VERSATILE: Florida Gators Offensive TALENT Gives Buster Faulkner Options

0:00The Florida Gators have a ton of talent in the skill rooms and, man, it's gonna be really fun on offense. You are Lockdown Gators, your daily podcast on the Florida Gators, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team, every day. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Lockdown Gators, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team, every day. Thanks for making Lockdown Gators your first listen of the day, every day we are available daily and free. Wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube, I am Brandon Olson, as always, your host, lifelong Florida Gators fan, the host of Lockdown Gators. And I write about the Florida Gators, your swap signal about substack.com. And today's episode of Lockdown Gators is brought to you by Game Time, download the Game Time app, create an account, use code locked on for $20 after your first purchase.

1:02And I'm gonna be honest, right? I was considering just, you know, tucking this one away and just just going on about the day, but I'm too damn excited for it. I'm just gonna be real with you. That's what we try to be here. We'll be right. We'll be wrong. We're gonna be honest 100% of the time. I'm pumped next Thursday. So Thursday, March 12th, Lockdown Gators will have a special guest. Florida Gators had coach John somewhere, we'll be joining the show. Can't wait for that one really looking forward to it. I'm pumped. I'm not gonna lie. I'm pumped. I'm not gonna lie. Until then, we've got a program to talk about. And what we're gonna talk about today is the Florida Gators have a really fun offense this year, right? Like the personnel groupings that you can run with are gonna be a blast for Buster Faulkner, who has air raid principles, which does matter when we're talking about this, right? And we know the Florida has a ton of talent in the running back room in the wide receive room in the tight end room.

2:04And you got dynamic athletes throughout, right? We're gonna talk about how Florida might be using some of those dynamic athletes throughout. And we're gonna start with something called 20 personnel, right? And for those you might not know when you go with 20, 10, 11, 13, whatever personnel. It's how many running backs you have on the field and then how many tight ends you have on the field. And the remaining number when you count them up to five is wide receivers. So if you have 11 personnel, you've got one running back, one tight end, three receivers. You got 12 personnel. You got what we're gonna talk about later. You've got one running back, two tight ends, two receivers, right? What we're talking about now is 20 personnel. It's two running backs, zero tight ends, and three wide receivers. And it's actually very common for offenses that come from the air raid, right? Mike Leach is known for running with 20 personnel was known, R.I.B. for running 20 personnel. Okay. And the way that you can cause kind of havoc for a defense with that is you put a guy like Jaden ball on the field and then you put a guy like Evan prior on the field, right?

3:09And obviously those are who we expect to be the top two backs for the coordinators this year. Jaden ball is in everything back. He can do literally anything you want from him. Evan prior speed is the name of the game for him, right? Speedy one cut back. When you have 20 personnel, usually the way that you'll see it is quarter back in the shotgun, one running back on one side, one running back on the other side. Right? And that way you can run the ball either direction. We got the whiteboard here, but we'll talk about it briefly. We're not going to do too much in the whiteboard today, but we will bring it up to just so some formations that you can look at. So we're going to bring the whiteboard out here again. If you're if you're just listening, you're not missing much. It's just visual cue, but you can run the ball, run the ball. You want a screen to either side you want. You can do a bunch that you want, right? And when you have one running back that can or preferably two running backs, but you have a running back that's good in past protection. You can have them past protect because there will be defenses that see you go 20 personnel and say, you know what?

4:10We're going to blitz because if you're going 20 personnel and if it's a two back next to each other set. We're going to blitz because you've got that crunched up right you got that condense set out there. So we're going to come at you. You could try that, but you've running back that could pass protect you can run screens and attack really aggressive defenses. You can do a lot out of 20 personnel hell. We spent I'm pretty sure a whole show last you talking about hey Russ Calloway should have a bigger hand in the offense. Here's 20 personnel. Let's do it with the air raid because again 20 personnel. I know when you think air raid you think we're going to spread it out. It's going to be four or five receivers every single play. I say nay nay. You talk about the air raid and you're going to get 20 personnel. You're going to get these two running back sets because yes, you can throw the ball. You can throw the ball out of 20 personnel. You can you can kind of treat 20 personnel and 21 personnel, which is two running backs one 10 and two receivers. The same way that that teams are kind of treating 12 personnel right now right where we're going. All right. Well, we're going to put two tight ends out there and as a defense.

