After the successful first drive against Tennessee, Florida wandered in the offensive wilderness for a while. Here are the stories of some of the more notable plays that went awry.

4:07 1Q: Franks forced out of bounds

On the first play after an interception, three receivers go vertical. Fans complained about the Gators not going for the jugular after the punt block against Michigan. They’re going for it here.

Unfortunately, none of the receivers get separation deep. It’s in part, as Gary Danielson pointed out, because Tyrie Cleveland and Josh Hammond run their double post routes too close to one another and therefore prevent each other from ever having a shot at getting open.

Tennessee was expecting and ready for a long throw. T.J. McCoy couldn’t hold his block, and Brett Heggie pulled to the right immediately and therefore wasn’t around to help him out. Feleipe Franks runs from the pressure to his right and out of bounds before getting hit.

Had the pressure not come from Franks’s left, he’d have had time to work down the progressions all the way to Malik Davis, who is out in the left flat and has no defenders within 15 yards of him in any direction.

3:01 1Q: Franks incomplete to Cleveland

The quarterback and receiver get their signals crossed. Cleveland runs a hitch and go. Franks throws it where it should go if Cleveland had turned 270º and gone to the sideline.

14:31 2Q: Franks throws into double coverage

There was a play against Michigan where Franks threw into double coverage long on the sideline instead of throwing to a single-covered shorter route. He does the same thing here. The receiver at the far right, which I believe is Kadarius Toney, is running a crossing route around the first down line and appears to be much more open than Dre Massey ever was.

When you heard complaints from beat writers during fall camp that Franks trusts his cannon of an arm a bit too much, this is what that looks like in the game. He thought he could muscle it in between the defenders—and he does, as it hits the receiver’s hands—but Massey can’t hold on in large part because he gets hit by two defenders at once.

13:45 2Q: Franks sacked

Mark Thompson blows his blitz pickup.

9:46 2Q: Franks sacked

DeAndre Goolsby briefly puts his hands on the defensive end before releasing upfield. In doing so, he prevents Taylor from ever having a shot of getting over to make the block in time.

Lamical Perine is the next line of defense, but he takes a bad angle and can’t pick up the block. Franks, who’s rolling to his right because the play is clearly moving the pocket to the right, never has a chance.

2:53 2Q: Thompson stopped for gain of 1

C’yontai Lewis, the guy in the backfield just ahead of Franks, decides to help out Martez Ivey with the block that Ivey is handling decently enough instead of putting a hat on the defender coming completely unblocked off the edge.

2:21 2Q: Screen pass for only 4 yards

Heggie hesitates just enough on his way to releasing upfield that he can’t get to the middle linebacker in time. The linebacker being unblocked prevents Thompson from having the opportunity to make a cut in the open field.

6:09 3Q: Franks incomplete to Powell

The same defensive end from the second sack above, Darrell Taylor, again lines up extra wide. He beats Jawaan Taylor, who is off balance from the start getting out of his two-point stance.

Darrell Taylor not being completely engaged in a block allows him to leap, which probably altered Franks’s throw. It ends up going high, a problem that’s exacerbated by Brandon Powell only being listed at 5'8" (the shortest scholarship player on the team).

2:07 3Q: Thompson sweep for only 3 yards

Taylor whiffs on his block, preventing Thompson from getting at the very least six or seven yards on this play.

Overall

After the drive in which the last play above happened, Florida had Davis’s 74-yard run and the touchdown drive. The offense got back in gear, in other words.

So what happened with all of this? There was no one thing.

The first play above was in part a failure of receivers to run the correct routes. On the second one, the quarterback and a receiver weren’t on the same page.

On the third play, Franks shows his lack of experience by trying to force a pass to a deeper guy when the shallower guy was open.

On the next two, running backs not picking up pass rushers are to blame.

Blocking misses are largely to blame on the final four plays I spotlighted.

And then, of course, Perine fumbled after a 28-yard gain and Davis fumbled on his 74-yard gain. Putting the ball on the turf is always bad.

The good news is that there were fewer mistakes than against Michigan. At least, I think there were. UM’s defensive front was so much better than Florida’s offensive line that it was hard to tell at times. On the other hand, Franks was less accurate in this one than he was in the opener.

Of the players I singled out for various things, Franks and Heggie are freshmen. Cleveland, Hammond, Perine, McCoy, and Taylor are sophomores. Only Lewis and Thompson are upperclassmen, and the former JUCO transfer Thompson is only in his second year with the team.

I don’t know if the playbook is just too complicated for underclassmen to pick up or if the problem is in the teaching, but a lot of the problems were execution errors. Sometimes Tennessee players just made good plays—generally on snaps I didn’t highlight above—but Florida hurt itself plenty.

This offense is still learning—let us all hope—so it still has headroom to grow. We’ll have to see how much better they look, if at all, as the year goes along.