From the outside looking in, Dan Mullen’s search for two new defensive back coaches in January looked like a disorganized, confusing mess.
First, it looked like Travaris Robinson would return to Florida and coach the entire secondary, freeing Mullen up to use the other opening on another position. That ship sailed quickly, and Robinson ended up at Miami. Later, it looked like Mullen was nearing a deal with the Dallas Cowboys’ Maurice Linguist, only for Michigan to swoop in and outbid the Gators. Chris Ash was rumored to be a candidate, only for him to join Urban Meyer’s staff with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Eventually, after frustrated fans vented on message boards and social media for weeks, Mullen finally put the finishing touches on his defensive staff toward the end of January. Former Auburn defensive backs coach Wesley McGriff will coach safeties and nickelbacks, while former USF cornerbacks coach Jules Montinar will work with UF’s corners.
The number of apparent rejections coupled with Mullen’s failure to address the rumors that he was interested in the NFL created a dark cloud that hovered above the program for a few weeks. However, Mullen insists that the process wasn’t as chaotic as it looked. McGriff, who was hired first, was always at the top of his list. He had even tried to hire him before but couldn’t work things out.
“His personality, his energy, what he brings, the relationships he has with kids,” Mullen said of what stands out about McGriff. “As soon as I made the change, really, I think the first call I made was to him.”
Mullen liked the combination of experience and energy that McGriff brings to the table. This will be his 21st season coaching major college football or in the NFL. He’s worked for four other SEC teams, including a stint as Ole Miss’ defensive coordinator. Everywhere he’s gone, the defensive backs have produced at a high level. Despite being 52 years old, he’s known for being an extremely energetic and effective recruiter, particularly in the South Florida and Atlanta areas. Florida could definitely stand to benefit from enhanced recruiting in those areas.
With a veteran coach like McGriff in place, Mullen took some time to decide what he wanted to do with the final open position and researched several candidates. The process to hire the final assistant coach was slow and meticulous by design.
Montinar quickly grabbed Mullen’s attention. While he’d never held a full-time job at the Power Five level, Montinar checked all of the boxes for things he was looking for. He’s young (35 years old), energetic and known for his recruiting prowess. His defensive backs have produced at a high level. Mullen looked at him as an up-and-coming coach who just needed his first big opportunity.
“As you do this, not just looking at their resume, but talking to guys they’ve worked with and his personality and how he fits within the staff,” Mullen said. “One thing to me about putting a staff together, it’s not just, ‘Hey, let’s just go create and have like an all-star roster.’ What you want to do is create a staff that everybody’s going to work together and understands how it best fits together. I think that is a huge part of success.
“Everyone talked about what a great team guy [Montinar] is, what a great high-energy guy he is, what a great young up-and-coming coach he is and a guy being from Florida and the opportunity to come coach at Florida. Just all of that made him the guy that, in the end, it was really a no-brainer for me.”
While Mullen loves his new assistant coaches now, the honeymoon phase will be challenged soon. McGriff and Montinar face a stiff challenge in spring ball, which begins in less than 48 hours. All they have to do is fix a secondary that produced perhaps the worst season by a UF secondary since the invention of colored television.
After evaluating the film from last season, Mullen has identified several areas that need improvement. First, as he stated repeatedly throughout the 2020 season, he thinks they need to do a better job of matching their scheme to their personnel. The play call might make perfect sense on paper, but if your players on the field can’t execute it, it does you no good. McGriff and Montinar will play a role in that process this spring.
“We met as a staff this morning talking about player evaluation, finding out exactly what our guys do well, what they don’t do well and making sure our scheme fits the strength of our players, that we’re putting guys in the best positions to be successful on the field and that we’re putting our best players out there on the field,” Mullen said. “But a lot of that gets into an evaluation process that we’re going to get to go through this spring to be able to evaluate a lot of young players out there and making sure that we are putting them in the best position to be successful on Saturdays next fall.”
Second, while defensive coordinator Todd Grantham strongly denied that his players had an issue adjusting to tempo during the season, Mullen acknowledged on Tuesday that it was a problem. Playing with an increased sense of urgency will be a point of emphasis this spring.
“I think we’ve got to be better on the field, if that makes sense,” he said.” Because I’m on the headsets, we get the call in but then how fast our guys get lined up, and I think we were a little casual at times getting lined up. And all of a sudden, we’re not getting lined up fast enough, the strength declarations aren’t being made fast enough, and so, guys are looking around, and, by the time they’re looking around, the ball’s being snapped. So, I think that’s some stuff that we’ve talked about and how we need to address that and how we need to fix that and how we need to make sure we have the right guys making all the right calls so that it happens much faster on the field.”
All of Mullen’s offseason moves have been scrutinized and will continue to be until the defense shows significant improvement. That is fair, as Mullen took a huge gamble by not firing Grantham and blowing everything up.
However, Mullen deserves credit for having the courage to trust his gut and not let the external frustrations that piled up with each day that passed without an assistant coach being hired influence him. He had a methodical process that he believed in and saw through to completion.
Now, Mullen just needs his decisions to prove to be the correct ones. All that hangs in the balance is the future of the program.