By Will Miles
Samford
Florida scored 70 points against Samford. That part was expected. The part that wasn’t expected was needing almost all of those 70 points to win the game.
The Gators avoided an embarrassing loss, but they didn’t avoid embarrassment as they beat Samford 70-52. Even Nick Saban brought up Florida in his post-game presser as an example of someone struggling with an FCS team in relation to his team’s 59-3 victory. If South Carolina was rock bottom, this was really close to going a step lower.
Florida was down 42-28 with just over three minutes left in the first half, and it looked like the end of the Dan Mullen era was going to happen in about 33 minutes. But the team was able to turn things around and outscore the Bulldogs 42-10 from then on, preserving a win and allowing Mullen to live another day.
Everyone knows this game was unacceptable. It’s unacceptable when you give up 50 points to an SEC team, but it’s embarrassing when you give up 52 points to an FCS team. But I am encouraged that the team was able to right the ship. In most of the Gators losses this year, things have gone wrong and have snowballed out of control. It happened in the first half against Alabama, the second half against LSU and right before halftime against Georgia and South Carolina.
This time, the Gators were able to right the ship. Yes, it was against Samford. Yes, it might be a mirage because of the opponent. But for once this year, the Gators got a win in a game where a bunch of stuff went wrong. Maybe it’s a baby step, or maybe it’s the beginning of the end for Mullen.
But at least it was a win.
Process
I’m a big believer in process over results. The reason is that sometimes results are misleading.
For example, Florida is 0-3 in one-score games this season. Turn those results around and the team’s record would be a lot more palatable. It also might disguise some of the issues that we’ve seen emerge over the past couple of games as well, reinforcing my point that results can be misleading.
That’s really the main issue I have with both the program and the coaching staff moving forward: are they following the right process. I think you could argue that the process of keeping John Hevesy and Todd Grantham after last season and after the LSU game makes jettisoning them after the South Carolina game indicative of a bad process.
I think you can make the case that having Anthony Richardson play in spells throughout the season, only to start him against the best defense in the country is indicative of bad process. That’s especially true after Richardson has gone back to the bench after the Georgia loss (some of that due to injury) and now won’t play even though he’s 100 percent.
Preparing for 2022 and beyond would be indicative of a good process, but that doesn’t look like what’s happening.
Process with the final two games
Neil Blackmon over at Saturday Down South indicated that the decision of whether to keep Mullen for next season hinges on the results in the next two games against Missouri and FSU. That’s indicative of a bad process.
I get people who believe Mullen isn’t the right guy. His recruiting has been sub-standard for Florida. The bottom has fallen out now that his players are in place. And he was slow on the trigger to remove a defensive coordinator who everyone else knew needed to go.
I also get people who believe Mullen deserves another year. He had Florida on the cusp of greatness in 2020 and the defense was the thing holding the team back. He has a chance at a special QB in Richardson and with an elite defensive coordinator may be able to match up a great offense and good or great defense.
What I don’t get is anyone who thinks they’re going to learn a whole lot about the program as a whole by the results against Missouri or Florida State.
If Florida goes 2-0 and you thought Mullen should go prior to those games, does that change any of the justifications above? Conversely, if Florida goes 0-2 and you though Mullen should get another year, does that change any of those justifications above?
The point is that the frustration with Mullen – and the Florida program – stems from fans who see a process in place that does not match with previous processes that have delivered consistent results. You can change the coach or the coordinator or the QB, but if you don’t have a solid process, consistency is going to be hard to come by.
Process with defensive coordinator search
That leads me to the process in selecting a defensive coordinator.
I’ve seen a lot of people suggest that Mullen should focus on a young coach who can recruit because that is a deficiency. In a place with a healthy process in place, that would absolutely be true.
But if Mullen is coaching for his job in 2022, he’d be a fool to hire someone unknown on the defensive side of the ball just because they’re an elite recruiter. He won’t be around to see the fruits of that recruiting if the coordinator doesn’t quickly turn around the defense.
This is the problem with having Mullen coach for his job in the last two games of this year or into next year. You change his incentive structure to value immediate return far more than the long-term health of the program.
That means you shouldn’t be surprised with guys like Kevin Steele or Gene Chizik are considered. These are coordinators who have experience and should be able to provide known results as opposed to finding some young defensive assistant who is an unknown.
I don’t like that decision-making process. I think it is flawed and ends up with the program constantly chasing its tail to catch up in other areas as recruiting falls behind, but I completely understand that it will be the decision-making process if Mullen is given 2022.
Process with recruiting
This is perhaps the sorest subject with both the Gators fan base and Dan Mullen himself. After all, he started a fire storm when he didn’t want to answer a question about recruiting after the loss to Georgia.
But if we look at the processes with recruiting, the cracks have been there for a while. My colleague Bill Sikes wrote an article at Read and Reaction in 2018 talking about recruiting, bump classes, and specifically the recruitment of Christopher Steele.
The issue with recruiting Steele wasn’t that he wasn’t an elite prospect. He was. It was that California prospects have rarely worked out at Florida and that there is an opportunity cost with chasing a recruit on the west coast when you could be focusing your energy closer to home.
It’s indicative of the poor process that Steele left and went back to USC, but even had he stayed at Florida, I would be saying the exact same thing. When you focus on the wrong things, eventually, the results catch up with you. Had Florida focused the time and energy they spent on Steele on building relationships with high school coaches in Jacksonville and Lakeland, would they be having an easier time recruiting at home?
The fact that Alabama, Georgia, Clemson and others are coming into the state and raiding it of top talent, and that Miami and Florida State are down right now, suggests that this isn’t just an issue with an individual recruit or staff member. Instead, it suggests that the process being followed is flawed.
