(Photo credit: Florida Gators)
A wild, wacky, and back-and-forth contest between Florida and South Carolina concluded with one of the most sensational last-minute touchdowns in recent memory. But even beside that, there was so much to make from this game.
What stood out above the rest?
1: Graham. MF. Mertz.
How about a hand for the once-upon-a-time Wisconsin Badger QB that half the Bucky supporters were booing out of town just ten months ago? The transfer signal-caller played his best game as a Gator, and maybe his best game ever, against South Carolina.
The funny thing is that Mertz actually finished with his worst showing from a completion percentage standpoint, completing “only” 30 of 48 passes. But that just goes to show how little of the story that completion percentage statistic tells. Mertz was overall excellent, firing the ball down the field with comfortability and precision to a number of receivers, most notably Ricky Pearsall, to the tune of 423 yards and a hat trick of touchdowns. And that’s despite the fact that Mertz took a beating in this game, getting sacked four times and being hit several more.
What we saw from Mertz directly conflicts with the data that we’ve collected so far on him, and this Florida offense. The Gators had simply never displayed the ability to hit the deep ball with any consistency, as either the routes weren’t run well, Mertz didn’t see receivers open down the field, he did see them but overthrew them, or the offensive line collapsed before the routes developed. For Mertz to roll out to his right, put up the sky ball for Pearsall to go up and snatch out of the air on fourth and ten with the game on the line? That’s new data, which says that maybe Florida can rely on the deep ball after all. And then for Mertz to fire the game-winning touchdown to Pearsall moments later? Well, that’s just poetic.
This was the kind of showing from Graham Mertz that tells me the Florida Gators have a puncher’s chance in their remaining games. He was smart with the football, he didn’t turn it over, and he hit every throw he could realistically have been expected to hit.
2: The Florida Gators defense took a major step back
Perhaps the most concerning thing about the victory is that it wasn’t truly a situation where the whole Florida Gators team took a step forward. Instead, one unit took a major step forward while the other took a major step backward. If Florida is going to beat any of the teams left on its schedule, it’s going to have to get four strong quarters out of both the offense and the defense; getting only one of them to show up isn’t going to work out very well.
I’ll cut to the chase: Florida’s defense was terrible. Sure, Spencer Rattler is an above-average quarterback, and he’s got some respectable playmakers in JuJu McDowell, Mario Anderson, Trey Knox, and Xavier Legette to work with, but the Gamecocks’ offensive line is one of the worst in recent memory. It’s been so bad that it allowed an astounding 22 sacks in its first four games against FBS opponents; that comes out to be about one and a half sacks per quarter. The Gamecocks’ offensive line has also damaged the team’s overall stats, limiting what could be a highly explosive offense with the skill position players to just 399.2 yards per game.
Florida, for its part, managed to get to Rattler twice and allowed 465 yards of total offense, easily the worst showing of the season- and the blame has to be spread around. Princely Umanmielen and his fellow defensive ends never could set the edge. Gator defenders missed tackles all over the field, including two on one play from Jordan Castell and Miguel Mitchell on Joshua Simon’s 33 yard catch and run touchdown. Florida’s secondary was burned several times on deep balls, twice with Jalen Kimber on the assignment (a third of which featured a badly missed offensive pass interference call, so you can’t blame him on that one). Even Shemar James and Scooby Williams, while they didn’t play badly, didn’t have quite the impact they usually have.
So while yes, the Gators did make the stops they needed to in the end, this was just a bad defensive showing from top to bottom. It’s hard to blame Austin Armstrong with a straight face here, as just three weeks ago everybody was singing his praises, and he can’t tackle or take the right angles for his players. This is, after all, a young team in year two of a rebuild. There are bound to be some growing pains along the way. But at the same time, this defense has now put out three less-than-great performances in a row, posing the legitimate question of if the first month of the season was a mirage.
3: How about Trey Smack?
Florida Gators fans may not be very fond of Dan Mullen, but this fanbase does owe him one measure of gratitude for Florida’s special teams this season. Because Mullen did leave Florida with one last gift before heading out: finding, evaluating, recruiting, and signing Trey Smack. Or at the very least, he deputized Shayne Graham to do it for him.
Anyway: Smack has been making a serious case for himself to win the Lou Groza Award. He’s at a disadvantage because Billy Napier mystifyingly went with Adam Mihalek to start the season and Smack didn’t take over the kicking duties until midway through the Tennessee game, but he’s been blasting kicks through with consistency ever since. He finally “missed” one for the first time all season, but that was because Florida’s field goal protect team didn’t do its job and allowed the kick to get blocked. Smack easily nailed his other four attempts, including one from 54 yards out that would have been good from at least another ten, maybe even fifteen, yards away.
And Florida doesn’t win this game without him. Thanks in part to a successful wildcat toss on the two-point conversion, Florida was able to keep pace with the touchdowns South Carolina was scoring with Smack’s four field goals. It’s hard not to feel bad for Mihalek, at least in a person sense, but it’s great to see Smack finally earn the job he should have had all along- and thrive in it.
4: Offensive line struggles continue
Whatever doubts may have remained about Florida’s two-OL coach approach have officially been vanquished. South Carolina’s defense is notably not good- defensive coordinator Clayton White is firmly on the hot seat, especially after Saturday- and yet they were able to sack Graham Mertz four times. And that continues a pattern of suspect play by Florida’s offensive line.
It’s hard to pin the o-line struggles on one player. Left tackle Austin Barber was fine, for the most part, although he did beaten on a couple of simple pass-rush moves on plays that ended badly. Richie Leonard and Micah Mazzccua were overall solid at their guard positions, but there were plays where the entire line just got beaten up and they were no exceptions. Center Jake Slaughter has certainly made progress since the Utah game, and he absolutely deserves credit for that, but he’s still got a lot of work to do, and that showed on Saturday. And Alabama transfer Damieon George has shown flashes here and there of why Nick Saban recruited him in the first place, but just isn’t winning his reps consistently enough to be trusted.
It wasn’t just the four sacks, either. South Carolina’s defense stuffed two running plays for losses, three additional running plays for no gain, and two more running plays for one-yard gains. Obviously, every team is going to call running plays that don’t gain several yards from time to time, but when you throw the four sacks on top of that, it does continue a pattern of Florida’s offensive line not playing at the level you’d hope when it has two offensive line coaches.
5: A Program Defining Win For the Florida Gators?
Perhaps the best part about this victory is that Florida played far from its best game, all things considered. That’s not a knock on them, that’s not bashing them, and that’s not being pessimistic. No, that’s a great thing.
To win on the road in the SEC is difficult in its own right, and that goes double for when you don’t have a massive talent advantage over everyone else like Alabama and Georgia. To win on the road in the SEC when you don’t play that well? That’s a sign of a program that’s headed in the right direction. Nobody is going to seriously compare Florida to either Alabama or Georgia, but those teams have made a habit of winning road games in which they don’t play well. Of course, Florida has only won two road games in slightly more than 1.5 seasons under Billy Napier, whereas Alabama and Georgia seldom lose, period, but that’s one more road win than the Florida Gators had heading into this weekend.
And so while clapbacks at the Gator chomping South Carolina fans and the way this game finished will be what this game is remembered for, a solid building block of the foundation has indisputably been laid down with this victory. This is the kind of result that the Florida Gators can build on, and depending on how the Napier Era plays out, perhaps one day we’ll look back upon this victory as the day that Napier’s program took the next step forward.