By Will Miles
13 Points
Never in my wildest dreams did I think a Dan Mullen coached team was going to lose because of its offense. I certainly didn’t believe that when Todd Grantham was the defensive coordinator.
But here we are. Grantham’s defense only really gave up 7 points considering that Kentucky turned the Emory Jones interception into a touchdown and then returned a blocked field goal for a touchdown as well. Even with those two issues, if you’d have told me that Kentucky only scored 20 points, I would have said Florida won the game (I picked them 28-24).
For really the first time since 2018 (or maybe Miami in 2019), a Florida offense didn’t pull its weight. That was at least understandable in 2018, as Feleipe Franks was not Dan Mullen’s hand-picked QB and the offense had been so bad in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
But after two years of explosive offense where the team opened things up and was able to convert, even on third-and-long, this is something different.
Yes, there were extenuating circumstances, but the reality is that the game plan was really poor. Kentucky played a 5-man front most of the night and Florida never adjusted, even when drive after drive stalled.
Florida had multiple drives stall in Kentucky territory. When Kentucky had the ball in Florida territory (rarely), they made the Gators pay. That is a big reason Florida is licking its wounds this week.
Special Teams
Dan Mullen may have learned a lot from Urban Meyer when he was his offensive coordinator, but he clearly wasn’t paying attention to Meyer’s focus on special teams.
This is now the second game this year where a special teams gaffe has cost the Gators dearly. The extra point against Alabama was bad enough, but to have a field goal blocked and returned for a touchdown was a huge momentum changer given the struggles of the Gators offense.
These sorts of mistakes would be at least understandable if Mullen were taking risks on special teams, but that is not the case. Outside of Kadarius Toney’s punt return against Kentucky last year, where is Florida gaining an edge in that portion of the game? Instead, it feels like the Gators are always behind the eight-ball, either fair catching punts or allowing them to drop and roll.
There are no game-changing plays from Brandon James. More than the game-changing plays, there are no shanked punts because the punter is trying to keep the ball away from him. There is no fear that Florida is coming after the kick. At one point early in the first quarter, Kentucky punter Colin Goodfellow just stood back there as Florida sat in its base defense, waiting for his gunners to make their way down the field.
Florida is a pretty good team. But they’re not good enough to completely ignore one portion of the game and never gain an edge there. And they’re certainly not good enough to lose the edge there. They lost it clearly against Kentucky, and that’s yet another reason why Florida is licking its wounds this week.
Penalties
What does it take to get pulled from a game? Would nine false starts have done it?
That’s a question I think needs to be answered because if you’re not going to change the snap count, and if you’re going to insist that you’ve worked in the noise all week and that the penalties were really the killer for the offense, then there have to be consequences for the penalties.
The false starts were terrible. Not only that, but the timing (many on third or fourth-and-short) were terrible as well. But unlike last season where Kyle Trask could bail Florida out on third-and-long, Emory Jones just doesn’t seem to have that ability.
The result is that after working really hard to get into third-and-short, Florida was often forced to punt instead.
You’re going to have penalties from time-to-time. But eight false starts is ridiculous. We’d rightly be ridiculing rival coaches if they allowed that to happen on their watch, and I think it’s right to ridicule Mullen here as well.
Your offensive line’s job is to block, but they can only do that if they’re not jumping before the snap. And running back Malik Davis had two false starts on his own, a cardinal sin for a running back. No game plan matters if you can’t execute the basics.
And the Gators didn’t execute those basics in any consistent way Saturday night.
Conservative Dan
Dan Mullen was criticized (and rightly so) for not using his timeouts before the half and trying to drive the ball down the field. I understand that he wanted to be conservative, and that’s his right as the head coach. I disagree, but I’m actually okay with the decision (even though his explanation leaves something to be desired).
