After an excellent start to the Billy Napier era in Week 1, the Florida Gators received a reality check from Kentucky in Week 2 and narrowly escaped USF at home in Week 3. Now it’s time for UF’s first road test and it comes against another SEC East foe, the Tennessee Volunteers, on Saturday, September 24.
Napier knows how tough it will be to beat UT in his first year as the head coach at Florida, but it’s a challenge he’s excited to take on. The first step is figuring out the opponent’s strengths, and Tennessee has a lot of them.
“Tennessee’s got a good football team,” Napier said during his Monday media availability. “You can see where coach (Josh) Heupel and his staff have improved in their time there. A lot cleaner product in all three areas of their team on film. Much cleaner football on offense, defense and special teams maybe compared to last year. This is a veteran team that we’re playing against, starting with the quarterback on offense and a number of players on defense that have played a lot of football.
“They’re a deep team. They play a lot of players, especially on the defensive side, and I do think they do good a job in the kicking game. So, got to got play at their place. Very familiar with Knoxville and certainly the challenges that come with that. So, a good football team, it’s going to be a challenge and we look forward and embrace that.”
Singling out quarterback Hendon Hooker isn’t surprising. He’s fourth in the SEC in passing yards, has a 6:0 touchdown-to-interception ratio and is third in the conference in quarterback rating. Hooker is the leader of a well-oiled machine that likes to operate at a fast pace.
When asked about slowing down the tempo of Tennessee’s offense, Napier admitted that there are ways to do that with both offense and defense. The biggest key for him will be the defense’s effectiveness on the first down of each possession (P and 10), though. The Vols’ offense tends to snowball, and getting to them early and often could change the way they play.
“I think there will be some strategy when it comes to that, you know, in terms of controlling the tempo of the game, and I do think that how you play offensively can ultimately influence how they play offense,” he said. “But you know, I think you’re about right there. It’s about every 20 and a half seconds or so they’re running a play. I know they want to do it in 18, so that’s part of their philosophy. There’s some things that go with that.
“I think the key is P and 10 is a big down when you play these teams, and, certainly, you’ve got to try and knock them out of their rhythm. There can be a problem for you when it turns into five, six, seven, or eight-play drives. It’s a momentum system, and I think you’ve got to do everything you can do to slow down that momentum. That starts with playing well on first down.”
[autotag]Anthony Richardson[/autotag] is hopeful that the offense will be more effective and make it easy on the defense. Good quarterbacks can help orchestrate long scoring that drives that help keep the momentum balanced, even if one team is scoring quickly.
Despite having a few down weeks, Richardson thinks the offense is just a few corrections away from making it all click. He knows the plan and is ready to execute on Saturday.
“Our offense, we can definitely be explosive,” Richardson said. “Just watching the film, you can just see that we are one person away from having a good play, whether that’s me or a missed block or not a crisp route. I feel like if we have all 11 executing, we can be very explosive and it’ll be a good game …
“… We want to try and keep their offense off the field because they like to move fast and we’re going to try and get our defense some rest.”
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