Reversal of fortune: Call it the DJ Lagway effect

DJ Lagway (2) looks over the LSU defense pre-snap (Gator Bait Photo by Chris Spears)

“Two hundred degrees, that’s why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit” -- From “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen

It would be difficult to figure out which was hotter Saturday night: The space beneath Brian Kelly’s collar or his tush. If you saw him tear into one of his players with an F-bomb laced tirade or witnessed players and coaches yelling back at him, you would probably vote for the collar. Brian Kelly had what can only be described as a bad day at the office.

If you paid attention to the scoreboard when DJ Lagway took a knee to preserve Florida’s 27-16 win over No. 21 LSU (6-4, 3-3 SEC), then there is no question you’d vote Kelly’s now blowtorch hot tush, which was easily pushing 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Kelly was poached from Notre Dame to win championships not to lose eight games in three years.

When a loss to the Gators became inevitiable, LSU fans were bombarding  message boards and Twitter demanding athletic director Scott Woodward terminate Kelly. There’s just one minor little detail about that. Kelly is in year three of a 10-year contract served up by Woodward that pays him a tad shy of $10 million this year. His contract escalates incrementally each year. So, unless LSU boosters can do a dandy impersonation of Aggies who raised the $75 million it took to buy out Jimbo Fisher in a matter of days, they’re stuck with Kelly.

Meanwhile, on the other sideline Saturday evening, Billy Napier bore a rather strong resemblance to a coach who has undergone a reversal of fortune. Too often in his not quite three years on the job, Napier and the Gators have found creative ways to lose football games they should have and could have won. When athletic director Scott Stricklin announced a couple of weeks ago that Napier would be returning for the 2025 season it was a mixed bag reception. Not everyone was thrilled with the decision.  

Questions about why Stricklin gave Napier one more year were answered Saturday by freshman quarterback DJ Lagway. Lagway isn’t just your typical freshman quarterback. Whatever it is, Lagway has it. He’s special, not just because he throws the most dynamic deep ball we’ve seen from a Florida quarterback in at least a couple of decades, but because he also has the ability to lift the level of play from everyone in the locker room and on the field.

Injured in the second quarter against then 2nd-ranked Georgia with the Gators leading 10-3 and looking like they were ready to spring an upset of monumental proportions, Lagway also missed the TExas game a week ago. He was in Austin. He suited up for warmups. He wanted to play, but he was held back a week for fear he might further damage his hamstring.  

Back in Gainesville, Lagway made it abundantly clear that he didn’t intend to sit another game.

“He wanted to play last week, and then, obviously, he came in the building Sunday, said, ‘I'm playing this week,’” Napier explained.

Florida was a touchdown underdog last Sunday. By the time the game kicked off Saturday, the Lagway effect had continually lowered the point spread. Three-point money was available.

Lagway plays with such confidence and swagger that it spills over to Napier. Normally a conservative play caller who goes for a 60-40 run/pass ratio, Napier drops all pretenses of conservative with Lagway, choosing to let his talented freshman do what he does best, which is put the fear of God into every opposing defensive coordinator by launching the laser-guided smart bombs downfield.

Lagway is more than just your basic mad bomber. He’s a game changer and the biggest change is the spillover to Napier. It showed against LSU in a game plan simplified to protect Lagway that at the same time played to Lagway’s talents.

By abandoning the read option and rollout elements to the offense, the new plan was to turn Lagway into a pure pocket passer. The elimination of the RPO and rollouts took pressure off the offensive line whose job was to basically line up and pass protect.

It was all too simple and yet all too genius.

Lagway’s mere presence forced LSU to back its safeties out of the box, an attempt to limit the deep ball. Rushing four was tried but that didn’t work, forcing the Tigers to start bringing the blitz from every conceivable angle. They got some pressure on Lagway a few times, but never enough to put him on the ground or force him to break out of the pocket.

Napier said, “Part of the mission was to keep him clean. They've got some good rushers, but overall I felt for the most part we did a good job in that area.”

The kid stood tall in the pocket the entire game, throwing darts. Instead of the expected run-heavy package Lagway came out slinging from the opening whistle and he didn’t stop until he took two knees to end the game.  

Elijhah Badger hauls in a 23-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter (Gator Bait Photo by Chris Spears)

On Florida’s first scoring drive, he connected with Chimere Dike on a 34-yard thing of beauty down the right sideline. He came back to the other side on the next play to Elijhah Badger for a 23-yard back shoulder touchdown pass that sent ripples of hope throughout The Swamp.

It’s always best to strike the first blow, especially when most of the 90,067 in the stands are your bestest buddies. That got them thinking if DJ Lagway can do this once, think what he might do over the course of four quarters.

Take that Brian Kelly!

In the second quarter, the Gators drove for a 49-yard Trey Smack field goal sparked by a 14-yard Lagway to Tony Livingston completion and a 10-yard run by Montrell Johnson Jr., back in action for the first time since the Tennessee game.

After LSU took a 13-10 lead in the third quarter, the Gators answered with a drive on which Lagway and Badger hooked up three times for completions of 17, 24 and 12 yards and Lagway hit Ja’Kobi Jackson with a 14-yarder that set up a 55-yard field goal by Smack to tie the game.  

Early in the fourth quarter following an LSU punt out of the end zone, there was an 8-yard run by Jackson, a laser beam of a throw to Badger that covered 36 yards to the LSU one and a Jackson run for the TD that put the Gators up for good. There are NFL quarterbacks who only dream of making a pass like the one Lagway threw to Badger.

