I’ve written in the past about how important it is for Florida to establish its running game. That’s what good football teams do, right? They have balanced offenses and play calling and they get it done on the ground and in the air. They’re multifaceted and can beat you in a variety of ways.
Personally, I’ve always been a pass-first kind of guy. In Madden, I throw the ball probably 98 percent of the time. Running the ball is like eating your vegetables. It’s boring, but you kind of have to do it, right? That’s how you have a balanced diet, err, play calling.
Well what if you just ate the bare minimum amount of vegetables? Instead of force feeding vegetables — or let’s just say two-yard carries by Lamical Perine between the tackles — you ate more snacks. Let’s say, purely for argument’s sake, the snacks are Kyle Trask hitting Van Jefferson for 15 yards over the middle of the field.
Snacks are inherently good. So are first downs. And efficient offense.
I ran the numbers (I actually just read the game notes this week, shoutout Zach Dirlam), and I’ve had a change of heart.
I used to be in favor of a balanced diet. But I now think the Gators offense needs more snacks.
Dan Mullen: Unleash Kyle Trask, embrace the pass and abandon the run.
There were two things that allowed me to make a connection between the Gators and Washington State’s famous air raid offense run by Mike Leach. One: Mullen was asked whether his team should run Leach’s offense and he didn’t seem entirely opposed to the idea.
“I talked to Brian, we talked to that, because we knew we had a veteran receiver corps,” he said. “Did we need to maybe go visit them in the offense? We didn’t, but maybe to study that stuff a little bit more and just open it up.
“Get it to your best players, put them in position to make plays.”
Two: a tidbit in this week’s game notes that mentioned Florida and Washington State are the only two teams in the country with five receivers with five or more catches and more than 100 receiving yards.
That’s the makeup of a dynamic, deep passing attack.
Florida ranks 27th in the country in passing offense despite running the ball on more than half of its plays. Of the 26 teams ranked ahead of UF in passing offense, only five teams (Oklahoma, Iowa State, Troy, Southern Miss and Notre Dame) have thrown the ball less than Florida.
Feleipe Franks was already off to the best start of his career when he went down with a season-ending injury. He was eighth nationally in completion percentage and 20th in passing efficiency when he went down. Trask is even better at slinging the ball around the field to a litany of receivers. And here’s the best part: he sees the middle of the field too.
Through four games last season, UF had 778 passing yards on 99 attempts. That’s good for 7.8 yards per attempt. Keep in mind Florida played two FCS teams during this span in 2018.
In the first four games this season, Florida has 1,179 passing yards on 127 attempts. That’s an increase to 9.3 yards per attempt against three Power 5 teams. Trask is averaging 10 yards per attempt this season. He almost had a 300-yard passing game in his first career start. If he weren’t pulled for Emory Jones in the fourth quarter it would’ve happened.
The Gators haven’t had an individual 300-yard passer in 41 games since Luke Del Rio accomplished that feat against Kentucky in 2016. You have to go back even further to find the last time UF had an individual with consecutive 300-yard passing games. Tim Tebow did it in 2007. That was 149 games ago.
Think of the record books, Dan. Think of the snacks.
Quarterback protection has been great; run blocking hasn’t. There’s no justification to continue to force feed a running back room in which no back listed on the depth chart with more than one rush is averaging better than 3.8 yards per carry.
I’ve seen the light. Now I want to see Trask throw the ball 40 times against Towson.
Contact Kyle Wood at kwood@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @Kkylewood.
