more confidence today, and I'm so grateful for the mindset those guys brought. We probably did pressure a little bit more today.
I told Brad (White) middle part of the game. I just said the hell with playing coverage. Let's try to come after them a little bit and see if we can affect them. And sometimes maybe we need to call it with aggressiveness to help our guys go play with more aggressiveness."
To highlight Sumrall’s point, Florida blitzed on 64% of Arch Manning’s dropbacks. It’s high, but not unheard of for Florida over the years. For example, Florida blitzed on 71% of dropbacks against FSU last season.
But it is unheard of for a Brad White run defense. Forget 60%; the last time a Brad White-led defense blitzed more than 50% in a single game, coincidentally, was in 2023, when Kentucky shut down Florida. Between Kentucky’s defense in 2024 and 2025, and Florida’s defense in 2026 prior to the Texas game, Brad White’s defenses had blitzed at an average rate of 33%.
That’s not to say a team should blitz with reckless abandon, because QBs who know what they are doing will pick you apart. But part of the criticism of White is that his defense tends to be vanilla and refuses to adapt when getting picked apart anyways.
It will be interesting to see what Florida’s approach will be against Georgia and how the cat and mouse game will go. Given two weeks to prepare, will the Bulldogs be better prepared to handle Florida’s blitz?
We don’t have that anwser, but we would rather Florida try something and go down swining than sit back and hope something is going to work that hadn’t been working yet.
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