Will Dan Mullen go conservative or pull out all the stops against Alabama?

Dan Mullen caused a minor stir among the Alabama folks this week when he called Mac Jones a good game manager. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, as that’s one of his favorite ways to describe Kyle Trask. Mullen is aware that “game manager” is generally used as a soft pejorative to describe a quarterback who does not excel in any obvious ways, but he doesn’t care. In his book, there is no higher calling for a guy behind center than to manage a game well.

I am not that worried about Trask’s game management in Atlanta tomorrow. He had a down game in that department last week, but I think it’s more likely than not that he’ll bounce back. The game manager I’m more concerned about is Mullen himself.

Shortly after Mullen’s hire at UF, I wrote up an article about his strengths and weaknesses. The rap on Mullen at the time was that he was a terrific game planner who didn’t always make the best in-game decisions. The example I used to highlight those notions happens to be the last time Mullen faced Nick Saban.

The 2017 Crimson Tide is the team that won the national championship with Tua Tagovailoa’s heroics against Georgia. Jalen Hurts was still the starter for most of the year, so the Bama offense hadn’t turned into the world-destroying buzzsaw its been since 2018. Its only loss came in the Iron Bowl, but two weeks before that, Mississippi State came the closest it ever did in Mullen’s tenure to winning the game. The Bulldogs came far closer than LSU and Clemson to beating that Alabama team, in fact.

You can find the finer details via that link, but Mullen found ways to take a shorthanded offense that was down some receivers and put 24 points on the board. It was the most points Bama allowed all season.

Despite the schematic brilliance, Mullen played it very conservative in his game management. Early on the Bulldogs got to 4th & 2 on the Alabama 36-yard-line, but Mullen went with a hard count to try to draw the Tide offsides. It failed, a delay penalty backed them up five yards, and he punted. He sent his kicker out for a field goal at 4th & 7 from the Bama 8-yard-line, and the Tide jumped offsides prior to the made kick. Instead of taking the penalty and trying something at 4th & 2 from the 3-yard-line, he declined the flag.

There were a couple of other signs of heavy caution, but those were the big ones. We’ve seen similar from Mullen this year.

After rolling up a big halftime lead against Georgia, Mullen called runs on consecutive first and second downs on five separate occasions in the second half despite the rushing attack being extremely inefficient in the contest. Four of those instances led directly to punts.

The game plans since Arkansas have largely been bland, and it shows in how the Gators didn’t win another game in the fashion it did against the Razorbacks. They didn’t even get to 30 offensive points against Kentucky, and multiple games this year (South Carolina, Tennessee) had coaches admitting after that they didn’t try to blow the opposing offense off the field late as long as it was willing to run clock. The Tennessee game also saw a punt on 4th & 5 from the Vols’ side of the field. UF lined up for a field goal at 4th & Goal from the LSU 3-yard-line and later kicked one from the Tigers’ 5-yard-line.

Now, it’s not all been strictly boring, rote stuff. We’ve seen flea flickers, a fake punt, Trevon Grimes in the Wildcat, and a couple passes from Kadarius Toney. I actually came away from last weekend’s loss wanting to see more rushing attempts from Trask. And last year against an LSU offense that’s in the same league as the one Florida’s about to see from Alabama, Mullen largely kept the pedal to the metal.

I say “largely”, though, because he didn’t go all-out. Late in the first quarter, he punted on 4th & 1 from midfield even as nine-of-ten Gator rushing attempts to that point had gone for positive yardage. In the second half after the Tigers had scored touchdowns on their first two drives, Mullen sent Emory Jones out I guess to try to slow the tempo. I don’t hate the idea of giving the defense a chance to regroup there, but the sequence was as futile as it was predictable: Jones rush for 2, Jones rush for 1, Jones incomplete pass.

Mullen believes in playing field position and protecting his defense, which is why he’s been able to get a lot of good defensive coordinators to work for him over the years. You can try to play field position against the Tide, but it’s not guaranteed to work out for you.

Georgia has the best defense Bama has seen in 2020. It allowed a 90-yard touchdown pass. Texas A&M has the next-best defense the Tide has faced. The Aggies allowed touchdown passes of 78, 87, and 63 yards. Two of those four came to Jaylen Waddle, who will not play this weekend. DeVonta Smith and John Metchie are more than capable of pulling it off, though.

And TAMU, to its credit, wasn’t simply playing field position either. It went for it on fourth down twice, though failing both times, and only punted on 4th & 18 or inside its own 35. The Aggies lost by 28 points.

That’s the crux of the issue. Mullen can try to play things conservatively, but it’s not at all guaranteed to work. Alabama is only a play away from the end zone wherever it is on the field against any defense, much less a UF unit that has struggled a fair amount this year.

Mullen’s been doing a lot of playing-not-to-lose lately, and that strategy couldn’t even accomplish its goal last week. This year’s version is one of Nick Saban’s best Alabama teams yet. The most likely outcome is a Crimson Tide win.

For Florida to enhance its chances of winning, it must get aggressive. While doing so will make a UF win more likely, it’ll also make a blowout loss more likely. That’s the tradeoff of increasing variance.

I don’t want to see UF lose by 35, but if it does, it’ll be evident whether the Gators shriveled meekly or went down swinging. If Mullen indulges his conservative instincts, Florida would be more likely to lose by the roughly 17 points that the Vegas line is for the game. That’d look better on the scoreboard, but it goes down as a loss either way. And, given how explosive Bama’s offense is and how flammable UF’s secondary is, a Florida team that goes conservative and tries to shorten the game could get blown out anyway.

I want to see what the Gators look like when they go for broke and hold nothing back. I wish I could be confident that I’ll see that tomorrow, but Mullen’s track record of game management tells me I can’t be. Here’s hoping he proves me wrong.