By Will Miles
Arik Gilbert
With all the malaise around high school recruiting, it’s be criminal of me not to mention the commitment of 5-star transfer tight end Arik Gilbert.
Look, I’m not sure anybody can be as good as Kyle Pitts. But Gilbert is a big, fast tight end who was rated significantly higher than Pitts coming out of high school. While Pitts only had three catches as a true freshman, Gilbert had 35 (in 8 games). And that was with Myles Brennan and T.J. Finley as his quarterback.
He struggles with blocking (as many young tight ends do), but Mullen showed he could scheme around that during Pitts sophomore year. Also, I don’t think it should be discounted the work that tight ends coach Tim Brewster put in with Pitts to make him a better blocker in 2020 than he was in 2019.
Gilbert is an NFL talent. You don’t often get the opportunity to pick one of those guys up via transfer. The fact that Mullen was able to do so is a big get for the Gators.
Using the Transfer Portal
Mullen has clearly put his eggs in the transfer portal basket.
It started with Trevon Grimes and Van Jefferson. It continued with Jonathan Greenard and Adam Schuler. Last year, we saw Brenton Cox contribute heavily. And this year, we should see contributions from Lorenzo Lingard, Demarkcus Bowman, Daquan Newkirk, Antonio Shelton and Gilbert.
Shelton and Newkirk clearly plug a hole at defensive tackle. Bowman and Lingard should bring some explosiveness to the running game. Gilbert should be able to fill in with an admirable Pitts impersonation.
Florida has been able to do this because it did not sign a full complement of players in the 2018 or 2019 classes. That enables them to “count back” players from future classes to those classes, which is why they’re able to bring in more than the 25 players most schools typically bring in every year.
But Florida has been so transfer happy the past two seasons that the ability to count back to previous classes is about up. It will be interesting to see whether the Gators only recruit 21 or 22 players moving forward to leave spots available for transfers or whether they go strictly after high school players from now on. Given the success in the transfer portal thus far, I suspect it will be the former.
It’s a big bet though. You only get a transfer for one or two years, as opposed to three or four years for a high school recruit. That means you have to hit because that player uses one of those 25 slots regardless of how long he stays.
It’s a bet Mullen has had to make to plug holes, but chasing players in the transfer portal is a risky strategy. We’ll see if it pays off.
National Signing Day
National signing day used to be a holiday for college football fans.
I can still remember back in 2006, hitting refresh on my computer in my lab while in graduate school, checking in to make sure that Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin’s letters of intent were faxed into the football office.
The same thing happened in 2015 when Jim McElwain managed to snag both Martez Ivey and CeCe Jefferson (both 5-star recruits) on signing day, salvaging what to that point was a really underwhelming recruiting class.
Obviously, those two staffs and recruiting classes went in very different directions, but the anticipation of signing day is the memory that I have. That doesn’t exist anymore.
I get that the NCAA wanted to give players who wanted to commit the ability to do so earlier. The early signing day is probably a good thing for players (though you could question that given the proliferation of the transfer portal), but it has had some unwanted side effects.
The main one is that early signing day is now the day we need to pay attention to as classes are pretty set at this point. Florida may rise or fall a spot or two, but the narrative is set. There aren’t four 5-star guys that Florida could potentially snag during signing day.
Maybe that’s better for the players. But it’s not better for the fans.
2021 Recruiting Class
So Florida’s signing class is set. I’ll dispense with the pleasantries at this point: it isn’t good enough.
In Urban Meyer’s 2006-2008 classes, the Gators snagged 23 players rated in the top-25 of the state of Florida. Mullen has snagged 10.
Meyer’s fourth year class had 10 players ranked in the top-100 nationally. Mullen has three.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t some really good players in this class. 5-star cornerback Jason Marshall looks like he’s going to be able to compete for a starting spot right away. Safety Corey Collier was rated a 5-star recruit until he got too big to play corner and is still learning safety.
But recruiting is about percentages. Top-30 players make it to the NFL over 50% of the time. That drops off precipitously to players outside the top-100. Alabama had All-SEC players all over the field in 2020, and the lion’s share of those players were top-100 recruits.
Yes, Florida was able to (sorta) hang with the Tide in the SEC Championship. But notice how the Tide didn’t have any of those close calls like Florida did against Texas A&M or LSU. Recruiting isn’t just for when you’re playing the big boys. Sometimes it’s for when you need to put an inferior team away.
What ails recruiting?
So what is the reason that Florida hasn’t been able to recruit at the top level of college football like it did under Urban Meyer (and despite some mythmaking, Steve Spurrier)?
There are lots of reasons that fans give for the dearth of success. There are definitely external factors that did not exist for Meyer back in 2005. Nick Saban had not yet built his juggernaut of a program in Tuscaloosa. Tommy Bowden was still winning eight or nine games at Clemson. And Kirby Smart was coaching running backs for Mark Richt at Georgia.
Add to that the declines of Florida State in Bobby Bowden’s final years and Miami being run into the ground by Larry Coker, and perhaps the answer is that not only was Meyer uniquely obsessed to be a great recruiter, but he also hit a perfect confluence of events to give him an advantage.
Still, Tebow chose Meyer when the other option was Saban. Harvin decided to commit to Florida out of Virginia Beach. So yes, there were things that stacked the deck in Meyer’s favor. But he was able to take advantage of those things.
There are a lot of things fans cite for why Mullen is struggling more than his mentor. Do any of those hold water?
Bringing the program back from the abyss
Florida last won the SEC in 2008. Alabama has won six titles since then.
Players who are being recruited in the 2021 cycle were five years old the last time the Gators were truly relevant. Add to that the constant turnover at the coaching position (Muschamp lasted four years, McElwain less than three) and the program doesn’t have an identity of winning like Alabama, Clemson and even Georgia.