5:16You could decide to go heavy and match us personnel wise and then we're going to throw the ball or you can go light and say you know what we think they're going to try to throw the ball and then we'll run the ball at you. You could treat 20 personnel the same way. Say, hey, if they're going to put another linebacker out there, that's fine. We're still going to attack you. Good luck covering Evan prior to the linebacker. Oh, and if you want to go light and put an extra safety out there or anything, that's well, we're going to run the football and challenge you to make that tackle. You could do a lot with what you have at 20% in the running back room in general, by the way. Whether we're talking Duke Clark, whether we're talking London Montgomery, Byron Lewis, whoever it is, you can do a lot with 20 personnel to just attack a defense. You put a lot of stress out there screens running the football. Oh, and by the way, you've got. He's kind of a psycho. I'm not going to lie to you. He's a little bit of a lunatic in Buster Faulkner where. I know we've been talking about 20 personnel, but you could also see some 21 personnel, which is, of course, two running backs and a tight end, which is not much different of a setup as far as visually how we had it set up on the whiteboard before if you were paying attention. If not, again, you don't need to see it.

6:27It's just to help, but you can have a tight end out on the field there. And we're just going to put an E for tight end. Why? I don't know why, but that's what we're doing. And then you can have your running backs set up. And you can have them out there, right? And you can motion so that you have, let's say, a. You can go quarterback under center and one of the running backs can play fullback, basically, right? And the other one can go right behind the quarterback. I think you're talking about, well, we're talking about old fashioned smash mouth football at that point, but guess what? That's something the buster fogner did at Georgia Tech. He would have his running backs lineup, despite being, you know, five foot 10 200 pounds, he would have them lineup at fullback. Because the thing is defenses need to defend your personnel. They need to defend your formation as well. Right? If you've got 20 personnel, but they're basically set up a five wide, a lot of defenses are going to go, all right, we're going to treat you like you're playing five wide right now.

7:33Right? But if you got 20 personnel and you really condense it, well, you got to worry about that too. You got to worry about, all right, they're basically playing three yards in a cloud of dust, right? So they're going to pick up a lot more than three because they're explosive and they're planning things that we're not and they're capable of doing things that we're not. And for Florida, now you've got buster fogner, who we've kind of seen some of the things that he's done at Georgia Tech, right? We've seen him be able to put again, like two running backs that are not big, and he's put them at fullback, and he's handed the ball to them at fullback. Just because it makes it so difficult to defend, it's just about causing L for defenses. That's it. I'm a defensive coordinator. I'll tell you this right now. I look at buster Faulkner and I kind of want to fight his ass. I'm not going to lie to you because I know he's just going to do things that make my life difficult. Luckily for us, buster Faulkner is our offensive coordinator.

8:33So I get to see him and I go, hey, I don't know if you drink, but I'd love to buy a joint. That's what I get to do as someone that gets to cover the team he's on. That's it. Like we get to talk about 20% you got jade and ball, you got Evan prior, you got London Montgomery, you got Duke, you have genuinely so many talented running backs in this room where I'm going, well, someone has to not play someone has to not get touches. That's like, oh, we could just put more running backs on the field. Why do we have to do 11 or 12 personnel? I can't we do 20 or 21. And again, coming from an air raid, it's always been part of the air raid to go 20 personnel. That's always been part of it, right? And I think that the way that I think about it more is my cleach, right? I do. I think that it helps you in past protection. I think you can throw a screen either way. You can run either way when you come on the shotgun and you got just one running back on the field and he's to the left of the quarterback. You can generally think like, okay, more often than not that run is going to go to the right side to the offense is right, right? Because they're running back and come across.

9:43You get to see that. But when you've got 20 personnel, it's like, okay, well, you can go either way. You can run either way. This is really difficult now. And that opens up a lot for your offense. We're going to talk about 10 personnel and 12 personnel when we get back with locked on gators. I'm Clea Butler, host of locked on women's basketball. And this is Mazda's women's basketball snapshot celebrating the work no highlight reel can ever capture. Number one ranked Yukon dominated St. John's 85 to 49 on Sunday at Madison Square Garden, extending its winning streak to 47 games. The Huskies kept a perfect 31 and O regular season, including 20 and O in the big east. Yukon is winning by nearly 38 points per game. The third largest average margin in division one history since 1999 to 2000 Yukon has nine undefeated regular seasons as many as all other programs combined and has turned six of those into national championships.

10:48These moments are earned off the clock. Those long before the lights ever come on the sweat, the fakes, the doubt, the scrapes and coming back for more every time Mazda puts that same drive into every detail. It means to find the moment putting in the work that defines you. There's more to a Mazda because there's more to you. Thanks again for a lot on gators. You're first listen of the day every day. We are available daily and free reviews in the podcast and on YouTube. And today we're talking about personnel groupings that you're going to see from the Florida Gators or that you're expecting to see from the Florida Gators in 2026 underbuster Faulkner again. He's an air raid guy. Yes, but he's also one of the most versatile play callers in college football in football, really. Again, there's a reason that John Somerall brought him in and John Somerall is very open about it. He said adaptability as a defensive minded guy. My job is to watch what an offense does and stop you from doing it.