Where his conservatism makes zero sense was in other areas of the game. On the opening drive, for example, Emory Jones ran on third-and-medium to set up a fourth-and-2 from the Kentucky 42-yard line. Every analytics tool at our disposal says this is an obvious place where you go for it.
You gain 22 yards by punting if you get a touchback. You have an elite running game. You have a running QB who opens things up even if a play breaks down. Even if you had Skyler Morhinweg back there, the right play is to go for it on fourth down because of the math. Mullen punted, and in doing so, left potential points on the field.
I mean, how much different does that game look if Florida converts, puts the ball in the end zone and is up 14-0 after its second drive. There would have been no more false starts because the crowd would’ve been silent. As it was, Florida gained nothing because after stopping Kentucky, they returned the punt right back to where they had been on fourth down, but a penalty moved them back to their own 25.
This is the lesson that I hope is learned from this one. The math is there for a reason. No, you don’t go for it there if you’re up 14 late in the fourth quarter. But in a tie game, early in the first quarter, to not go for it isn’t just a bad decision, it’s an indefensible one.
Mullen went into the game planning to be conservative. But he was so conservative that he cost his team points. We can point to individual players or individual plays that cost Florida this game, but none cost them more than Dan Mullen’s decision to punt on the opening drive.
Going Deep
Mullen was questioned this week about Emory Jones’ lack of deep passes. This is a completely legitimate question as less than 9% of his throws were 20+ yards coming into the game and he didn’t take a bunch of them against the Wildcats.
Mullen’s answer was that Kentucky was in a cover-1 look and was backing up so deep shots didn’t make a lot of sense. No use forcing the ball, right?
I’d be okay with that if they had exploited that in other ways. If a defense is dropping like Mullen claims Kentucky was, there are other ways to exploit it. The biggest is by running pick/rub routes and throwing to the running back out of the backfield.
The wheel routes last season against Georgia were a direct response to the Bulldogs dropping into coverage. Multiple times a Florida wide receiver picked the linebacker responsible for the back, allowing the back to go downfield. When Georgia tried to adjust, Florida ran the same action, but this time with the tight end playing the role of the running back.
Georgia had no idea what hit them, and Florida fans have been taunting Georgia fans with wheel route references all offseason.
The point is that there are ways to force the defense out of the coverage that Mullen says they were playing to open up the deep shots. But that’s not what’s really going on here. There were deep shots there, but for whatever reason, those weren’t taken.
Is that Emory Jones’ fault? I suspect that it is. But it is also the fault of the coaches, who need to make him more comfortable taking those shots. Cover-1 isn’t the reason.
Defense pulls its weight
I’ve been very critical of Todd Grantham, but his defense played great Saturday night.
The Gators defense surrendered 87 yards through the air, held Chris Rodriguez to under 100 yards and gave Florida the chance to break Kentucky when they intercepted an overthrown ball early in the third quarter.
The blocked field goal wasn’t their fault. Perhaps you would have liked to see them hold Kentucky to a field goal after Emory Jones’ interception in the fourth quarter, but they had just stuffed Rodriguez on a fourth down on the previous drive so it’s not like they weren’t doing their job.
That was not an elite Kentucky offense they faced on Saturday night. But this isn’t the same Florida defense we saw last year either. This one is more physical and is starting to get better play from its defensive backs.
Yes, they are still susceptible to big plays. And no, I don’t trust them if you put them on the field against Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss. But they did enough to win Saturday night and neither the offense or the special teams executed well enough to come through for them.
That’s a shame considering all the heat they took in 2020.
Postgame Pressers
To me, the most disappointing part of the loss to Kentucky wasn’t the actual loss, but the way in which the loss was handled.
Dan Mullen scoffed at the idea that he’d been outcoached (even though he was) and essentially had to be pulled from his postgame press conference early by his own PR people. He wasn’t any better on Monday, starting down reporters who asked him legitimate questions about how he could lose to Kentucky.
