Graham Mertz: 'Individual stats don't matter, W's matter'

Graham Mertz quietly had the best season of his collegiate career last year in his first at Florida. However, since it only helped the Gators to put up five wins, he’s not interested in the numbers anymore.

Mertz spoke about his mindset coming into this fall while talking with the media at the Manning Passing Academy on Friday. Simply put, none of his or their statistics mean anything if they don’t lead to victorious outcomes for their record.

“I think the biggest thing? Like, individual stats don’t matter. W’s matter,” said Mertz per Shea Dixon.

Florida finished at 5-7 in 2023 for the second of a pair of losing seasons under Billy Napier so far. That included five straight to end the year that cost themselves bowl eligibility.

Again, though, Mertz’s play went below the radar amidst that record below .500. He had a career year over the 11 appearances in his fifth season with 2,903 passing yards, 20 touchdowns, and only three interceptions on 72.9% completion.

Still, for all the stats that he and his teammates may have posted, none of them were enough to finish with a record that they liked down in The Swamp. That’s why focus on those are now shifting to whatever it’s going to take to win as many games as possible in a high-pressure year in Gainesville.

“The reality is we didn’t have that last year. So I think, for us and every day that we walk in, we know what our record was last year and we know what everybody says about it,” said Mertz.

“All you can do is just go out there and go win every game. That needs to be the mindset,” Mertz said. “I mean that’s everybody. Every quarterback is telling their team, ‘Look, we’re going to go win every game’. But it’s how do you get everybody to buy into that and work towards that?”

While the expectation for Florida is their first winning season since 2020, they’re going to have to do it against a well-known slate that’s among the most difficult in the nation. That fact is what has Mertz and the Gators turning their attention to what will tally wins in the column rather than numbers in their box score.

One weakness for Graham Mertz labeled entering 2024

For Florida to improve, they’re going to need QB Graham Mertz to take another step forward.

Clark Brooks recently joined for a discussion about quarterbacks on ‘Andy Staples On3’. During that conversation, he broke down the strengths and weaknesses of Mertz. In particular, he explained that throwing downfield has proven to be a major concern for Florida’s signal caller.

“He was still the secondary option in both (Wisconsin and Florida’s offenses). But his average depth of target against his hardest opponents went down by three yards over year,” Brooks said. “He targeted behind the line of scrimmage on 30% of his attempts. It was the highest in the SEC and he joins Will Rogers and Mac Jones as the only SEC (quarterbacks) to have a double-digit checkdown rate. He did not throw the ball into harm’s way, almost to a fault.”

“I would like to see a lot more aggressiveness, particularly downfield. Only 14 percent of his targets were contested. He was not throwing the ball to people unless they were fairly wide open or he was absolutely forced to. Which, again, did not happen far too often with a very low interceptable pass rate,” Brooks said. “So, for me, I need to see that downfield stuff. Because you think he’s a different quarterback than he was at Wisconsin? Well, I’ll remind you, he struggled to hit people downfield as a Badger and he struggled to hit people downfield as a Gator.”