11:49And I watch and I judge offensive coordinators by how they adapt to defensive answers to them. And personally, I don't think there's a better guy that adapts than Buster Faulkner, whether it's his personnel or the defense. I don't think there's a better guy at it. And 10 personnel is going to be something that I think you're going to see from the Florida Gators a good bit. It's something that Florida Gators fans have been asking for and clamoring for four years and didn't get it. Look, I've got no problem with 12 personnel. I'm very open about that. I always have been very open about that. Even I as a guy that's like, yeah, give me 12 hell, give me 13 hell, give me 14 personnel. Let me get tight ends on the field. I also want to see 10 personnel. I also want to see one running back this year or tight ends and four ride receivers. And also, you're going to see something that we're going to call 10 and a half personnel, which is going to be one running back. A mere Jackson and three wide receivers.

12:49And it's going to be technically 11 personnel. Well, we're going to call it 10 and a half personnel because he's just that threatening, I think. But when we're talking about 10 personnel, it's going to be one running back and four wide receivers. And that also gives defenses a lot of issues because you can do so much as an offense out of that. And that's going to be a common theme when we're talking about what you can do from these personnel groupings and why you're going to see some of these personnel groupings is that you can see a lot. And you can do a lot with these personnel groupings, right? I mean, you're not a lot 10 personnel. You're often going to see it out of a double set, which double set is two receivers on each side. I personally never really care about what we're talking about with what side the running back is on. And there's some people that think that that's how you should determine some things. I don't we're going to use S to mark the slot receivers. That's a V not a W. But when we're talking about what you can do from 10 personnel, this is just a general 10 personnel setup that we're holding off right there.

13:56That's it, right? That's how you got nothing fancy, right? It's a wide receiver out wide. On each side, it's a slot receiver in the slot on each side and it's a running back in the back field with the quarterback. And what makes it so difficult to defend if you're a defense is that one, if you've got a fast receiver room, that makes it really tough, right? If you've got speed everywhere, like Florida does, like imagine a four wide receiver set with Vernell Brown, the third Eric Singleton, Jr. Let's say Jalen Lloyd and sure, we'll go Dallas Wilson, right? You've got Jalen Lloyd, track speed, Dallas Wilson, giant human being. That's just a monster when you throw the ball in his direction.

14:59Burn it up on the third and there are singles and Jr. can do whatever you want. Hell, you can see 10 personnel except two of the receivers could be Davien Grossen, Justin Williams. And it's like, oh, by the way, both those guys have played running back throughout their careers. Both those guys can take the ball, hand it off to them in any direction and make things happen. We could do that. And if we go 10 personnel and you want to match and you want to go dime, which dime if you're a defense is 60 defensive backs. So you're going to have four defensive linemen, one linebacker or three defensive linemen, two linebackers bad decision, never do that one. And then you're going to have two safeties, two outside corners and two slot corners essentially, right? We're going to run the football because guess what we have them? We've got five offensive linemen to block your five box defenders. And we can say, hey, you know, we're going to have two receivers on each side and they're going to be stacked right on top of each other.

16:00Really wide. We're going to we're going to wide choice if you're in shoot this thing, okay? And we get to attack you there. We've got a lot of speed. We can attack you in any way. We could throw the ball short. We could throw a ball long. We could hand the ball off. We can want to read option and we run read option. We got a hat in the hand. Right. You've got five defenders there. We've got five offensive linemen. We got a quarterback. We got a running back. Everybody's the threat. And it makes it really tough. And it also helps that you can run kind of mirrored concepts, right? When you run 10, you've got first off mesh is we did a whole show about mesh a week or so ago. You can watch that where you've got just that little, that little rub route, that little pick play basically right underneath easy completions. If you're throwing it against man, you throw it out and lead the guy. If you're throwing it against his own, they sit in his own and they attack and they get an easy completion underneath, right? And buster falcon is going to run a hell of a lot of it. You're going to see it, right? You run Y cross, which is going to have that that Y receiver running that that cross route, right?