Mullen has brought that stability back to Gainesville (at least until his dalliances with the NFL this offseason). He has also brought winning, as the Gators 29 wins over the past three seasons are the most in any three-year stretch for the team since 2007-2009.
That hasn’t translated into high-level recruiting…yet. I say yet because at some point, you would have to figure that the aerial show that Kyle Trask put on in 2020 is going to appear to recruits. You would figure that Kyle Pitts likely being a first round draft pick and Kadarius Toney going in rounds one or two would start to appeal to recruits.
But we haven’t seen it yet, and that’s after three years of consistent winning. Perhaps that’s unfair. After all, Steve Spurrier won 28 games in his first three seasons, took a small step back in his third season (9-4 in 1992) and then ripped off seasons of 11, 10, 12, 12, 10 and 10 wins.
If Mullen does that, nobody is going to be complaining about recruiting.
Facilities
You’ll often hear this cited as a reason that Florida doesn’t get recruits, and there is some truth to it.
It is true that Florida lags behind in facilities. There are drawings of the amenities in the football players-only facility whereas there are actual slides in the Clemson facility. Players are drawn to those types of things and when you have something that looks outdated on an official visit after a recruit is blown away by facilities at another school, I’m sure it makes an impression.
But Florida just got out-recruited by Miami in the 2021 class. The Hurricanes have had more coaching turnover, have won fewer games and most definitely have worse facilities. I can’t imagine the comparison where you have to take a recruit on a 30-minute drive just to get to the stadium where he’ll play compared to the Swamp.
Florida has an advantage over Miami in just about every area, yet the Hurricanes are poised to finish ahead of Florida with two fewer commits. This after Miami closed on safety Avante Edwards in the 2020 class, ripping him away from the Gators on signing day.
I’m sympathetic to the staff needing better facilities. But that sympathy goes away pretty quickly when you compare the Gators to the Hurricanes.
Dan Mullen
And this is where I think we get to the real issue: Mullen doesn’t like recruiting.
It’s become pretty clear that Mullen is quirky. He also is a football nerd, and likely appreciates players who have that mindset as well.
Top level recruits don’t always have that mindset. In fact, oftentimes they can “out talent” everybody else on the field, especially in high school. I would say that Mullen doesn’t have the patience for that sort of thing, except we saw Marco Wilson starting against Alabama after his shoe-throwing fiasco against LSU.
Instead, I think it’s just that Mullen is really bad at connecting with recruits. In his book with Buddy Martin (“Urban’s Way”) about his time in Gainesville, Urban Meyer had this to say about Mullen.
“Tim (Tebow) almost didn’t come to Florida because of him (Mullen). We had to overcome our quarterback coach to get Tim Tebow to come here.”
Meyer goes on to say that this was a theme with Mullen and his QBs, as he had issues with Chris Leak, Josh Harris and Alex Smith. Now all of those QBs have become really tight with Mullen, but you can imagine that if he had such an issue connecting with guys he was going to coach directly, what kind of issues would he have connecting to a 5-star linebacker?
We all know people who are fantastic at sales. They love talking to other people and hearing their stories. They make the customer feel like they are the center of attention. I’m terrible at that, which is why I’m an engineer. That’s really the case with Mullen too. He’s much more of an engineer of football coaches than the sales representative.
McDonald’s Bags
C’mon, admit it. The fact that Tennessee was allegedly handing out cash in McDonald’s bags had you feeling much better about the Florida program, didn’t it?
The fact that Jeremy Pruitt was cheating and still unable to win is astounding. He actually did amass some pretty good talent in Knoxville. Recent transfer portal entrant Henry To’oto’o would look mighty fine in Orange and Blue.
I remember laughing when Lane Kiffin left the Vols hanging after one season. Then I remember wondering how they ever hired Derek Dooley and let him wear those awful orange pants. Then I remember thinking it couldn’t get any worse than Butch “brick by brick” Jones and the turnover trash can.
But wow, the firing of Pruitt, the departure of athletic director Phil Fulmer, the hiring of UCF athletic director Danny White to the same position and then White immediately going to the UCF well for head coach Josh Heupel has just been a confluence of events that must have Vols fans’ heads spinning.
Add to it the embarrassment of the McDonald’s bag story and it’s juicy for Gators fans, but also sad for those of us who remember those great games against Tennessee in the late 90s. It’s funny that Peyton Manning never beat the Gators because it kept Tennessee from playing for a title and Manning from winning the Heisman.
At this point, it’s just kind of sad.
Heupel Hire
If I was a Tennessee fan, the Heupel hire would be the last straw for me.
Heupel took over a UCF team coming off of a 13-0 record and fake national championship in 2017 and led them to a 12-1 record with the only loss coming to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl in 2018. From there, the Knights have gone 10-3 in 2019 and 6-4 in 2020. The offense has continued to hum while the defense has gotten considerably worse.
It reminds me a little bit of the early 2000’s Miami Hurricanes. Those teams were built by Butch Davis into a powerhouse, with Davis leaving to be the head coach with the Cleveland Browns and Larry Coker taking over.
Coker was able to lead the Hurricanes to a National Title in 2001, and then cost them another title in 2002 with some ridiculous coaching decisions in the championship game against Ohio State. The Hurricanes then fell to 11-2 in 2003, then 9-3 in 2004 and 2005 and Coker was out after a 7-6 season in 2006.
Heupel’s fall at UCF was quicker than Coker’s at Miami, but the pattern is the same: immediate success with another coach’s players and then an inability to maintain that level of success with his own.
Good luck, Vols fans.