It’s been a rough few days for Gators coach Dan Mullen when it comes to the court of public opinion.
First, the Gators were blown out 34-7 by No. 1 Georgia on Saturday, which prompted the usual concerns among fans about the direction that the program is heading in.
Then, during his weekly press conference on Monday, he was asked a question about his staff’s approach to recruiting. He tried to deflect the question and state that he wouldn’t talk about recruiting until after the season, but he worded his response in such a way that it was easy for his critics to misunderstand him or outright weaponize his own words against him.
“We’re in the season right now,” Mullen said on Monday. “We’ll do recruiting after the season. When it gets to recruiting time, we can talk about recruiting.”
That middle sentence, “We’ll do recruiting after the season,” was used by some people to bash Mullen and his staff for not taking recruiting seriously enough year-round.
That press conference was then ended abruptly after only about 12 minutes when he usually spends around 30 minutes at the podium. Shortly thereafter, UF announced that defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and players wouldn’t be available to the media this week.
Finally, on Tuesday, Mullen did a one-on-one interview with Edgar Thompson of the Orlando Sentinel, which some viewed as nothing more than an attempt by Mullen to shift the narrative and limit the damage by only speaking to a handpicked reporter.
On Wednesday, Mullen made his weekly appearance on the SEC Coaches Teleconference. Before he answered any questions, he used his opening statement to clarify his recruiting comment and explain why he’s not allowing the players to speak with the media this week.
“First, I’d like to touch on something for all the Gator Nation, all our great fans, of something that was taken out of context in Monday’s press conference as it pertains to recruiting,” he said. “Our staff recruits nonstop. We grind at recruiting every day. We’re always recruiting and working the best to get great players that fit the Gator Standard and bringing them here to our program. And, as I said on Monday, we just weren’t going to get into the specifics of everything we do in recruiting and how we do all of that until after the season.
“On Monday morning, we had an 8 o’clock team meeting. We had a great meeting with the team [about] the energy, the excitement of our players going into this final third of the season and the focus of which we have to take and the approach we need to take in the final third of the season, and I felt that the best [thing] for our players was to make sure our focus is completely on the work that we have to do in the final third of the season.
“So, because of that, I made myself available for media every single day this week – Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday – because we didn’t have the players available. So, I just wanted to clarify some of those things that apparently have been taken way out of context over the last several days.”
The remainder of his 10 minutes on the call focused on the team’s mentality as they prepare to play South Carolina on Saturday.
As he did following the Georgia loss and during his press conference on Monday, Mullen pointed out confidence as being one of the team’s primary issues.
In each of their four losses, they’ve allowed one or two bad plays to lead to more bad plays, which in turn have cost them the games.
Against Alabama, a couple of missed tackles on the opening possession led to the Crimson Tide scoring 21 points in the first quarter. If they only gave up 17 points in that quarter, they would’ve won the game.
Against Kentucky, a couple of early false start penalties eventually led to eight false starts and 15 total penalties, the program’s most in a game in 20 years. If they had only committed five false starts instead of eight, they might’ve won.
Against LSU, some early difficulties with defending the run turned into a 300-yard rushing, 49-point game for the Tigers.
Most recently, three turnovers in a span of about two minutes turned a 3-0 game into a 24-0 Georgia blowout at halftime.
This team isn’t very good at making mistakes mere footnotes in otherwise successful games. Instead, they let disaster happen. That problem is largely a confidence issue, Mullen said.
“In our losses this year, you can’t pinpoint one thing, but you can pinpoint that, when bad things happen, they were really bad for us,” he said. “There were different bad things that happened in each game. The other part of it is, one, to eliminate the mistakes, which you want to do.
“The second part of it really is when something bad happens during the course of a game to put the brakes on and say, ‘Hey, the ebbs and flows of the game make them minor. When things go wrong, that’s OK. The next play, we have the confidence whether it’s on offense, defense, special teams, the next play for guys to believe that we’re going to step up and go make that play and turn adversity into just a minor adversity, not into something major that has cost us four losses on the season.’
“I think there’s a huge aspect to that of the guys expecting to make plays out there on the field and looking at each other and not just expecting themselves but expecting their teammates to make plays. I think we’ve had unbelievable energy at practice this week with our guys. I think their focus has been fantastic this week, and I think part of the preparation is building all of that confidence within each other and expecting great things to happen, expecting each other to make plays while we’re out there on the field.”
While the 2021 Gators might not have much to play for in their final four regular season games, Mullen said that these games are still very important for the program’s confidence and momentum moving forward. They’ve got a bunch of young players who could play key roles on the 2022 team, so it’s important that they end this season with a reason to feel optimistic.
“We’re dealing with young kids,” Mullen said. “We have a lot of young players, and momentum can carry them a long way. Momentum has a lot to do with the confidence in which they play with on the field. It’s really all about Saturday. It’s going to be really important for us to find a way to get a win on Saturday.”