For all the pressure and scrutiny John Brantley was under in 2010, Florida’s senior quarterback might have the easiest job in football right now.
He is working under maybe the best quarterbacks coach in the game in offensive coordinator Charlie Weis. He is surrounded by playmakers and can put up 200-yard games without making any real throws.
Saturday against Tennessee, Brantley threw for 213 yards.
But Brantley’s total yards at the catch — that is, the distance his receivers were from the line of scrimmage when they caught the ball — was only 15 yards. Fifteen!
That number is slightly skewed, because four of his 14 completions were screens behind the line of scrimmage, resulting in negative yards at the catch.
Disregarding those, the yards-at-the-catch average for his other 10 completions was just 2.9. Think about that for a second.
Brantley threw the ball an average of fewer than three yards downfield on his completions. Somewhere in the 8- to 9-foot range.
Literally every quarterback who has ever had the smallest margin of success playing high school or college football could do what Brantley did on Saturday.
He completed one throw farther than 5 yards: an 11-yard curl to Deonte Thompson.
It may sound like I’m hating on Brantley here, but the truth is, I’m not. Every quarterback in the world derives a portion of their total yardage from yards after the catch, and rightfully so. There’s a measure of talent that goes into finding receivers who have room to make plays and hitting them in stride so they can turn it upfield and eat up that extra yardage.
But the yards-after-catch total Brantley’s playmakers put up Saturday is absurd. Rainey and Co. combined for 198 yards after the catch, an average of more than 14 per completion.
It would be incorrect to say Brantley’s at fault for making all these short tosses, because there’s no reason not to.
But some day, probably soon, a team is going to press up on the line and defend the short patterns. And this is where the problems could start.
Brantley attempted eight passes against Tennessee to receivers who were more than 5 yards downfield. He completed just one of them.
This could be a product of how the Volunteers defended the Gators. They clearly weren’t taking away the short stuff.
Or it could be because Florida’s leading wide receiver, Deonte Thompson, has just seven catches for 93 yards, and maybe the players at that position are just bad. Brantley, Weis and everyone else with a voice has predictably expressed confidence in the receivers and the offense’s ability to go vertical if need be.
For the time being, I can’t argue with that.
The offense is taking what the defense gives them, and it’s working to the tune of 37.7 points and 442.3 yards per game. But what’s going to happen when defenses stop giving up the underneath stuff?
Since we haven’t seen it yet, I can’t say with confidence Florida’s offense won’t be up to the challenge. But, if I were a Gators fan, I wouldn’t be excited to find out.
Contact Greg Luca at gluca@alligator.org.
