Publisher’s Note: Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Gator Country. Thank you for supporting our Gator family. : ). -Ray
By Will Miles
Missouri loss
Based on expected points added, Florida should have won this game against Missouri 73% of the time. They outgained the Tigers and the Florida defense played better than the Mizzou defense.
But once again, special team mishaps and red zone inefficiencies doomed the Gators. Combined with an inexplicably conservative game plan by Dan Mullen and you were left with Missouri being the aggressor in overtime after Florida chose not to even try with more than a minute left in the fourth quarter.
Florida now sits at 5-6, and while all of the underlying statistics indicate they are a better team than that, the reality is that we now have enough evidence that they’ll shoot themselves in the foot at the most inopportune time that we pretty much expect it.
But the bigger issue is that there was more than one die-hard fan who reached out to me and said they were going to do something else during the second half. It’s not that the game wasn’t close. It’s that you can only watch those mistakes pile up for so many games before disappointment turns into apathy.
I watched the second half live, but having watched it live, I understand their view point.
Dan Mullen fired
The Missouri loss brought on the inevitable: the end of the Dan Mullen era at Florida.
Mullen’s firing finished a wild spiral that went from him barely losing to Alabama in the third game of the year to getting trolled by Eli Drinkwitz after a loss to Missouri. The Alabama game may have been the first loss this season, but it was the losses to Kentucky, LSU, South Carolina and Missouri that forced the change.
Gators fans are not a patient bunch, and deservedly so. The reality is that Mullen knew that when he took the job and the proceeded to get whipped on the recruiting trail repeatedly by SEC rivals. It meant that any hope that he was the man for the job waned the minute he wasn’t able to easily dispatch opponents who should have been overmatched.
The job of a head coach isn’t just to win games. It’s to cast a vision that everyone – from the AD to the players to the fans – can buy into. Mullen never seemed to get that, which meant that a large portion of the fan base couldn’t buy-in, even if they wanted to.
And after the loss to South Carolina, there wasn’t anything left to buy into anyway.
PR and Dan Mullen
Mullen would still be the head coach had he beaten the lesser programs in the SEC East this season, but I still don’t think that’s what did him in. Instead, I think it really boiled down to his inability to read the room.
Whether that was dressing up like Darth Vader after nearly instigating a brawl against Missouri, making light of COVID-19 restrictions or mailing in the Cotton Bowl before it was ever played, Mullen made some missteps in 2020. Still, interviews this offseason indicated that he realized those missteps and was working on improving.
But the PR gaffes kept coming this year. Whether it was talking about competing repeatedly and then watching his team come out completely flat against South Carolina or answering a softball question about recruiting so poorly that his answer wound up a talking point for Paul Finebaum, Mullen was his own worst enemy.
Those who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt after last year stopped trying. And those who believed he wasn’t the right man for the job were able to use his own quotes to support their views.
More of who you are
I’ve been asked repeatedly why Mullen didn’t look like he was energized for the Florida job the same way that he was in 2018. The question is, what changed?
But I don’t think much changed at all. If you read Buddy Martin’s autobiography of Urban Meyer’s Florida tenure, Meyer himself describes Mullen as awkward, going so far as saying they had to keep him away from Tim Tebow for fear that Mullen would drive him away from the Gators to Alabama. Meyer also said that Mullen was great at building relationships once the QBs got to the school.
You might have heard the phrase “money doesn’t change you, it just makes you more of who you are.” It’s meant to warn that if you’re waiting to become wealthy to be a good person, that won’t happen. If you were a bad person when you were poor, you’ll be a bad person when you’re rich. If you were a great person when you were poor, you’ll be a great person when you’re rich.
I think the same can be said for the crucible that is the Florida job. If you’re not good at PR and if you’re prone to saying things people take the wrong way, that’s only going to get accentuated at Florida. The same might be said for someone who has a big, warm personality (Steve Spurrier), where his barbs got accentuated as well.
Of course, it also helped that Spurrier won a ton.
Coaching Search
There are a lot of rumors out there at this point about who the new coach will be. I know that fans want a quick answer, but I think they should preach patience because of what I outlined above.
I believe in analytics. I think they are great tools for understanding whether someone has the tools to excel as a college football head coach. But jobs like Florida are unique, and I think personality fit might be more important than X’s and O’s or even recruiting.
Yes, the new coach needs to recruit. Yes, he needs to be able to draw up plays and put his players in the best position to excel. But he also needs to be able to deal with the boosters, media, fans and opposition. And he needs to be confident enough in himself that when those forces come down on him that he’s still able to do what is best for the program.
Jim McElwain and now Dan Mullen were not able to do that. The noise in the system got loud because they were losing, but also because they hadn’t built up enough good will to sustain them through a down year. The next coach would be wise to spend a lot of time at Gator Clubs to make sure they buy-in to his vision for the program.
But only if it doesn’t impact recruiting.
Vision Casting
So what should the vision for the new coach be?
I think it should be “no more excuses.” For years now, I’ve heard about how the UAA has held back the Florida program by not spending enough on recruiting and not having matching facilities to Florida’s rivals. While I don’t think things like facilities have as big of a recruiting impact as others, I can’t argue that Florida has been behind.