Process with dealing with the media
Perhaps nowhere is the process more flawed with the Florida program right now than in dealing with the media.
Dan Mullen marches to the beat of his own drummer. I mean, he’s the only coach I’ve ever seen who showed up at a post-game press conference wearing a Halloween costume. His “pack the Swamp” comments and his comments following the Oklahoma game last year certainly rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. The answer to a recruiting question turned into national fodder earlier this year.
It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to have him interface with public relations people to put a better face on the organization. As I mentioned, fans are patient if they understand your decision-making process. You can’t just say you don’t trust recruiting rankings and then go 5-5. You can’t just say Anthony Richardson doesn’t do things pre-snap that Emory Jones does when Jones is throwing two interceptions per game.
The reality is that “coach speak” is a thing because it is useful. It is the process of telling fans (and the media) what they want to hear, whether it’s the truth or not. It’s the way that coaches control narratives instead of letting narratives control them.
If 2021 has proven anything to us, it’s that Florida hasn’t figured out how to prevent narratives from getting out of control.
Process with developing leaders
Who is the leader of this team?
When Florida lost to Ole Miss in 2008, it was clear that Tim Tebow was a leader and was willing to take responsibility for a loss. In 2017, when Florida was having an absolutely horrible year, a young David Reese stepped into the void to talk about accountability and how to turn things around.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the 2008 team went on to win the title and that Reese was a stalwart for the defense in 2018 and 2019. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that the defense fell apart once Reese was no longer in the fold.
Every team needs leaders. Those are the guys who pick others up when they make mistakes, kick others in the butt when they need to pick things up, and who ensure that when things go bad that things don’t get out of control.
If we have learned anything from the pre-halftime collapses for the Gators against Georgia and South Carolina is that leadership has been lacking, because you wouldn’t be able to have those sorts of collapses if you had people there to help stem the tide.
Whether that’s a process thing or not, I’m not sure. But given the allegations about how toxic the program was under Grantham, it’s not all that far-fetched to think that perhaps his personality – or others – was preventing that player leadership from growing.
Leadership in the locker room
That’s perhaps the silver lining that I take out of the Samford game. The team went into halftime and it sounds like – if you listen to Dameon Pierce and Mohamoud Diabate – that the players started to hold each other responsible for turning things around.
Again, we won’t know anything until Florida plays tougher opponents because the Gators came out in the second half and dominated Samford. The question is whether that is more because it was Samford or if something actually started to switch on in the locker room.
Todd Grantham seems like an overwhelming personality. His willingness to run the defense with little oversight from Mullen indicates that personality, as does some of the antics that ticked off Gators fans when he was the DC at Georgia.
You have to wonder whether him missing is going to allow some natural leaders to step forward. Is it possible that his large personality kept players from speaking up or from holding each other accountable? I think that’s definitely the case. We’ve all worked in a job where we held out speaking up because we thought I was our supervisor’s job to have the confrontation and not us.
But losing to Samford might have created conditions to make that change. The embarrassment of losing to an FCS team is significant enough that perhaps players who normally would have stayed quiet finally spoke up. And perhaps those who were resistant to listen to Grantham were willing to listen to their teammates.
We won’t know until this week.
Emory Jones’ mom
It came out on Twitter this week (from his Dad) that Emory Jones’ mom has been hesitant to come to games because of things being said about her son.
Whatever you think of Jones’ play on the field, it should go without saying that his mom should be able to come to games without hearing filth about her son from his own fans. I remember a few years ago sitting in the stands behind Freddie Swain’s family and thinking that I hoped people watched what they said because his family would hear.
I’m not sure how we got to this place, where it’s okay to spout nonsense in the direction of sports figures simply because they aren’t in a position to fight back. I get that Twitter allows you to be anonymous and that you paid good money for those tickets to watch the Gators. But to say something demeaning to the point where it makes someone’s family want to go away isn’t just embarrassing for the program. It’s embarrassing for you.
I try – very hard – to only tweet or write things that I would say to someone in person directly to their face. I’m sure I fail sometimes, and to be honest, if a player or coach wanted to call me on it and I was wrong for what I said, I’d apologize. But more than that, I’d feel terrible about the mistake.
At some point, you have to look at yourself in the mirror. If you’re someone who’s said something, in public, awful about any college football player, that says a lot about you. It says that you’re only interested in what other people can give you rather than being interested in other people.
And I suspect that it also says you’re a coward, because if that player was anywhere around you – and didn’t have to pay consequences for confronting you – that you’d keep your mouth shut.
What to watch for against Missouri?
Missouri and Florida are both 5-5. They’re both in the top-25 when it comes to running the ball. But Missouri has a much different approach to running the ball than Florida does.
Tyler Badie has 200 attempts for 1247 yards (6/2 yards per rush). Nobody else on the team has more than 23 carries.
Conversely, Florida’s leading rusher is Emory Jones (111 carries, 5.7 yards per rush) and Florida has five ball carriers with more than 23 carries (Jones, Malik Davis, Dameon Pierce, Nay’Quan Wright and Anthony Richardson).
The QB run game has been key for Florida, with all of its wins correlating pretty heavily to the ability of either Jones or Richardson to run the ball, not just for yards, but efficiently as well. The same can be said for Badie as well, as he has totals of 61, 72, 41, 68 and 41 yards in the Tigers’ losses, but totals of 203, 81, 217, 254 and 209 in their wins.
Seems pretty easy, doesn’t it? Stop Badie and stop Missouri. Stop Jones/Richardson and stop the Gators. That’s what you’ll want to look for on Saturday.