By Will Miles
Spring practice is here
Less than two weeks after National Signing Day, Florida is set to start spring practice.
If it feels unusually early, it is. Mullen ostensibly will use this to his advantage, taking the opportunity to teach young players, get mistakes on film, and then spend the limited time that the staff gets with players over the summer to make them familiar with that film.
I don’t think that the inability to line-up properly on defense last year was excusable, especially late in the year. But this year, there will be absolutely no excuse for that sort of stuff. The players have a full spring schedule. They have extra time between spring and fall to fix their mistakes and grow. They have extra time with Nick Savage over the summer to prepare their bodies.
Likely we’ll see physical mistakes in 2021 as players adjust to the speed and physicality of the SEC. But if we’re seeing mental mistakes again, there aren’t any excuses left.
Those are on the coaches.
No spring game?
There won’t be a traditional spring game this season. Athletic Director Scott Stricklin assured fans on Twitter that there will be access to the team and some sort of television event on the SEC Network, but the traditional walk-ins welcome spring game experience won’t take place this season.
That’s disappointing.
I get that there are concerns around COVID-19 still. I also get that having fans in the stands for the spring game adds a level of complexity that the program likely doesn’t want to have to deal with.
But it does seem hypocritical to allow 17,000 fans at games during the year when you can charge them $120+ per ticket and then not allow the same number of fans to attend he spring game when the ability to charge goes down.
Perhaps I should give the program the benefit of the doubt and believe they’re doing this for the right reasons. All I know is that the last time Gator fans were in the Swamp, it was watching a depleted LSU team beat an unprepared Florida team on a thrown shoe.
I don’t blame fans for being upset about wanting to get that taste out of their mouths.
Mullen Presser
Dan Mullen had a press conference on Wednesday prior to spring practice starting. Here are some opinions about what he had to say.
NFL Dreaming
Mullen said that he didn’t interview for an NFL job. That is probably reassuring to many Gators fans. But to others, it’s going to rub them the wrong way.
After all, Mullen could have come out and said that he didn’t have NFL interest when the stories came out a month ago. Instead, fans have been left to wonder how committed he is to the program and defend it by saying that Mullen was just trying to gain leverage in contract negotiations for an extension.
But trying to gain leverage ends up making you sound like a mercenary, rather than the guy who loves coaching at UF. Add to that the comments Mullen made about the college football landscape changing and how challenging it will be for coaches moving forward and I’m not convinced that if the NFL comes calling that he won’t make the jump.
Indeed, I don’t think that Mullen didn’t interview because he was preparing to get the Gators into the SEC Championship Game again as he said. I think he didn’t interview because nobody called.
Treading Lightly
One thing that Mullen said really made my antenna go up.
“Well, if you know you got a really good shot at Demarkcus Bowman transferring in, that kind of took the RB spot in this year’s class.”
This was in response to some of the criticism (some warranted) that Mullen has taken for not having recruited the RB position well.
But this sounds like coming really, really close to the line to me. Bowman enrolled at Clemson on August 12. He decided to enter the transfer portal on October 1. He transferred to Florida on October 3. Now, Mullen is saying that they kept a spot open and didn’t recruit a RB because they thought they needed a spot for Bowman?
Recruiting is a relationship game. You have to build relationships with recruits over multiple years and cultivate those relationships to get them to commit. The idea that they ignored the running back position prior to October on the hope that Bowman would transfer seems unlikely.
I’m not saying that Mullen or the staff did anything untoward. But if I – a pretty significant homer – don’t like the timeline associated with Mullen’s comments, it’s something he needs to watch.
He admitted in the press conference that he needs to be more measured in his words. I don’t really care about the Darth Gator stuff. But in the wake of the recent probation announcement, this is one area where I’d advise Mullen and Co. to tread lightly.
Addressing needs in the transfer portal?
Mullen did make a comment about how he uses the transfer portal to address needs and that they turned down excellent players because they didn’t fit the Gators needs.
That’s an interesting strategy.
The benefit of the transfer portal – especially for Mullen at this point – is that Florida has a 100% hit rate on transfers being successful players. Maybe Trevon Grimes or Brenton Cox (yet) haven’t been game changers, but there’s no debating that they’ve been solid contributors.
Add to that Van Jefferson, Jon Greenard and Adam Shuler and you have a hit rate that Mullen should be proud of at positions that the Gators needed their contributions.
But if Florida is actually turning down skilled players in the portal, then that sort-of points out the flaw with using the portal for plugging holes instead of for stockpiling talent.
Because Florida has had to rely on transfers to fill holes, there just aren’t spots to bring in additional talent through the portal. That is fine so long as the 100% hit rate continues and nobody gets injured. But this is the SEC. Injuries happen. Florida has actually been really fortunate that they haven’t experienced a significant rash of injuries over the past couple of seasons.
Alabama lost its most explosive receiver – Jaylen Waddle – early last season. They didn’t miss a beat. That’s the line Florida is walking, because it’s not a championship team if a player who emerges to be its most explosive player goes down.
Up-tempo or slow-tempo?
One thing Mullen said that intrigued me is that he said the team might be up-tempo or slow-tempo on offense, though he expected closer to a 50/50 run/pass split.
