Gators' strategy: Take away Jake Fromm's favorite throw and force the freshman to beat them over the top

Georgia’s last contest against Missouri marked just the second time that freshman QB Jake Fromm attempted 20 or more passes in a game. The first time came against Notre Dame, which was good enough to force Georgia into regular passing downs or into pass checks on its runs, and Fromm managed only 4.9 yards per attempt in a narrow victory.

The second time against Missouri, things were markedly different. Fromm burned the Tigers for 12.5 yards per pass and Georgia was test-driving some actual dropback passing rather than simply asking Fromm to hit quick options when opponents loaded the box or taking deep shots off play-action.

Now the Bulldogs have had a bye week to continue to develop that dimension of their offense in hopes of having a trump card to play in the “cocktail party” battle with Florida this weekend.

The challenge from the Gators

The ultimate test for a team that wants to run the ball from spread sets is how you handle a defense that plays man coverage on your WRs, keeps its linebackers in the box, and then also drops a safety into the box. Florida did exactly that in its last game against Texas A&M:

A&M really struggled to get WRs open and here true freshman QB Kellen Mond gets beat by the range of Florida’s deep safety. The Gators are a fast team with a good defensive line and they’re hard to beat for spread offenses that want to try and hit them in the air. The Aggies managed only 263 yards of offense and won largely due to Florida’s own offensive ineptitude.

It’s a good bet that Florida will make Fromm prove he can do better than Mond trying to attack their coverages over the top. It’s also a good bet that Florida spent a portion of its bye week working on matching up on Georgia’s favorite routes from man coverage.

Fromm’s favorite throw

Georgia whipped Missouri with its passing game by emphasizing a particular throw that Fromm makes as well as anyone in the country, the “7” or “flag” route.

Fromm has the arm strength to hit this throw to the wide side of the field and Terry Godwin in particular (No. 5) is good at making the out breaks to get open on the route, although Fromm has hit multiple players on it.

This is probably Georgia’s concept that uses the 7 route, as part of a three-level “flood” concept that hits a defense with a flat route underneath, the 7 and then a post/go route over the top:

They’ll also mix it in with just the flat route underneath as a two-man “smash” combination:

It’s a good combination and route to have in the arsenal for a run-centric team like Georgia as it attacks an area of the field that defenses often concede in order to get numbers and leverage into the middle of the field to stop the run.

Florida’s solution will look different than teams clipped above though as the Gators’ single high safety schemes put a major onus for covering the 7 route on the nickel defender:

Florida’s nickel is Duke Dawson, a senior DB with seven break-ups and an INT on the year. If he can keep up with Godwin and restrict that window for Fromm, then the Dawgs’ QB will be left to make check downs to the back against the Gators’ middle linebacker in coverage. If the Gators don’t care for that matchup, they’ll have to pull Dawson off and give Fromm a window to hit Godwin.

Perhaps Georgia also spent its bye week working on some man coverage beaters to help give Fromm ways to attack Florida if it loads the box, but one way or another he’ll probably have to deal with Dawson playing tight coverage on his slot and the Gators bracketing his TE with a down safety and a linebacker. Or maybe worse, the Gators manning up the TE with just the safety while the linebacker comes late and hard on a blitz.

It’s a challenge for everyone but perhaps most of all for the true freshman who’s new to the world of executing dropback passes against high level athletes in big time atmospheres.

Georgia has a lot of advantages in this game, but they’ll need Fromm to come out of these battles OK in order to make good on them all.