What in-depth stats tell us about Will Muschamp the coach

In 2012, Will Muschamp’s Florida Gators pulled off a feat that was as odd as it was symbolic of his time there.

That squad rode a strong and opportunistic defense and special teams units to an 11-2 record and No. 3 ranking in the final regular-season poll. Muschamp’s offensive approach was to control the ball, and UF ranked 10th nationally in time of possession against FBS competition. Yet the Gators were 109th in yards per play.

What happens when a team reaches the far extremes of a fast or slow pace is the meaning of raw statistics (ie, yards or points per game) gets stretched. Fewer plays and longer drives mean fewer yards and fewer scoring chances, so a team has to be very good to climb in those raw rankings.

In Muschamp’s Gator tenure, he never fielded a non-cellar dwelling attack. A closer look at advanced metrics shows things are more complicated.

His first two offenses were pretty good at a few specific things. They could move the chains, often by hammering the ball ahead in 5-, 6- and 7-yard chunks. The 2012 team wasn’t bad on the ground, while the 2011 team actually got some efficiency from the passing game.

But those groups weren’t explosive or very effective in passing situations.

The bottom fell out in 2013, leading to the dismissal of offensive coordinator Brent Pease and the hiring of Kurt Roper. The goal was to speed up the offense. While that happened, it didn’t help.

Florida jumped from 98th in plays per game to 78th, and that number was also depressed by facing grinding teams such as Georgia, Missouri and LSU (one metric put their pace at 42nd nationally). The problem was the offense wasn’t much more effective.

One hundred teams averaged more yards per play. That last team averaged more than 30 points a game, but that’s not so much in a high-scoring era, and they were inflated by two games. The Gators put up 65 on Eastern Michigan and 52 on FCS foe Eastern Kentucky.

Factor those out and Florida averaged 24.7 points and 332.6 yards a game.

Muschamp came out strong in his opening news conference at South Carolina. He promised more snaps a game, because that means more chances to score. His Florida defenses were strong by any measure, and the promised change likely removes the great pitfall of college ball-control teams.

Muschamp saw how Gus Malzahn’s attack operated at Auburn this past season, granted not in a year when it worked well. Roper ran a decent enough offense at Duke to get the call up to Florida, and almost a lifetime ago coached Eli Manning at Ole Miss.

One could argue one season with a bad quarterback situation wasn’t enough to judge the Roper-Muschamp pairing, and that might be true. But Muschamp’s Florida tenure established an identity, one where the offense did what it did almost in support of the defense.

Separating from that will be a first big test.

This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 9:50 PM.