LEXINGTON, Ky. — Five days before playing Kentucky in 2018 Dan Mullen was asked about the Gators’ 31-game winning streak over the Wildcats. It’s a question every head coach or player on either team was asked for more than a quarter-century.
“Coach, do you address the streak with your team?”
Mullen responded.
“I don’t look at it … I imagine, one day, the streak will be broken. That’s just the nature of sports.”
Five days later, for the first time in 32 tries, the Kentucky Wildcats beat the Florida Gators, 27-16. It was bound to happen and, perhaps, 2018 was the year it was destined to. The Gators were in just the second game of the Dan Mullen era and Feleipe Franks cracked that the coaching staff was still learning the names of players in the second week. Meanwhile, Mark Stoops had been building a legitimate SEC program in Lexington. They had a talented running back in Benny Snell, a good offensive line and Terry Wilson was about to break out and lead his team to a 10-win season for the first time since 1977.
This isn’t your father’s Kentucky anymore.
“You can see they’ve built a great foundation. They have depth. They have experience. They play a very physical style of football, both offensively and defensively on the lines of scrimmage. They’ve got starters back,” Mullen said on Monday. “They’ve built a consistent winner, which is a lot of credit to what Mark Stoops has done and what he’s been able to do and their university.”
The 2018 game was Mullen’s first loss, it was called embarrassing and it could have derailed the entire season. Instead, the Gators used that adversity to find themselves and create an identity. They didn’t the fact that they were the first team in 30 years to lose to Kentucky become who they were, just something that they had to go through.
After that game Florida reeled off five wins in a row including road games at Tennessee and Mississippi State, as well as a home win over LSU, the latter two teams were both ranked at the time.
The loss in week two taught the team humility and helped the coaching staff push their point that every play, every rep in practice, every lift in the weight room meant something. It didn’t matter if you were playing the 1985 Chicago Bears or a pee wee football team, you had to have a standard of which you went about your own business and then meet, if not exceed, your own standards. Anything else is simply unacceptable.
“There should be a standard at which you play at, every game no matter who you are playing. If you’re playing below that standard, then that’s not right and that’s not how we’re going to win,” Feleipe Franks said. “I think we made that very clear after last year’s loss and going into this season we made it very clear there’s a standard at which you play at and if you’re not up to that standard, don’t go out there and expect to win.”
Everyone player or coach that spoke to the media this week leading up to the 2019 game refused to admit that the 2018 game was being used as motivation. Mullen said they would look at the game from a year ago strictly for film and scheme, not motivation. Franks said if you need to look back at a loss for motivation then you’re doing it wrong.
“Either you have a competitive fire or you don’t. You want to go out there and play every Saturday or you don’t. You want to win or you don’t. It’s black and white,” he said. “I don’t there’s any grey area in being a competitor, ether you have the passion or you don’t.”
Instead of looking back with anger or revenge on their mind the Gators should look back and thank Kentucky. The Gators were a young program in 2018 and the Wildcats punched them in the gut and woke them up. Since that game, Florida has completely bought into what Dan Mullen and his coaching staff are selling. They’re a better program for having been through that early adversity.
“I think it’s easier to learn when you lose. When you get too complacent, or ‘we got this, we’re 5-0 or 6-0.’ And then you get complacent and you start to play below the standard and then you lose and then you realize, ‘you know what, we didn’t do this right, we didn’t do this, that and the other. You need to go out there and correct those mistakes’,” Franks said.
“Yeah, losing is the easier way to learn that lesson. Not a fun way, but an easier way.”