Jeepers Creepers! Where Will Ron Roberts Bring The Blitz From? Micanopy?

Former Auburn DC Ron Roberts brings his creeper defensive scheme to Florida this year

He is the godfather of the Creeper defense, variations of which have helped transform defensive philosophy all the way up to the NFL and all the way down to the high school level. No matter how you scheme an opponent, however, Ron Roberts knows that defense begins and ends with one basic concept – how do you affect the opposing quarterback?

For the last two years, the Florida Gators haven’t done a very good job of it. The Gators have only 45 sacks in the last two years. A year ago, when they had only 22 sacks which was 12th in the then 14-team Southeastern Conference, the Gators managed only three interceptions. That was 14th in the SEC, next to last in the entire country.

The lack of turnovers had everything to do with Florida’s inability to get to the passer, which is one of the chief reasons why Roberts was imported from Auburn. As Florida’s no co-defensive coordinator, job number one is to find ways to make life miserable for opposing quarterbacks.

“In our conference, you're going to see three or four of the top quarterbacks in the country, and they're NFL caliber quarterbacks,” Roberts said Tuesday morning. On Florida’s schedule, the Gators will face Cam Ward (Miami), K.J. Jefferson (UCF), Carson Beck (Georgia), Quinn Ewers (Texas) and Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss), all of whom should be collecting an NFL paycheck next season.

Those guys and the other talented quarterbacks on the schedule will have to figure out what’s up Roberts’ sleeve on every single play. His masterpiece is the Creeper, which is designed to daze and confuse quarterbacks charged with figuring out where the blitz is coming from. Back in 2021 when Roberts was the defensive coordinator at Baylor, his guys got to two Ole Miss quarterbacks 10 times for 69 yards in losses in the Sugar Bowl. That led to three interceptions as the Bears took a 21-7 win by turning a high-powered Ole Miss offense very pedestrian.

Roberts went Romper Room Tuesday to explain the creeper concepts in the most basic of terms.

“It was the ability to bring an off-the-ball guy, again with stemming somebody who's not one of the designated four down or three down, whichever one you're in,” Roberts said. “It's to bring a guy in the rush. It started out fire zone concept. You bring in five, and you're down a guy in coverage. So it's a way to get the same type of pattern, maybe not the add-on backer, and play traditional coverage behind it.

“So you can still force the ball, you can still create the issues on some of the run blocking schemes, but play traditional coverage behind it.”

Understand it?

Basically, it’s about bringing a blitzer from some place the quarterback doesn’t expect while making him think it’s coming from somewhere else. Former first round NFL draft pick Sam Darnold once described it as “seeing ghosts.”  When Ron Roberts has the opposing quarterback seeing ghosts he has no clue what’s coming or where it’s coming from.

Sacks are one way to measure the effectiveness of the Creeper. Another way is to bring so much pressure the QB throws early or makes the wrong read. Pressure makes opponents reduce the number of receivers in the route and it also makes them cut routes short. When the Gators beat Ohio State for the national championship in 2006, there was so much pressure that the Buckeyes were reduced to running two-man routes and going max protect on every pass play after the first quarter.

This is what the creeper is designed to do.

“So your ability to affect a quarterback, where it's not just sacking him, but it's hitting him, it's getting close to him, it's making him rush throws, it's making him throw before he's ready to throw, it's making him throw the ball in tight windows,” Roberts said. “So it’s all together … Sometimes it's got to be the coverage being tight enough where they make him hold the ball until they can get there. So it's a combination of a lot of things. Some of it is schematics, some of it is execution of fundamentals and techniques about how to rush a quarterback.”

A year ago at Auburn, the Creeper resulted in the Tigers giving up four fewer first downs and seven fewer points per game. The Gators gave up 382.3 yards and 27.6 points per game in 2023. There was a five-game stretch in which the Gators gave up at least 465 yards and 33 points. Translate the kind of improvement Auburn made to the Gators just in that short stretch and UF would have finished no worse than 7-5 instead of 5-7.

One reason why the Gators had their defensive struggles in 2023 had everything to do with youth and inexperience. The Gators were one of the youngest teams in the country, particularly on defense where so many times inexperience reared a very ugly head. Too often young guys weren’t sure where to go and when they got there weren’t good enough tacklers to put people on the ground.

“There was a lot of youth,” Roberts said. “There was a lot of inexperienced guys hitting the field their first time in SEC football. Then you go back to the fundamentals …  Tackling wasn't done at a high level.”

Because missed tackles were a plague last season, Roberts made tackling a spring priority and that will carry over to the next 30 days as the Gators prepare for a Miami team that will come into The Swamp ranked and with extremely high expectations. A year ago the Hurricanes averaged 31.2 points, 258 passing yards and 173 rushing yards per game. They expect to be better this year due to key acquisitions from the porta, most prominently former Washington State QB Cam Ward and former Oregon State running back Damien Martinez. Ward threw for 3,776 yards and 25 touchdowns last year while Martinez ran for 1,185 yards and nine touchdowns.

Miami is just the beginning of a tough schedule in which the Gators will face highly talented quarterbacks every single week. There are no off weeks. Every single week the Gators will be required to bring their A-Game if they're going to post a winning record. Roberts thinks he has a defense capable and talented enough to get the job done.

“I think our players are good enough,” he said. “I think we've got great players. I think, as long as they know where they're supposed to be and what their assignments are, they can go out and execute at a high level.

To supplement young guys who were thrown into the fire last year, the Gators added players at all three levels of the defense that should make a difference. Of course, all eyes will be on the guys who rush the passer. It is the Creeper defense, after all, and its effectiveness is predicated on making good quarterbacks do things they wouldn’t normally do because they have no clue where the pressure will be coming from when they break the huddle.

“I think we've got really good edge rushers,” Roberts said. “I think we've got talent in that room. I think we should be able to affect him [opposing quarterback] with four, but if we can't affect him with four, we've got to bring in somebody else.”

And if the opposing QB can’t figure out who that somebody is, then Ron Roberts will have him right where he wants him.