Coming into Saturday’s game, we knew Florida’s defense wasn’t elite, but there was a pathway for them to hold Missouri in check enough that we still felt confident they would get things done. In Missouri’s three previous games against FBS competition this season, they had scored a grand total of four TDs on a drive that had started off a punt or kickoff.
They scored five TDs against Florida on Saturday on drives that started off a punt or kickoff.
Oops.
A huge reason why was the secondary's inability to keep anything in check, and Sumrall basically sounded the alarm that there is no easy answer.
Jon Sumrall doesn’t see an easy fix to the secondary woes
When asked about the explosive plays the Gators gave up, Sumrall didn’t indicate that things are going to get magically fixed anytime soon:
“It would be a really easy fix if it was just one guy. It would be a really easy fix if it was just one thing. The problem is, right now, it's different guys wearing the hat that maybe are giving something up, and then different issues that are presenting that are really, when you're trying to maybe plug one hole, and another one opens.
And then when you're calling the game, like Coach (Brad) White, he can't protect everybody. Somebody has got to win a one on one down. Like there's 11 guys on each side, and we have to win some one-on-ones out there on the perimeter, which we are not doing enough of right now.”
What’s concerning is that it’s not like this in an untalented unit on paper. Florida’s starting corners are both former top 50 overall players in their respective recruiting classes, and the guys who Florida has rotating for them are also highly rated four-stars. The safeties the Gators are using may not have as many stars next to their names, but they are experienced guys.
And yet, to Sumrall’s point, it seems like no one is capable of sticking with their man. The two most concerning plays were the two touchdowns in the 2nd quarter. On the first one, Florida is in a standard cover three. Missouri knows that Brad White loves cover three and so they dialed up a play that caused the safety to bite down, and they simply exploited the seam behind him.
On the other TD, Florida was playing eight yards off the line of scrimmage and still managed to get burned by five yards.
So it just begs the question if the entire point of Brad White’s defense is to not give up explosive plays, and then it goes out and gives up explosive plays, then what are we accomplishing here?
Again, Missouri was a good offense coming into Saturday, but they were not elite.
For those keeping score at home, Florida is now 104th in scoring defense against.
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