17:02You run four votes and you could have four votes with an option route where one of the slots can run a post if he wants to. And you get his run and make place. It gives you the ability to do so much. And you can see defense is try to panic there, right? Again, I'm going to keep bringing up my glitch. Mike Leach is the air raid guy that I know. Like he's the air raid guy that I'm going to talk about, right? And there's a lot, right? A lot of guys will recognize, you know, Lincoln Riley more. It's how mummy and and and Mike Leach were kind of the guys that created it. Right. Dana Holversen. Like you've seen that Cliff King's very all those guys that they're all air raid guys right and each have their own little. I'm going to call it playing to it, right? But with with 10 personnel, you could do a lot and your quarterback run game, that's where quarterback run game helps a lot too. Is that if we've got five blockers, you've got five defenders in the box, you've got five offensive linemen.

18:05And by the way, now we got a quarterback that can move a little bit. You know, we're going to do. We're going to snap that ball. And our running backs going to go right through the A gap and our quarterbacks going to run right behind them. And we're going to pick up six yards. And we're going to call it a day, right? So it gives issues to the defense. It gives advantages to the offense. And you can really attack. And you can really just just be menaces there, right? And you can you can do so much out of 10 personnel. And you can run again, like mirror to concepts is in the same concept just on opposite sides. You can run scissors on both sides, which is the outside receiver runs a post the inside receiver runs a corner. And you can run mirrors and you can attack there. Now you can do so much out of 10 personnel that again makes the defense hell. It's really tough to defend.

19:05There's a reason that the air raid is incredibly successful at the cultural level in terms of putting up points. Has the air raid won a lot of big games? No, absolutely not. Why is that me personally? The reason I say it is that I feel like you've always had air raid head coaches that know how to do it, right? Lincoln, Cliff, Mike Leach, like you've had air raid coaches run the air raid. And kind of ignore defense. I think one of the big advantages for Florida and we'll go in depth on this at some point. But one of the big advantages for Florida is you've got a defensive minded head coach that's saying you know what? Give me an air raid offense. Give me an air raid guy. And let's attack you there. It makes you pretty scary. Four of Gators are also going to run a lot of 12 personnel. We'll talk about that when we get back with locked on Gators.

20:06It is tax time, but for a lot of us, the old way of doing taxes is a lot, right? Trying to book an appointment that's not the most convenient sitting in a waiting room with a stack of papers, like emailing back and forth and wondering if they really get your situation. But this year you're getting a major upgrade into a turbo tax now has in person locations nationwide. You can meet face to face with a real tax expert and your documents get uploaded straight to your turbo tax app on the spot. And just like that, you're done, right? Your turbo tax expert works to get you every dollar you deserve while you get real time notifications as you go about your day. It's the relief of walking in and meeting a real person. Now, knowing your taxes are being handled right had the turbo tax dot com slash local to find us or near you and book your appointment and the biggest stretch of college basketball. It is here. I don't want to say almost here is here buzzer beaders bracket busters conference tournaments are here March madness is coming up. Being live for something like that, by the way, bucket list stuff, right?

21:09Hard parts always actually getting tickets long cues prices jumping around surprise fees that check out the game time app gives fans the advantage with constant innovation. It's how you unlock amazing tickets and experiences in just a few taps. It's incredibly simple to use the game time guarantee means 100% legitimate tickets delivered on time at the best price. And here's the best part fees are included in the price you see. So what you see is what you pay period. Take the guess we're going to buy in college basketball takes it with game time down to the game time app create account into locked on for $20 for first purchase terms apply again create account. We could L O C K E D O N for $20 off down with the game time app today. Thanks for making a lot of on gators your first listen of the day every day. We are available daily and free lives of the podcast and on YouTube and I just want to say this. Just now, and I was like, thanks again for making a lot of luggage. I almost said, thanks again for getting locked on personnel your first listen of the day. That's how personnel focus I am right now. All right. That's how locked in I am on personnel. And Buster Faulkner is I think maybe the best coach or the best air read coach in terms of utilizing 12 personnel.

22:21Okay. And 12 personnel is different. From most air raid guys right like like 20 personnel fits right and 12 personnel is in one running back to try to end two riders. And 20 personnel fits the air raid mold. It does because you can still attack quick underneath you can attack there you can attack vertical you can run seams seams or seams right you can run for versatile 20 personnel. You can I know a lot of people think you can't you can. I got my right running back in past production my left running back to running a bird of the seam. My left receiver is running vert my right slot vert up the seam my right receiver vert for words. There we go. But 12 personnel is where guys like I mean Lincoln Riley is good at using it. You've got Buster Faulkner though the best air raid 12 personnel coach. Okay. You usually see one tight end on each side and you can watch Georgia Tech you see this this is the part of the Georgia Tech offense that when I talk about Buster Faulkner and I talk about the hatch attack and I talk about his air raid principles.

