By Will Miles
Wesley McGriff
I’m underwhelmed.
It’s not that McGriff isn’t a good coach. David Wunderlich wrote a piece detailing his coaching history and he certainly has SEC experience, seems like a good recruiter and his players love him. But I don’t see this the same way I viewed the Tim Brewster hire last season.
Brewster helped build the North Carolina and Texas programs with Mack Brown. He then went to the NFL for eight seasons before coming back to work with Jimbo Fisher at Florida State and Texas A&M. That degree of high-level college and pro experience is tough to beat, but it is the building aspect of those programs that really intrigued me about Brewster.
McGriff also has high-level SEC and pro experience (2013-2015 as DB coach with the New Orleans Saints). He also has a reputation as a recruiter. But he hasn’t been anywhere more than four seasons. And those recent stays haven’t been all that successful.
As defensive coordinator, his Ole Miss defenses in 2017 and 2018 gave up 7.5 and 7.9 yards per pass attempt (7.2 is about average). As defensive backs coach, his Auburn defense gave up 6.4 yards per attempt but that jumped up to 7.3 this year. In New Orleans as defensive back’s coach, his defenses ranked 7th, 28th and 32nd (dead last) in net yards gained per pass attempt.
Now not all of this is on McGriff. Rex Ryan was the leader of those Saints defenses that were getting torched. Ole Miss didn’t exactly have a huge surplus of defensive talent in 2017 and 2018. And 2020 was a weird year so perhaps Auburn’s defense against the pass under McGriff is an outlier.
But that now makes three straight stops (New Orleans, Ole Miss, Auburn) where defenses were worse in year two after adding McGriff than in year one. He might add a ton as a recruiter, but he’s not going to fix all recruiting deficiencies. And those deficiencies are going to have to be overcome with development and year-to-year improvement.
Other coaching spot?
Word is that Chris Ash, former defensive coordinator at Texas, may fill the other open spot on defense.
I like that pursuit, because Ash has a much more robust record of improvement. The big thing on his resume is his four-year stint at Rutgers, which was a disaster. The Scarlet Knights went 8-33 in his tenure, which isn’t exactly inspiring.
But if you look closer, Rutgers improved from 7.9 yards per pass allowed to 7.5 to 6.3 in his first three seasons there. That jumped to 8.1 the next year and he was fired, but the problem at Rutgers wasn’t the passing defense, it was the offense was just anemic.
You see the same thing at Wisconsin, where Ash was the DB coach in 2010 and then the defensive coordinator in 2011 and 2012. There, the yards per pass allowed decreased from 6.9 to 6.7 to 5.7 in his three years after Wisconsin gave up 7.4 yards per attempt the year before he arrived.
He followed that with a rough year at Arkansas in Bret Bielema’s first season there as head coach and then two outstanding years (5.9 and 5.8 yards per pass attempt) as co-DC at Ohio State. This year at Texas, the Longhorns gave up 6.8 yards per attempt after giving up 7.9 in 2019.
The point isn’t that Ash has a perfect record. He doesn’t. The point is that his players have consistently improved at any stop where he’s been there for more than a year, and he has now shown at two stops (Wisconsin and Texas) immediate improvement upon arrival.
That would be an exciting prospect for a Florida defense that couldn’t guard anybody in the secondary in 2020.
Another Alabama championship
Alabama finished off a perfect season with a 52-24 demolition of Ohio State.
It probably wasn’t lost on many Gators fans that the score heading into halftime – 35-17 – was the exact same lead that the Tide held over the Gators in the SEC Championship. The difference is that Ohio State didn’t put up much of a fight while Florida was able to make its loss respectable.
I’ve heard some fans claim this as a moral victory for Florida; that surviving the Alabama buzzsaw the best proves that Florida is closer to the college football elite than perhaps an 8-4 record suggests. But I kind of look at it the opposite way.
Kyle Pitts is maybe the best tight end to ever take the field for the Gators. Kyle Trask was a legitimate Heisman contender, and probably wins the award if the Gators had blown out LSU the way they were supposed to. And Kadarius Toney has been a cheat code for multiple years now, but was only this year really unleashed on the opposition.
Those kinds of things don’t come together all that often. My colleague Bill Sikes has written about the concept of “clustering”, the idea that SEC Champions tend to cluster multiple All-SEC players from particular recruiting classes to have elite seasons instead of borrowing significantly from each class.
The Gators just had one of those clusters on the offensive side of the ball and couldn’t field a competent defense to support it. Even if Emory Jones is outstanding, it’s unlikely he’ll have the help that Trask did in 2020. That doesn’t mean 2021 will be a waste. The defense can’t be worse, can it?
But it does mean that to propose that 2020 indicates Florida is close ignores the uniqueness of the performances of the guys on this team. It also ignores that despite those performances, the Gators still lost three games (since the JV played against Oklahoma).
The last team to win a national championship – which is the goal – with more than a loss was LSU back in 2007. Three losses isn’t close.
Process over results
What Saban has built is impressive. But part of what makes it so impressive is that he has now run almost the exact same playbook that he ran at LSU, just on steroids.
He took over in 2000 and his 2001 recruiting class was ranked 2nd in the country and his 2003 and 2004 classes were ranked 3rd and 4th, respectively. Joseph Addai, Michael Clayton, Marcus Spears, Ben Wilkerson, Andrew Whitworth, Craig Davis, Dwayne Bowe, Matt Flynn, JaMarcus Russell, LeRon Landry, Early Doucet, Glenn Dorsey were all parts of those three classes.