But this new coach can negotiate a recruiting budget. He’s going to have a new state-of-the-art football-only facility. And he has the most hungry fan base in college football just waiting for him to turn things around.
There aren’t any more excuses. If this next guy can’t recruit, it’s on him. If he can’t develop players, that’s on him too. Any vision that moves responsibility away from the head coach at this point just means he isn’t the right guy for the job.
Whoever gets the job will probably come in talking about process and doing things the right way. He’ll talk about restoring Florida to championship form. He’ll talk about getting buy-in from his new players and bringing in difference makers through recruiting and the transfer portal.
But the best thing he can do to win over Florida fans early on is make it clear: he’s not going to make any excuses. Win or lose, it’s on him.
Anthony Richardson….finally
It looks like we’re going to get the full Anthony Richardson experience against Florida State this weekend. If you were apathetic about this game, Richardson’s skills being on display should change that.
Florida State isn’t a very good team (5-6), but neither is Florida. But Florida (at least on offense) has been a much better team when Richardson has been on the field. He’s been much more explosive than Emory Jones and while he has turned the ball over some, it hasn’t been any more than Jones has.
I’ve detailed multiple times how Florida’s offense has excelled when the QB run game has been efficient. What I mean by efficient is that the QB yards per rush is up around 7-8. That’s where it has been when Florida has won this year. When the Gators have lost, it’s been under 5, including the 2.6 yards per attempt average by Emory Jones last week against Missouri.
Jones has been given multiple games to turn things around. He excelled against Samford but has been pedestrian against Missouri, South Carolina, Georgia and LSU. Yes, Richardson struggled against the Bulldogs, but he was also excellent against South Carolina, FAU and USF.
The reality is that while Emory Jones is an okay-to-good QB, Anthony Richardson has the potential to be elite. The more snaps he gets now, the better we’ll know whether he can turn into that players in 2022. And while Mullen playing Jones to save his job made a lot of sense, at this point, there’s nothing on the line for Greg Knox except the ability to coach in a bowl game.
Richardson gives him the best shot to get that done.
Hope from Hopper
Ty’Ron Hopper was an elite recruit in the 2019 recruiting class, but Florida just hasn’t gotten much out of him the past two seasons. That changed against Missouri, as Hopper got a ton of action and delivered on the promise that his recruiting ranking promised.
That’s a big deal as Florida goes into this game against Florida State, as the Seminoles’ Jordan Travis is probably the first true dual-threat QB that the Gators have faced this season. Solid linebacker play is going to be critical to shutting down what FSU wants to do.
Hopper isn’t the only linebacker who played well against Missouri. While he only had two tackles, Mohamoud Diabate made a critical tackle for loss after the poor punt by Jeremy Crawshaw and was instrumental in doing the dirty work, taking on offensive linemen in the hole aggressively to free up Hopper to make the tackle.
That game was the first time all year that I felt that Florida defenders were sacrificing their own stats to help their teammates. And if you want to know why the defense looked better – aside from Missouri not being all that good – that’s a big reason why.
Florida’s defense took a big step forward against Mizzou. Whether it – and it’s linebackers – can take another step forward against FSU is going to go a long way towards determining whether Florida can get bowl eligible.
Something to play for
I’ve been perplexed all season as Dan Mullen has fielded questions from the media about motivating his players. I get where the question is coming from: your team expected to play for the SEC Championship and now is playing for bowl eligibility. Isn’t it natural there would be a let down?
But I just don’t think that’s how things work. First and foremost, these players have a goal of playing in the NFL. There was that article that came out in the Athletic a few weeks ago calling them soft. They then went out and tried to show it against Samford. At that point, not one of them was going to be on a draft board, even Kaiir Elam.
So if you want to motivate the players, it seems pretty simple to me. Tell them that they’re costing themselves money. Maybe you won’t win the SEC Championship, but you sure can win over NFL scouts who will blame Todd Grantham for not utilizing you if you can show yourself to be better in the last few games of the year.
I get it. Fans might have dialed back their level of interest due to the teams’ performance, and there isn’t a lot for them to watch when it comes to 2021. But in the big picture for these players, there is still a lot more to play for.
Rivalry Games
As if NFL status weren’t enough to play for, this game – in particular – shouldn’t be hard to get up for.
It’s senior day and it’s Florida State. Just about all of the ‘Noles played against just about all of the Gators in high school. These guys came to this school because they wanted to play in this game.
Yes, both teams are 5-6, but being able to ruin your rivals’ bowl chances – and having that on the line – is actually an interesting subplot after the Seminoles’ win last week and the Gators loss to Missouri.
A lot of the rivalries that are out there are manufactured. Eli Drinkwitz has to go buy Walmart light sabers to get his team excited about Florida. Even the game against Georgia has limited overlap when it comes to players going against each other in high school.
But the Florida/Florida State rivalry has players who have played on the same teams and have played against each other since Pop Warner. It has players whose families have been watching each other for years. These guys are about to go home for Christmas and will have to face their communities whether they get a win or a loss.
I can’t imagine something more motivating than that.