23:32This is the part where I say it's a little bit of a power spread. Like that's that's what I look at when I think all right Georgia Tech you really ran a power spread with some air raid principles to it but it was mostly a power spread. And this is kind of that that like spread raid style like I don't know how else to call it. It's a it's a power spread raid style right but you got your running back in the back field with your quarterback. You've got usually a tight end on one side of the line and a tight on the other side of the line and usually a receiver far right ever see or far left right you got guys split out there. Then you go right we've got again important to note doubles. Okay that's two receivers I need side just in this case instead of two slot receivers they're two tight ends you could still run mesh. You could still run scissors you can still run everything that you run in 10 personnel. You've just got bigger guys doing it and you know what that causes defenses to do generally when you go 12 personnel they're going to go all right we're going to bring another line back around to the field right.

24:42And if you've got guys like for Florida. And I talked about this on Mondays show Monday morning show where I was like look you can see Florida. Potentially go hey we're going to start a mere Jackson and Luke harping it tight end. They're both the the receiving types we haven't seen either than be very successful as blockers like I've said I've been told that. That that a mere Jackson was was a way better blocker than people give him credit for last year the coaching staff is really high on him there and. Luke harping we saw not be a very good blocker George that right. And I said where when Luke harping is on the field way more often than not they were throwing the football than running and that to me is indicative of how you are as a blocker. But you can see Florida go hey we're going to have 12 personnel it's going to be a mere Jackson and Luke harping on the field and then we're going to go. I don't know Jalen Lloyd and and VB three we're going to have speed that leads out there and Jaden ball in the back field.

25:47It's a guy well a lot of defenses when these you go 12 personnel they're going to come in and be heavy right and it's like well we got a mere Jackson and we got Luke harping out there they're going to run they're going to run routes. Right so you got to be able to cover them and and if you can't cover them or if you can cover them we're going to run the football if you can cover them we're going to kill you. Again we can run mesh we can we can do everything we want in the air raid. From 12 personnel you're going to see it in short yardage you're going to see it in the red zone you're going to see it random times. Just where you can see advantages to be had. Like buster Faulkner loved 12 personnel in Georgia tech and he had four receivers play a good amount of snap or four tight ends play a good amount of snaps. And they all played a similar number of stuff like there was not a large gap between them. It was maybe like seven snaps per game difference from the guy that played the most the guy that played the least. It was like a seven snap difference per game that's not a lot especially when you run as many plays as they ran it's really not a lot.

26:52And you're going to see that that like that's one of the reasons that they can rotate so much is that depending on what they want to do out of those formations that's what they do depending on what they want to do out of that personnel that's what they do. And so you're going to see buster Faulkner say hey we're going to have 12 personnel and we're going to make you defend everything. And by condensing things that allows you to attack wide more often right you're going to see what you see a lot now with offenses is that they play with spacing. It's not just about spreading everybody out. It's not you watch watch watch some of the best offenses and you're going to see they're actually really tightly condensed and that's going to terrify you. Because you're going to see this is what Billy Napier did is really condensed and teams just blitz the hell out of us. You know what the issue was. And we talked about this a lot with like like Billy Napier was running a Shanahan offense but he was running Mike Shanahan offense and not Indiana Hoosier's offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan.

27:56He was running OG Mike Shanahan's offense. And it made it really tough to watch because how you watch good offenses operate when they go condensed sets when they say hey we're going to have you know tight ends in on the line. We're going to have receivers in on the line. And you watch them do stupid things like try to throw the ball over the middle of the field no when you watch a good offense you know what they do they say we're going to bring everybody real tight and condensed. And first thing i'm thinking if i'm an offense enemy got real tight condensed they're glitzing someone is rushing by maybe not glitzing maybe it's a same pressure maybe it's creep or whatever someone's rushing that's not a traditional Russia. Maybe it's that slot corner maybe it's a linebacker someone's rushing okay. What we're going to do quick throw to the flat. What we're doing we're motion across the formation sprint to the flat and we're going to get to the ball and strive.

28:59That's what good offenses do that's what good offensive coordinators do spacing is a weapon personnel groupings are a weapon. And now the Florida haters finally finally have an offensive coordinator that knows how to use those weapons. I can't wait to see it thanks for a lot on gators your first listen of the day every day we are available daily and free rivers in the podcast and on YouTube as always I am brand rules and so grateful to get do this job and just cover our program. I'll love it for locked on gators on brand rules and follow me on Twitter WN as soon as we're bringing follow locked on gators on Instagram. I think threads as well TikTok all that fun stuff right the kids love love the TikTok it's I'm old now and that is sort of this. But we will see you later on today we will be back with another episode of locked on gators we're doing two days going to be a good time I'll see you all next time.