Three oddly specific predictions for Florida Football against Miami

Tomorrow Florida Football will take to the field for real as the Gators take on Miami. We here at Hail Florida Hail have laid out the keys to the game and will be giving our official prediction tomorrow morning for who we think will win.

But in advance of our final prediction, we wanted to take a stab at some hyperspecfic things we think will happen in the game and why they could have an impact on how the game plays out.

The following are three oddly specific predictions for the Gators ahead of playing the Hurricanes.

Austin Barber and Kamryn Waites get called for a combined two holding penalties

"Starting out with a real downer aren't you Ben?"

We here at Hail Florida Hail like to deal with numbers, and here is a very real number from the 2023 campaign:

There were 198 offensive tackles in the country who took part in at least 350 pass-blocking snaps in 2023. Austin Barber was one of only 29 offensive tackles who were called for at least four penalties during a passing play (Damieon George is also part of this group).

Kamryn Waites didn't play a ton in 2023, but he was called for two penalties against LSU and gave up a sack against both Missouri and FSU.

With Rueben Bain waiting on the other side of the line of scrimmage, Barber and Waites are going to have their hands full, and depending on how deep down the field Billy Napier tries to go, it wouldn't shock us if a couple of flags got dropped against Florida's tackles.

Tre Wilson will have an ADOT of 6.0 yards

ADOT is Average Depth Of Target. In other words, how far down the field is a wide receiver when he gets targeted.

We chronicled earlier this month how Tre Wilson had the lowest ADOT in the country in 2023 and how Napier is going to do his best to get Wilson further down the field.

As mentioned above, a giant question mark looms over whether Graham Mertz is going to have time in the pocket to find Wilson deeper.

Wilson's two most productive games last year from a total yards standpoint (South Carolina and Arkansas) were also the two games where his ADOT was the highest.

And by highest, his ADOT against Arkansas was still 6.5 yards, which still isn't very far down the field.

We have a feeling Wilson is going to be heavily featured, and a low ADOT doesn't exclude him from going over 100 yards receiving if Miami is as poor at tackling in the secondary as we suspect they could be. But that 100-yard day is going to require a lot of yards after the catch, as Florida will probably have to rely upon quicker throws to get him the ball.

Derek Wingo blitzes 10 times

Last year Derek Wingo had a blitz rate on passing plays of 35% for the 156 passing plays he was involved in. For the bulk of year he hovered around 20 snaps per game.

Officially on the depth chart he is listed behind Pup Howard, but it is with the "Or" designation. If we wanted to do a 2-for-1 specific projection here, we could see Wingo getting about 30 snaps against Miami, given his experience.

We highlighted last week how Cam Ward tends to take sacks when he is under pressure. His completion percentage was 11% points lower when facing a blitz than when not blitzed.

Austin Armstrong and Ron Roberts like to blitz and we have a feeling Wingo is going to be turned loose to try and get to Ward on a number of third downs.