I think we were all surprised – I certainly was – when LSU demolished Florida in 2002 in the Swamp to the tune of 36-7. At the time, we blamed Ron Zook for ruining what Spurrier had put together in 2001 and that is true. But I think we were also seeing the power of Saban’s process.
Now that he’s at Alabama, Saban’s team has only missed the playoff one season (2019). His average national recruiting ranking for the four years prior to each of those playoff teams? First, first, first, first, second, second.
Saban is a great coach. His on-field results speak for themselves, and it’s not as though he was a slouch with the Cleveland Browns or at Michigan State. But his seven national championships have been a product of him leaning into the idea that the best way to win in college is to have the best players.
That seems obvious. But he’s the best at it. And what he was able to prove at LSU has now been perfected at Alabama.
Do your job (Saban edition)
The other thing you noticed watching that championship game – and the semifinal against Notre Dame – was the way in which Alabama’s players executed their scheme flawlessly and with the expectation that they would do so.
There was little showboating. The ball always went right to the referee right after a score. The Crimson Tide players celebrated together as a team. And then they absolutely eviscerated their opponent.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Jaylen Waddle had no business being out on the field, but he wanted to be there for his teammates. Landon Dickerson had to convince his coaches to let him out on the field for the final snap coming off of knee surgery.
Part of that is the special character and chemistry of this particular team. But part of that is the fact that the expectations set forth by Saban are that his players will act that way. If you don’t, you sit. A thrown shoe would have caused an immediate benching. Not lining up would have done the same.
Because Saban starts with more talented players than most other programs. But part of the reason that they are better players when they get out on the field is because Saban has set the expectation that they need to each do their job.
Recruiting realities
That brings us to Florida.
Recruiting just isn’t good enough to compete regularly with Alabama, Georgia and perhaps even LSU and Texas A&M.
The SEC is different. Because Alabama exists in the SEC, there are only going to be a few years where another program has a real chance. And when you have that chance, you have to be prepared to take advantage.
Florida is probably going to finish 14th nationally this recruiting cycle. That’s after two straight 9th place finishes. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that it is 5th best in the SEC during that time. There’s only one way to overcome that kind of talent deficit: quarterback play.
That means that for Florida to get past Alabama, Dan Mullen is going to have to coordinate getting Trask-level play out of his QB. Is that likely? Well, Mullen’s track record is that he has a shot.
But there are other coaches you would have said the same thing about who haven’t been able to get over that hump.
Harbaugh extension
Michigan announced a contract extension for Jim Harbaugh this past week. It’s an interesting comparison for Florida for multiple reasons.
First, Harbaugh came to Michigan known as an offensive guru who would restore the Michigan brand and finally be able to take on Ohio State. He had substantial success his first few years, going 10-3 in 2015 and 2016 before taking a step back to 8-5 in 2017. The Wolverines went 10-3 in 2018 and 9-4 in 2019. After an abbreviated 2-4 campaign in 2020, the natives in Ann Arbor are getting restless.
The reason I bring up Harbaugh is after a rough first recruiting campaign (37th), Harbaugh followed that up with classes ranked 8th and 5th before falling off the next three years to 22nd, 8th and 14th. The Wolverines are currently ranked 13th for 2021.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Certainly the lows (37th and 22nd) are lower than Mullen. But so are the highs, with two 8th places and a 5th place finish. Overall though, the records in the first three years and the average level of recruiting between Harbaugh and Mullen are really, really similar.
The difference between the two is at QB. Harbaugh just hasn’t been able to find a QB at Michigan who can really be a difference maker in his offense. He found that QB at Stanford and Andrew Luck led the Cardinal to a 12-1 record in 2010.
I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, as Mullen found his QB this year in Trask and the team still went 8-4. It thrills me that Mullen is developing skill on the offensive side of the ball. It worries me that he just missed an opportunity to replicate that 2010 Stanford-type season with Trask at the helm.
Because if Harbaugh’s Michigan tenure teaches us anything, it’s that guys who have seasons like Trask are really hard to find.
How to improve?
So how does Florida improve in 2021?
It seems pretty obvious to say the defense, but I want to be a little bit more specific. The defense obviously struggled to get off the field on third down and gave up a ton of yardage through the air. But the one other area the defense really struggled was creating turnovers.
That should be a little bit surprising considering Florida was pretty effective getting sacks this season (35) and yet still that only turned into 1.3 turnovers per game, which ranked 71st in the country. That’s down from 1.7 in 2019 and 1.9 in 2018.
The reality is that there are likely going to be growing pains as some of the younger players make their way on to the field in 2021. But generating turnovers tends to be cyclical.
So if we’re looking for reasons that the 2021 defense will be better, I suspect it might be just that a few more interceptions will go Florida’s way.
Basketball apathy
I find myself relatively apathetic to Gators basketball this season.
That isn’t altogether unusual, as I’m definitely much more of a football fan. But I think there’s more to it than just that.
One of the reasons that I enjoyed the Gators 2020 football season was that it was fun to watch. Going 8-4 while scoring 40 points per game is a lot different than 9-4 scoring 24 points per game (2016). It just feels different.
So I think that’s why I’m apathetic to the basketball team. It just isn’t very aesthetically pleasing to watch. The loss of Koyontae Johnson certainly doesn’t help, but it just doesn’t feel like this team has an identity.
That was on full display in the game against Kentucky this weekend, where a struggling Wildcats team blew Florida off its own floor for an 18-point win.
I’ve been a pretty solid defender of Mike White. Florida basketball is different than Florida football and so requires a different set of expectations. But Kentucky has lost to Georgia Tech, Richmond and even Alabama.
Maybe I’m being unreasonable to have expectations that the Florida football program can compete with the Tide, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Gators fans to expect their basketball program to compete with Alabama.