Down 20-13, LSU got a field goal, but Florida countered with a 55-yard touchdown run by Jadan Baugh. It began with a student body left pitchout. When Baugh squared his shoulders to the line he gave a wiggle, showed a foot then pulled it back to make a tackler miss and from there turned it into a sprint for the end zone and a 27-16 lead.

Florida snapped the ball only 43 times including three kneeldowns and yet the Gators scored 27 points, won the game by 11 and sent a top 25 team to its third straight loss. LSU snapped the ball 92 times, won the time of possession battle by more than 18 minutes and had 27 third downs (13 conversions).

LSU’s 92 snaps were good for 382 yards, an average of 4.2 yards per play. Florida’s 43 snaps produced 339 yards, an average of 7.9 per play. Florida was explosive. LSU was chuck and duck.

Not only did Napier simplify the offense, he offered up a simplified version of the defense, too. In Austin, the Gators were always two steps behind. Statistically, this was an effort akin to that of the Miami and Texas A&M losses. Many of the problems were injury-related because the Gators had to plug and play inexperienced kids while moving veterans to new positions. Add that to a complicated scheme designed for a healthy first unit and the Gators simply cracked.

To deal with LSU’s offense, the goal was to take the big play out of the passing game and make Garrett Nussmeier and his crew of fast receivers try to nickel and dime their way down the field. By taking the deep threat out of the passing game, the Gators sacrificed some of their ability to shut down the run but it was the perfect tradeoff. Although Caden Durham and Josh Durham combined to run for 160 yards running the football is not the LSU identity. What makes the Tigers go is a passing game in which their strong-armed quarterback throws to receivers who are faster and better athletes than the other team’s secondary.

It didn’t work against the Gators.

The combination of tight coverage and a relentless pass rush bogged down the LSU offense. Up front Florida kept rotating fresh bodies into the game. Big guys up front matched and exceeded LSU physically in the trenches. Quick guys off the edge got more and more effective as LSU’s guys on the edge lost their quick first steps.

Eventually, LSU’s vaunted offensive line, said by many to be the best in the country, wore down. The Gators got to Garrett Nussmeier once in the second quarter, three times in the third and three more in the fourth. Seven sacks, 56 yards in losses. On at least six occasions, the Gators chased Nussmeier out of the pocket and had him running for his life. Nussmeier threw out of bounds to avoid a sack on four occassions and had six of his passes broken up in the secondary.

When the dust cleared, Nussmeier had thrown 47 passes, completed 27 and moved the ball 262 yards. That’s 5.57 per pass attempt.    

You lose a lot of games with passing numbers like that.

“I thought the leverage in coverage was pretty good,” Napier said. “That was one of the keys to the game was we covered them with the group of DBs that we had, I felt we hung in there pretty good. A lot of those are coverage sacks, where we're landing, but we certainly affected the quarterback.” 

LSU’s quarterback never got untracked. Florida’s quarterback, on the other hand, was on track from the moment that he announced nothing was going to stop him from playing against LSU a week ago to the final kneeldown that raised the decibels in The Swamp to 747 takeoff levels.  

A week ago the Gators seemed to be dead in the water. Thanks to the Lagway effect that emboldens Billy Napier to do wild and crazy things like abandon his conservative roots, they have two games to get one win that will make them bowl eligible.

Who would have thought that possible back in September after the loss to Texas A&M? Of course, who back in September would have thought Brian Kelly, not Billy Napier would be sitting firmly on a nuclear-hot seat?

SEC FOOTBALL

Saturday’s scores

FLORIDA (5-5, 3-4 SEC) 27, LSU (7-3, 3-3 SEC) 20

No. 3 Texas (9-1, 5-1 SEC) 20, Arkansas (5-5, 3-4 SEC) 10

No. 11 Georgia (8-2, 6-2 SEC) , No. 7 Tennessee (8-2, 5-2 SEC

No. 10 Alabama (8-2, 4-2 SEC) 52, Mercer (9-2) 7

No. 15 Texas A&M (8-2, 5-1 SEC) 38 New Mexico State (2-7) 3

No. 23 South Carolina (7-3, 5-3 SEC) 34, No. 24 Missouri (7-3, 3-3 SEC) 30

Auburn (4-6, 1-5 SEC) 48, Louisiana-Monroe (5-5) 14

Kentucky (4-6, 1-6 SEC) 48, Murray State (1-10) 6

Next week

No. 10 Ole Miss (8-2, 4-2 SEC) at FLORIDA (5-5, 3-4 SEC)

Kentucky (4-6, 1-6 SEC) at No. 3 Texas (9-1, 5-1 SEC)

UTEP (2-8) at No. 7 Tennessee (8-2, 5-2 SEC)

No. 10 Alabama (8-2, 4-2 SEC) at Oklahoma (5-5, 1-5 SEC)

UMass (2-8) at No. 11 Georgia (8-2, 6-2 SEC)

No. 15 Texas A&M (7-2, 5-1 SEC) at Auburn (4-6, 1-5 SEC)

Vanderbilt (6-4, 3-3 SEC) at No. 21 LSU (7-3, 3-3 SEC)

Wofford (5-6) at No. 23 South Carolina (7-3, 5-3 SEC)

No. 24 Missouri (7-3, 3-3 SEC) at Mississippi State (2-8, 0-6 SEC)

Louisiana Tech (4-6) at Arkansas (5-5, 3-4 SEC)