Gators Offense Moving in Positive Direction

Ever since Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow left, Florida’s offense has left a lot to be desired. The hope is that first-year head coach Dan Mullen will turn it around. There’s good reason to believe he will. Mullen was the team’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 2005-to-2008. Under his leadership, the Gators’ offense ranked 49th, 23rd, 4th and 4th each year in points per game. Florida’s offense has not come close to that kind of production in recent years.

Quarterback play gets positive update

Mullen has given an update on how his quarterbacks have been doing, and so far, he has been pleased. They all had a particularly good second day in terms of accuracy and finding open receivers. Quarterback play has been a weakness for Florida. In the 2017 season, the Gators ranked 115th in passing yards, 112th in passing touchdowns and 113th in quarterback rating. Feleipe Franks, who started last season as the starter, finished the year with 1,438 passing yards, nine touchdowns and eight interceptions on 54.6 percent passing.

Jordan Scarlett looks better than ever

Despite missing a significant amount of time due to the credit card fraud scandal, it appears that Scarlett has not missed a beat. Teammates have been impressed by him and so has co-offensive coordinator John Hevesy. Scarlett last played for Florida back in 2016, where he rushed for 889 yards on 179 attempts (5.0 yards per carry) and six touchdowns. Florida has a wealth of running backs at its disposal. That includes Malik Davis who was one of the most electric freshmen running backs in the country in 2017, rushing for 75 yards per game on 6.7 yards per carry his first seven games before suffering a knee injury.

Scarlett and Burney pic.twitter.com/crrE7jKpfA

— Nick de la Torre (@delatorre) March 22, 2018

It’s all about the guys up front

At the end of the day, it will all come down to the play of the offensive line. The unit has struggled lately with protecting the quarterback. If it can improve in that area, Florida’s offense could possibly see a major leap.