That’s a significant departure from 2019 and 2020. It’s actually a significant departure from 2018 if the team runs significant tempo. There was a lot of criticism that came Feleipe Franks, some of it unfair. But one criticism I thought was valid was that Florida took way too long to get into its offensive sets.
One of the reasons that the offense looked so much more fluid under Kyle Trask is just that the offense got up to the line of scrimmage much faster (aside from the fact that he turned out to be really, really good).
So a team that runs the ball a lot but is still up-tempo is something we haven’t seen in Gainesville under the Mullen regime. That carries with it significant risk at leaving the defense out on the field without significant rest if you can’t convert third downs.
But it also carries with it significant upside to completely wear down the opposition so you can take over in the fourth quarter.
Spring Desires
So what do I want to see in the spring when the Gators decide to give us access?
2 Running Back Sets
Lorenzo Lingard and Demarkcus Bowman are the two most explosive players on offense. You could see Lingard’s explosion even on the couple of carries that he got against Vanderbilt.
To rely on one-back sets means you’re taking a weapon off of the field that has the ability to take the ball to the house. If you bring Bowman and Lingard into the backfield with Emory Jones a running threat as well, you now have three players who demand the defense’s attention.
Emory Jones hasn’t been given the opportunity to throw all that much. But if you have the threat of swing passes in either direction to Bowman and Lingard, safeties are going to have to pay attention.
And that may mean that Arik Gilbert is able to streak right down the middle for big plays to supplement a running game that should be explosive as well.
10 competent offensive linemen
Florida hasn’t really played more than 7 offensive linemen in any season under Mullen.
Richard Gouraige and Ethan White played some as backups in 2019. White and Josh Braun played a little bit in 2020. But one of the issues that Florida had was when Jean Delance struggled, there wasn’t anyone they felt comfortable replacing him with. They actually tried against LSU and it was the most we saw Trask get hit all year.
Trask certainly covered a multitude of offensive sins, but the Gators offensive line wasn’t terrible. Florida ranked 46th in Football Outsiders Opportunity Rate (the ability of the OL to do its job) in 2020. That isn’t fantastic, but it isn’t terrible.
So the perception that the Gators couldn’t run the ball is more colored by Mullen going away from the ball than that they couldn’t actually run the ball. The Gators ranked 69th in yards per rush attempt (4.3), about middle of the pack. But they only ran the ball 43% of the time.
This season, they aren’t going to be able to do that. That means that an injury – or even a ding – on the offensive line is going to be a big deal. That means that extra bodies may be needed.
Also, while the offensive line wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t particularly good either. Delance and Stewart Reese come back, but Stone Forsythe and Brett Heggie are not, meaning there should be plenty of competition for those two spots.
Mullen and John Hevesy have recruited a bunch of offensive linemen the past two seasons. It’s time for all the development we always hear about to finally show up and produce starters who are elite because they’ve been getting pushed, and backups who can step in and provide competent play in a pinch.
Defensive Depth
Florida’s defense was terrible in 2020. It’s going to take a long time to erase that stink around Gainesville. But the thing that marked the defense in 2020 more than just being bad was that there was nowhere to turn.
That was painfully obvious when Marco Wilson chucked the shoe against LSU and didn’t miss a play. Not only that, but Wilson was then a starter in the SEC Championship.
I’m not here to pile on Wilson, but Mullen mentioned at his presser this week that the Gator program is built on trust and accountability. That can’t be true if you can’t pull a player when they violate that trust.
I think we saw what would have happened had the young players been put in the game against Oklahoma. We often see the one bad play that a corner or safety makes and use those to make judgments about their overall level of play. In some ways, that is fair because their job (especially at safety) is to prevent big plays.
But one thing that doesn’t show up to casual observers is how often a particular player does their job perfectly. Wilson was far from perfect, but clearly the coaches saw on tape something that made them think he was a better option than other guys they could throw out there.
You can certainly blame that on the coaches or COVID or whatever else you want, but because there wasn’t any depth, there couldn’t be any accountability.
That needs to change.
Sigh….Basketball
After four straight wins to get to 10-4 and jump back into the AP Poll, Florida has now lost its last two games against South Carolina and Arkansas, with a COVID break in between.
For the past two seasons, there has been a ton of vitriol thrown in Mike White’s direction. Some of it has been justified. Some of it has probably not been.
But it doesn’t really matter at this point. At this point, there just seems to be apathy.
It’s a running joke that the minute Florida has any success, they’ll end up blowing a game they shouldn’t against an (supposedly) inferior opponent. It’s also a running joke that you should bet on the Gators when it doesn’t look like they should have any business winning a game (hello, Tennessee).
I think it’s unfair to ask Mike White to be Billy Donovan. But I do think it’s fair to see some signs of progress that the team – and the program – are getting better.
From a recruiting standpoint, that is absolutely true. But from an on-court perspective, I don’t see a whole lot of progress. We’ve seen that story on the football field, with a coach who brought in fantastic recruits year after year but just couldn’t get over the hump on the field.
I’m thankful that Ron Zook was the Gators coach because he set the table for Urban Meyer. But I’m also thankful that Jeremy Foley made a switch in 2005.