With the Gators sitting at 4-4 and having lost three of their last four games, it’s natural to question how motivated this team is to finish the season as strong as possible. They have nothing to play for except making a bowl game and putting together solid individual highlight reels for NFL teams.
There have been teams across the country in recent years that have mentally checked out and just kind of gone through the motions with seemingly little passion for the game. Some players might be thinking about their NFL futures or considering entering the transfer portal if they’re not satisfied with the way things are going. The 2013 and 2017 Gators let mid-season struggles sink them to unimaginable depths.
Those concerns were amplified by an article on theathletic.com where several anonymous SEC assistant coaches called out the Gators for not playing hard.
Coach Dan Mullen didn’t directly address that article, but he made it clear on Monday that he believes that he’s assembled a roster of highly competitive players who will give their all every time out, including this Saturday at South Carolina.
“I see the frustration,” Mullen said. “I don’t think any of our guys are happy with where we are and where we’re at; I know I’m certainly not. And, as a competitor, there’s two ways to look at it, the woe-is-me factor or, as a competitor, ‘I can’t wait to get on the field and go compete.’ That competitive mindset will pull you through to go compete, and then I’ve got to get things cleaned up to make sure our performance is at a higher level.
“If you don’t want to compete, then you don’t show up. I’m going to be in South Carolina next week, and we’ll be there with a team that’s going to be ready to go compete, not a team that’s like, ‘OK, I guess there’s a game on the schedule, I guess we should get on a plane and drive up there and run out and stand on the sidelines for a couple hours until the game ends.’ That ain’t how it works. I guess I’ll look. If guys don’t want to compete, then we won’t bring them on the trip.”
While Mullen believes that the competitiveness is there, he reiterated that he thinks they need a confidence boost in order to play better. They can’t let one bad play turn into a disastrous couple of minutes like they did against Georgia. A confident team shakes off Anthony Richardson’s fumble by getting a stop on defense and coming out firing on their next drive offensively. They didn’t.
Building that confidence and mental toughness starts in practice.
“There’s a very fragile deal within a game where ‘I expect the ball to bounce my way, I expect to make the play, I expect to win the game, I expect every break to go our way,’” Mullen said. “Then there’s the other ‘I’m looking around for someone else to make the play’ or ‘Oh no, what’s going to happen wrong next to us?’ That’s a fine line. So, you have to, one, change your mindset, but the best way to change your mindset is within your preparation so that you know you have the confidence to be prepared at that moment to go out.”
Tuning out the noise
As expected, the outside criticism of the football program has ramped up even more since the Gators’ blowout loss to Georgia on Saturday. Some fans want just about every assistant coach fired about the season. Others want Mullen fired. Some want athletic director Scott Stricklin fired if he doesn’t get rid of Mullen.
There are many issues within the program right now. Their recruiting consistently ranks near the middle of the SEC. They make several sloppy and undisciplined mistakes in almost every game. You can question whether the defensive scheme or the way that they rotate players at certain positions is putting the players in the best positions to be successful.
When stuff like that happens and the Gators lose games, the coaches get most – if not all – of the blame for it. Mullen understands that, and he’s tried to get his players to focus on the things that they can control and not let the social media chaos negatively affect them.
“That’s part of the job,” he said. “That’s part of this. It’s six inches from a pat on the back and a kick in the rear. In the SEC, you’re either getting one or the other. There’s no in between. There’s no ‘I guess everything’s OK.’ That’s why I say the perception and the reality. The perception is everything’s perfect or everything’s horrendous. Reality, we’re probably more in the middle somewhere, and you’re just trying to figure out how to improve and get better.
“I always tell our guys when it seems to be going good, it’s probably not as good as everyone perceives it to be. There’s probably some issues we need to go fix. When it’s going bad, it’s probably not as bad as it’s going, and we just … have areas we’ve got to improve in.”
Mullen added that he does pay a little bit of attention to what people are saying about him and the program but only so that he can address those things with the players on a more specific basis.
“You forget these guys are 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids, a lot of them,” he said. “So, they’re on social media all the time. They’re out there with their friends. I try to pay a little bit of attention. I don’t pay much attention to it personally. I’m focused on how we’re getting better, but I pay enough [attention] so that I know what our guys will have to deal with, but then we get back to the reality. ‘Hey, here’s things we did well. Here’s things we did poorly. Here’s areas we need to improve in.’ We kind of live in that world to address things.”
Inconsistencies continue to plague Gators
Inconsistency has been one of Mullen’s biggest talking points for several weeks now. All four of their losses can be attributed to different things. They lost to Alabama because of poor tackling early on and special teams mistakes. They lost to Kentucky because of eight false start penalties.
They lost to LSU because they turned it over four times and somehow forgot how to defend a counter play. They lost to Georgia because of poor quarterback play and poor defensive play in sudden-change situations.
There isn’t one area of this team that you can depend on to play well every single time out. As soon as they fix one thing, three more things break.
Even within games, there are inconsistencies. For example, on their first drive of the second quarter against Georgia, they moved the ball 44 yards on seven plays to the UGA 31-yard line. Then the rest of the drive went like this: 11-yard sack, incomplete pass, false start, 13-yard run and incomplete pass on fourth-and-13.
Georgia’s defense is very good, perhaps even historically good, but the Gators stopped themselves on that drive and on several others.
Mullen said that playing more consistently will continue to be emphasized throughout the week.
“We addressed that today,” he said. “The inconsistencies of our performance, but I also see what we pointed out is some of the inconsistencies during practice as well. You see, hey, here’s four plays in a row: good, bad, good, good or good, bad, good, bad, one of those deals. ‘Why is there inconsistency whether it is in effort, performance, execution, assignment? What are the inconsistencies, and how do we make sure we eliminate as many inconsistencies as possible?’”
Mullen not willing to discuss recruiting
Recruiting has been the aspect of the program that has come under the most fire during Mullen’s nearly four years in charge, but that’s especially been the case over the past few days.
Not counting his transition class in 2018, his three recruiting classes at Florida have ranked ninth, ninth and 12th nationally in the 247Sports composite rankings. They’ve finished no higher than fifth in the SEC each year. The 2022 class has lost two of its three highest-ranked members over the past couple of weeks and currently sits at 22nd nationally and ninth in the conference.
Meanwhile, Georgia and Alabama perennially rank within the top-3 nationally. Playing with inferior players, at least on paper, forces the Gators to fight an uphill battle to beat those teams. It takes a combination of elite game-planning and near flawless execution for the Gators to beat them. Their substandard recruiting also allows teams like Kentucky to pull off the occasional upset if they don’t play well on a given day.
So, Mullen was asked if they need to adopt a new recruiting approach to get better results. His answer hasn’t been received well by fans.
“We’re in the season right now,” he said. “We’ll do recruiting after the season. When it gets to recruiting time, we can talk about recruiting.”
UF going dark
Mullen’s Zoom press conference was cut short after about 12 minutes despite multiple media members being in the queue to ask questions. Shortly afterwards, the media received an email stating that defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and players will not be made available to the media at all this week.
Grantham usually speaks on Monday night after practice, while players are available following Mullen on Monday afternoon, after Grantham on Monday evening and after practice on Tuesday.
The only remaining media availability prior to the South Carolina game is Mullen’s weekly appearance on the SEC Teleconference on Wednesday.
No explanation was provided for the truncated media schedule.