What To Watch For: Florida

Will the Real Anthony Richardson please stand up?

Last week’s blowout took a lot of the wind out of LSU’s season but there is still spite to play for! Florida is probably the most annoying rival LSU has if we’re being completely honest, and the current win streak in the midst of LSU’s complete decline has been extremely funny. While Florida is rebuilding as well, it’ll be fun to hang another W on them

When LSU has the ball

Building on last week

While LSU’s offense changed almost nothing on a macro level and faced a dreadful pass defense, Jayden Daniels had his best game as a passer this season. While the OL was rough, he looked more decisive and threw the ball fairly well. He has to continue to build on that or LSU is going to have some issues moving the ball

Health up front

Without Will Campbell for all of the game and Garrett Dellinger for much of it, an already shaky LSU OL was simply untenable. While LSU gets Will Campbell back this week, it again does not have its best interior OL in Dellinger which will continue to be a major problem for a run game that is simply nonexistent.

When Florida Has the Ball

Which Anthony Richardson?

While Anthony Richardson has struggled all season playing and throwing the ball in structure, he has been explosive and volatile enough to put up a couple of games in which he produced a lot of offense, he’s not a good passer, at least yet, but he can produce offense. However, he has been inconsistent and at times a liability, so we’ll see which Richardson we get. It may decide the game.

Taking Florida’s Fastball and Making 15 Work

So much of what Florida likes to do with Richardson involves crossing routes on boot-action, drive concepts, and other in-breaking stuff. At the NFL level, Vic Fangio tree defenses have used weak rotations from their safeties to cut off intermediate and deep crossing routes from depth. Luckily, Matt House is a big fan of these kinds of structures and has deployed them very well this year. It’ll be important to lean on these rotations to take that away. Additionally, when not playing your 3-buzz type structures to deal with those in-breaking routes, it’s important for LSU to mix in man coverage looks and tight-to-routes zone match looks to force the issue and make Richardson be a more accurate QB than he is capable of being. Unlike against Tennessee, Florida’s more condensed offense will put the full menu of simulated pressures and creepers back on the table for Matt House which will allow LSU to both get after the QB and create negative plays in the run game. You can also bring heavy pressure in obvious passing situations to stress Richardson as a processor, but you better not let him escape the pocket when you do. The LSU defense is the thing to watch on Saturday.