You can act like that when you have Super Bowls or National Championships. Nick Saban is famously surly at times, but that guy is probably the best to ever do it at the college level. Going 10-3 at a pressure cooker like Florida doesn’t give you that sort of leeway.
And you may bristle at questions about being outcoached, but it really isn’t up for debate. Mark Stoops’ offense did next to nothing and he was able to parlay a big play by Wan’Dale Robinson and a special teams advantage into a win. He also took away Florida’s running game with a 5-man front and didn’t really have to adjust from there.
The Florida job is about more than winning. It is about embracing the expectations and then taking responsibility for the shortcomings when they arise. And they will, because even Urban Meyer didn’t win every year.
Fans wanted to hear Mullen talk about how confident he was in his players, how they’re going to use this loss to get better and how he knows they’re not where they need to be but they’re going to get there. Instead, they got a surly coach with defensive replies to every question, and no concrete answers to what is going to change moving forward.
Mullen vs. Stoops
Everybody agrees that Mark Stoops has done a tremendous job at Kentucky. But how good of a job is it really?
Well, if we assume that Louisiana-Monroe, South Carolina and Florida will finish the year above .500, his record against teams with .500 or better records since 2018 will be 14-11. Dan Mullen’s record against .500 or better teams since he arrived at Florida in 2018? 14-11.
That’s skewed a little bit, as Florida has played more teams (12) with a .700 winning percentage or higher than Kentucky (6), but the fact remains that the Wildcats’ program is on-par with the Gators over the course of the last four seasons. That means that the 2-2 record that Mullen has against Stoops in his time in Gainesville is reflective of reality.
I don’t really know what to make of that. Florida should be way better than Kentucky. It shouldn’t be close, especially considering that Kentucky has had a revolving door at QB and Florida has had a near-Heisman winner and now has a player in his fourth year in the program behind center.
But as Bill Parcells said, you are what your record says you are and those are the numbers. Perhaps there are legitimate reasons for it, but I’m not sure most Florida fans are going to be too happy with just being equivalent to Kentucky.
Does anyone actually care about Vandy?
This week is so anticlimactic.
Prior to the Kentucky loss, we would have at least been able to focus in on whether Florida was able to replicate the domination that Georgia had against the Commodores. But now, does it really matter?
We’re not comparing ourselves to Georgia any more. Heck, we’d need a separate SEC loss for the Bulldogs, a win over Georgia and three SEC losses from Kentucky just to win the SEC East. At this point, whether it’s a narrow win or convincing win over Vandy is really immaterial.
All that being said, I’ll still be watching. I’ll be watching to see whether Emory Jones starts to take some deeper shots down the field. I’ll be watching to see whether Anthony Richardson starts to get some real playing time. I’ll be watching to see whether Dan Mullen comes out with an aggressive game plan or whether he still plays things close to the vest.
Vanderbilt is a good healing week. It’s homecoming. Everybody is coming back to campus. And we all get to lick our wounds from both the Alabama and Kentucky losses. The good news is that many of the key players on this team will be back next year. So let’s start building towards those goals with a win over the Commodores.
What to watch for the rest of the season
When’s the last time you heard about relentless effort?
When Dan Mullen came to Gainesville, his talking points were restoring the Gator Standard and Relentless Effort. That 2018 team was definitively flawed, but they restored the standard with a 10-3 year and a big win over Michigan, and – considering Feleipe Franks was shushing his own fans – could not be accused of lacking in the effort department.
Four years later and I haven’t heard that phrase used much recently, and there are definitely places I want to hear it used. Perhaps we could use some relentless effort on special teams. Perhaps we could use some relentless effort when it comes to clock management. Perhaps we could use some relentless effort when it comes to player evaluation.
Whenever you lose to a team like Kentucky – a good but not great team – there are going to be questions. The answers that we got coming out of the game against the Wildcats is that the Gators are not a great team.
But they can still be a team that focuses on relentless effort. Let’s see if they can do that the rest of the way.