The Gators will face an incredibly tough opponent this week, and it’s not Kentucky.
Sure, the Wildcats are armed with one of the best defenses in the SEC, a powerful running game and homefield advantage, but the real battle will take place on UF’s practice fields this week.
Last week, Mullen talked about the importance of eliminating the mental errors that cost them the game against Alabama. In that game, they committed four penalties on third down, missed a slew of tackles, threw an interception, muffed a kickoff and missed an extra point. And those were just the mistakes that the average fan noticed.
Mullen thinks they did a better job of avoiding self-inflicted wounds against Tennessee, but they still have a bunch of room left for further improvement. They missed a bunch of more tackles, busted a couple of coverages, committed some penalties and missed a few blocks here and there.
Now, as the Gators prepare to take on the Wildcats this week, Mullen wants to see them take another step in the right direction. If they do that, the scoreboard will take care of itself.
“You want to be a great team, you’ve got to play great all the time, and I saw that,” Mullen said. “Certainly saw a decrease in mental errors this week from the week before, even though there’s still plenty of them to go around.”
The mental errors aren’t limited to just the players, either. He admits that he makes mistakes in every game, and he always goes back and evaluates whether he made the correct decisions in certain situations.
“Usually, any time we have a delay-of-game, I put that a lot on me,” he said. “So, we had a delay-of-game on special teams. I think our punt team had a delay-of-game. So, that’s a lot on me. I’ve got to figure out what we’re doing to get the team on the field, make sure the decision’s called, the play’s called, get the offense off, get the punt team on and get the ball punted.
“I’m an aggressive guy, so, sometimes, I’m thinking, ‘Do I really want to go for this in this situation?’, and then think realistically and say, ‘That’d be a really dumb move,’ and, by that time, I took maybe three seconds too long to do that. But I think that’s part of everything with the team is always you self-evaluate. ‘OK, embrace what we do well and continue to build on it, but let’s eliminate mistakes.’”
Mullen said that they addressed mental errors during their team meeting on Monday morning, and he owned up to his mistakes in front of the team.
He believes that the best way to eliminate those handful of critical errors in every game is to publicly acknowledge that they happened and hold each other accountable for improvement.
“The key to our success is just everybody owning up to ‘Hey, when we do things well, let’s call that out and emphasize it and continue to do those things well,’” Mullen said. “‘When we do things poorly or make mistakes, let’s own those and find a way to make sure we’re fixing it, [so that] we don’t do it again.’”