Roberts to the Rescue? Florida football sure hopes so

Ron Roberts’ new job title at the University of Florida is — take a deep breath — “Executive Head Coach, Defensive Coordinator/Inside Linebackers.”

It could just as easily be “Dissectologist.”

That’s the term for people whose hobby is putting together jigsaw puzzles. Roberts has the same passion when it comes to a particular sport.

“I’m a football junkie. That is my hobby. That is my everything else,” he said. “I don’t golf, I don’t fish. You know what I mean?”

Good thing. His latest task will be like assembling a 10,000-piece puzzle that’s been missing a bunch of pieces.

That would be Florida’s defense, which was last spotted here around 2019. Among the missing pieces have been tackling, interceptions, pressure, players, confidence, communication, cohesion and coaching.

All that cost defensive coordinator Todd Grantham his job in 2021, and Dan Mullen followed a couple of weeks later. Now it poses an existential threat to Billy Napier.

That’s why he hired Roberts to try to solve the puzzle. To which you might ask, didn’t Napier hire Austin Armstrong as defensive coordinator just last year?

Yes, and Armstrong still holds that job. It’s just that now he shares it with Roberts.

“Austin’s running the unit meetings,” Napier said, “and Ron's doing a good job of creating clarity for the coaches and really helping us to improve the fundamentals.”

Translation: Armstrong needed help.

In retrospect, it might not have been the wisest move to hire a 29-year-old to lead an inexperienced defense. That’s not to say things like allowing 701 yards to LSU was all Armstrong’s fault, but there was obvious staff dysfunction.

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Defensive backs coach Corey Raymond and line coach Sean Spencer were fired after the season, replaced by Will Harris and Gerald Chatman. Inside linebacker coach Jay Bateman left to become Texas A&M’s defensive coordinator.

That created an opening for Roberts, though Napier might have brought him on anyway. I wrote last year that I have socks older than Armstrong. If anyone has apparel older than Roberts, they really need to clean out their closet.

He’s 56, and he has a dog-eared coaching passport that’s taken him to nine colleges in the past 27 years.

“I’m just happy to be here to help in (certain) ways,” Roberts said. “That’s one thing you get with a chance to be older. You’ve seen some things. I’ve already made my mistakes, you know?”

He’s seen a lot of things, but few earthlings have seen defenses as bad as Florida’s been putting on the field. SEC teams averaged 33.6 points and 471.2 yards a game against the Gators last year. Only Vanderbilt was worse.

UF’s eight sacks were next-to-last in the SEC (again, thank you Vandy). Out of 130 FBS teams, it tied for last in interceptions with three.

Nineteen players had more than Florida’s entire team in 2023. It was enough to make fans long for the days of Third-and-Grantham, named for the coach’s penchant to blitz on third down and give up big plays.

Roberts’ calling card is the “Creeper” defense. It forces opposing quarterbacks into a guessing game by blitzing a linebacker or defensive back and dropping a lineman into coverage.

He helped originate the scheme and had success with it as Napier’s defensive coordinator at Louisiana in 2018-19. That’s where Roberts first met an up-and-coming graduate assistant named Austin Armstrong.

They’ve talked almost weekly since then, as defensive hobbyists tend to do. Now the mentor has been reunited with his protégé.

“He’s brilliant. He’s very smart,” Roberts said. “He’s gonna have a future to do whatever he wants in this profession.”

Not if the Gators keep routinely turning opposing quarterbacks into Heisman contenders. Again, that’s not all on Armstrong. If you were pointing fingers at what’s gone wrong with Florida’s defense this decade, you’d need five or six hands.

“There’s all kinds of reasons we weren’t where we needed to be, but it’s alright,” Roberts said. “We are going to grow from it, learn from it, move on.”

And it all better happen between now and November. That just adds to the challenge facing Florida’s new Executive Head Coach, Defensive Coordinator/Inside Linebackers. And one of the great appeals to an avowed dissectologist.

We’ll see soon enough if Roberts can help put the pieces together. But if he likes a puzzle, he has certainly come to the right place.

David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on X @DavidEWhitley

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Florida football hopes Roberts can be its savior on defense