Year four is often a pivotal season for a head coach, particularly in the cutthroat SEC. By then, the roster overwhelmingly consists of players that he evaluated, recruited and signed.
With that being the case, you don’t have to worry as much about whether players he inherited from the previous staff make him look like a better coach than he actually is or a worse coach than he actually is. There’s no mistaking who gets the credit or the blame for the program’s results any longer.
So, year four is often viewed as a snapshot of what fans can expect from the program moving forward under that coach’s guidance.
And that’s what has Gators fans worried. The eventual star players that Dan Mullen inherited from Jim McElwain – Kyle Trask, Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney – are no longer around. Mullen is almost entirely responsible for the roster construction of the 2021 Gators, and they’re sitting at 4-5 after losing three consecutive games and are in danger of suffering their first losing season since 2017.
Those who want Mullen fired can make a very solid argument. Why should Mullen be allowed to try to dig the program out of a mess that he created?
Some of his players, though, see things differently. The four players that were made available to the media this week all talked about how fiercely competitive Mullen is. In their opinion, he hates losing so much that he will make the necessary changes and get this program back into championship contention.
“I think the biggest thing about Coach Mullen that I feel makes him the person for the job is that he’s a competitor,” said offensive lineman Stewart Reese, who has played for Mullen for four years between Mississippi State and Florida. “Regardless of what’s going on, regardless of how bad it gets, he’s just going to keep plugging and plugging and plugging away until it gets better. That trickles throughout the team, on down to the coaching staff and on down to the players. Personally, I wouldn’t take nobody else but Coach Mullen.”
Running back Dameon Pierce shared a similar sentiment.
“One thing that makes Coach Mullen special, I believe if he was in shape and he was allowed to do it, he would put these pads on and go to war with us, go to war right alongside us out there and play right with us and get his nose in the ballgame,” Pierce said. “He’s that competitive, and he’s that kind of guy. He loves football. He’s knowledgeable about it. He tried to put us in position to win, and, sometimes, things don’t work out the way you want it to.”
Linebacker Mohamoud Diabate, who is tied for third in the SEC with 74 tackles, said he can tell how badly Mullen wants to win by how hard he works. That’s the type of coach that he wants to play for.
“I like playing for Coach Mullen just because the obsession he has with football,” he said. “I’m a person who notices little things. Sometimes, I might pull up at night, I might have forgot something, I see his Mercedes there. He’s working. It might be a Sunday, I see his Mercedes there working.
“He’s a very intellectual guy. That’s what I like about him. I like someone who can psychologically test me, psychologically push me, and I feel like Coach Mullen can do that, and he has done that the last three years.”
Diabate added that the players also deserve some of the blame for the way that this season has gone, and it’s up to them to figure out how to play better.
“In regards to people saying getting back to a championship program, this year we had a lot of close games,” he said. “If we don’t have a missed field goal, a missed extra point, a blocked kick and a couple of little mistakes, we’re the greatest ever. We just have to clean up some little things. That comes down to everybody, not only the coaches, us, paying attention to detail. When the running back is doing this, I’ve got to do that.
“We’ve been to that championship level just last year. We have a little slump, a couple games. We feel confident we’ll be able to hone-in [as] a player-led team and get things right.”
Another concern that many fans have is the possibility that Mullen has lost the locker room. The external criticism of Mullen started to ramp up after the Gators’ loss to LSU and it reached a fever pitch following the 34-7 loss to Georgia. Instead of playing hard for their head coach and trying to silence the critics, they made things worse by looking lackadaisical and unfocused in a 40-17 loss to South Carolina.
That performance certainly didn’t look like one that you’d expect to see from a team that loves their coach and wants to fight for him.
The players, however, insist that the team hasn’t given up on Mullen. They played poorly against the Gamecocks, but it wasn’t because they’ve lost faith in their coach.
“There’s really no explanation for it,” Reese said. “We just played a bad game, and, moving forward, like I said, you just take whatever you can from that game and avoid trying to make those mistakes the next game. So, that’s really all we can do at this point. I wish I had some elaborate explanation for it, but that’s as simple as it is.”
Diabate pointed out that the players’ actions during the week aren’t indicative of a team that has abandoned all hope.
“Ain’t nobody [skipped] practice,” he said. “I ain’t seen nobody hit the portal. We’re all here ready to work. We worked [on Wednesday]. We’re going to come in [on Thursday], and we’re going to work. We’re going to come in Friday and work. And Saturday, we’re hopefully going to come out and execute. I don’t see anybody wavering. I see everybody strong and ready to finish the season strong.”
There’s a lot of noise surrounding the program right now. When the Gators drastically underachieve, a lot of people want the head coach to be fired. That’s just the reality of how this sport works.
The players, though, are trying to tune all of that out and finish the season as strongly as possible. If they do that, all of the other stuff will take care of itself.
“One of the biggest things Coach always tells us is don’t listen to the outside noise,” Reese said. “One thing that I’ve learned in six years of playing college football is they’re going to praise you when you’re up, and they’re going to kick you in the ass when you’re down. Sorry for my French, but it is what it is. All the outside stuff, it doesn’t matter because if people were so gung-ho about having something to say, they would come in front of the team and say it. But, that’s not what everybody’s going to do.
“So, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what everybody else has to say. We’ve got to do what we need to do for our coach to make sure that we finish out the season the right way.”