Depending on the program, the meaning of a head coach’s third year can change. At Notre Dame, for instance, the third year is the real prove-it season. Four different Irish head coaches have won national titles in their third campaigns, and Brian Kelly played for the title in his third.
At Florida, third seasons have been less fruitful of late. Urban Meyer’s third team was a nine-game winner in a four-season stretch that otherwise contained only 13-1 teams. Will Muschamp’s third team went 4-8 and set the stage for his firing; Jim McElwain was fired during his third year with a team that would go on to finish 4-7.
With Dan Mullen entering his third season, I think it’s worth taking a look at one factor that can greatly affect the product on the field: experience among starters.
Underclassmen don’t necessarily make for bad starters. The 2007 season I’ll go over below had sophomores Tim Tebow, Percy Harvin, and Brandon Spikes on the top line of the depth chart. However, teams with more upperclassmen tend to do better overall since the players are more developed mentally and physically.
Here is how the experience level of third-year teams since Meyer have looked from an experience standpoint. The player counts by head coach goes for both signees and who transfers came in under, and years of experience starts counting at one with freshmen. I tried to get them reflective of the season as a whole, so I started with initial starting lineups and made adjustments for early-season injuries as needed.
Urban Meyer, 2007
Zook players: 10
Meyer players: 12
Average years of experience: 3.3 offense, 2.6 defense, 3.0 overall
Meyer’s second team famously had 21 of 22 starters be Ron Zook recruits, but there was a mass exodus of older players following the season. That combined with the blowout recruiting classes of 2006 and 2007 having players who beat out some elders meant the ’07 squad was very young.
The lines were largely where the Zook guys could be found, as four were offensive linemen and three were defensive linemen. The other two were TE Cornelius Ingram and S Tony Joiner.
But even among the Meyer guys, only Louis Murphy came from the 2005 transitional class and was in his third year. The starting lineup therefore featured eight guys from the 2006 class and three true freshmen from the ’07 class (Maurkice Pouncey, Joe Haden, and Major Wright).
The team was still good and a sophomore on it won the Heisman Trophy, but the inexperience, especially on the back end of the defense, brought the win total down to single digits at 9-4.
Will Muschamp, 2013
Meyer players: 11
Muschamp players: 11
Average years of experience: 3.5 offense, 3.4 defense, 3.5 overall
The original starting lineup is what I’m counting here, plus adding in Jon Halapio (who missed the first two games to injury). This group began a lot more experienced than Meyer’s second team, but the season’s absurd injury plague meant the starters barely played together as a single group.
The uninspiring early loss to Miami showed this squad probably wasn’t destined for true greatness, but the early September team wouldn’t have lost seven games in a row to finish the year. Three of those seven Ls were by one score, and simply having the original starters probably would’ve made the difference in a couple of them.
Five of the seven opening day starters who didn’t play against FSU were Muschamp signees or transfers, so the new coach was missing some quality new guys. Coaching and development still matter, but Muschamp was decent in some places for bringing in talent. But only to a certain extent…
Jim McElwain, 2017
Muschamp players: 6
McElwain players: 16
Average years of experience: 2.6 offense, 2.9 defense, 2.8 overall
As you might expect, more Muschamp holdovers were starting on defense (four) than offense (two). Thing is, McElwain had turned over a large part of the offense by his second season. Already six opening day starters in 2016 were his guys, and the Muschamp ones included Brandon Powell playing a different position than he had under the previous regime. By the time the FSU game came around, the count was down to three (Powell, David Sharpe, C’yontai Lewis). So, just two on offense in 2017 is not surprising at all.
The bigger story is defense. All three linebackers were sophomores by this time after Muschamp somehow severely mismanaged numbers at a defensive position. The ends were newer guys too, with a still-raw Jabari Zuniga on one side and Cece Jefferson on the other. The secondary had some youth too with freshman Marco Wilson at one corner spot and sophomore Chauncey Gardner playing out of position at safety. Freshman CJ Henderson got plenty of playing time too in nickel sets when Duke Dawson moved inside.
The average experience on defense was below 3.0, same as in 2007. Not coincidentally, the 2007 and 2017 Florida defenses gave up some of the highest points per game rates in decades (25.5 in ’07 and 27.3 in ’17). As good as a lot of the players on the 2017 defense ended up being, they weren’t ready for prime time that year.
Dan Mullen, 2020
McElwain players: 12.5
McElwain players: 9.5
Average years of experience: 3.8 offense, 3.6 defense, 3.7 overall
This is based on my own projection at the moment, which is subject to change later. On offense I have Kyle Trask and Dameon Pierce in the backfield with Trevon Grimes, Jacob Copeland, and Kadarius Toney out wide and Kyle Pitts at tight end. Because Mullen and John Hevesy tend to favor experience there was no spring practice for competition, I have the line the same as the bowl only with Brett Heggie sliding over to center to replace Nick Buchanan: Forsythe-Gouraige-Heggie-White-Delance.
My defensive line is Zach Carter, Kyree Campbell, and Tedarrell Slaton with Brenton Cox at Buck. Ventrell Miller and James Houston are the linebackers for now, and I’m guessing Amari Burney goes back to star. Marco Wilson and Kaiir Elam are your corners. I think we’re in for another relatively equal four-man safety rotation, so Donovan Stiner, Brad Stewart, Shawn Davis, and Trey Dean all get half credit as starters. That’s where the half player thing comes from; Dean is the lone Mullen recruit with the other three coming from McElwain’s 2017 class. Aside from giving out half credits to the safeties, this is basically the consensus pre-spring projection for the 2020 team with the possible exception of Jeremiah Moon being the Buck starter.
I’m not 100% sure what to make of so many starters still being McElwain guys. On the one hand, it does make sense. Mac’s firing was pretty sudden after he’d won the division twice in a row. There were grumbles about him but he wasn’t on anyone’s hot seat. The 2017 class, which is in its fourth year now, was his highest-rated class and produced six of the solid defensive starters and three of the four safeties (plus Toney on offense). It’s a luxury to have a fifth-year senior quarterback in this day and age, and three of the offensive line starters are such as well.
So it’s not a bad thing that so many McElwain guys are in place to start given the strength of the ’17 class, but it also means that Mullen signees haven’t beaten out those guys yet. All the same, there was no spring practice for guys like Michael Tarquin and Will Harrod to challenge for offensive line spots or Mohamoud Diabate or Ty’Ron Hopper to make a run at the linebacker spots.
However it works out, there are a lot of veteran players everywhere. This will not be a 2007 or 2017 situation where youth everywhere, especially on defense, hurts the team at times. It’s a more veteran team than 2013, and 2013 fell apart because of widespread injuries that plagued Muschamp teams but have yet to bite Mullen’s Florida outfits.
By third-year Florida head coaching standards, the 2020 team is in excellent shape from an experience standpoint.