Quarterback Questions Remain – Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — It’s a popular saying when it comes to quarterbacks. The one about them getting too much credit and too much blame. Billy Napier has been known to throw that adage out there and did again Thursday night after an Orange & Blue Spring Game that was anything but a quarterback clinic. 

The 42,000 fans that left Spurrier/Florida Field after watching Orange placekicker Trey Smack nail a 46-yard field goal as time expired for a 10-7 victory probably weren’t heaping a bunch of credit in the direction of Graham Mertz or Jack Miller III, the UF duo that spent the last five weeks in a 15-practice spring QB duel. Neither distinguished himself, but neither did many of the players around them.

“Not as a clean as you would like but I think defensively probably had a lot to do with that,” Napier said about the Gators’ all-around offensive performance. “I think the pocket was a little muddy, that’s one thing I would say.” 

Before honing further in on the quarterbacks (and assigning too much blame), consider that praise directed at the Florida defense. The Gators are coming off a 6-7 season when they had a quarterback, Anthony Richardson, expected to be taken in the top 10 of the NFL Draft. Richardson’s season, of course, was uneven, but the Gators’ defense was not. No, Florida was consistently poor on that side of the ball in finishing 103rd overall in the nation, giving up a staggering 415.8 yards per game and allowing opponents to convert 49.7 percent of their third-down opportunities. Getting off the field was a problem last season, as well as it was the season before. 

Maybe what happened Thursday is a sign that UF is gaining some ground there. 

The Gators’ defense, now led by co-coordinators Sean Spencer and Austin Armstrong, was the story of the game. The Blue gave up 198 total yards, including just 48 on the ground. The Orange allowed 307 and only 54 rushing. The two units totaled nine sacks, with each forcing one turnover, and never let the quarterbacks get into any kind of a rhythm. There were 14 tackles for loss.

“I think the defense did a good job. They showed tonight, the new DC showed they’re a legit defense,” Miller said of Armstrong, who was defensive coordinator at Southern Miss the last two seasons. “We see it every day in practice, so we weren’t really…