Last week, Dan Mullen was named one of 20 semifinalists for the George Munger Collegiate Coach of the Year award. That particular one seems to have taken a liking to Mullen since it gave him the award in 2014.
I say “that particular one” because there are plenty of college football coach of the year awards. Much like everything in the sport, no one is in charge. If you want to give out such an award, go for it. Literally nothing is stopping you.
In fact, Wikipedia has a directory of 17 current and former college football coach of the year awards for various levels, including two named after legendary Grambling coach Eddie Robinson. The funniest is probably the Bobby Bowden National Collegiate Coach of the Year Award — wait for it, I know — which was awarded by the Over the Mountain Touchdown club of Birmingham, Alabama and the Alabama Sports Foundation from 2009-13.
The award had “national” in the title, but it went to Nick Saban in 2009, Gene Chizik in 2010, and then Saban again in 2011 and 2012. They all won the national title, so it went to Jimbo Fisher in 2013, right? Nope. It went to BCS title game loser Gus Malzahn. Bama gonna Bama, I guess.
Mullen has done a splendid job this year. The Gators are on the cusp of winning ten regular season games despite helming a team with some glaring issues. The offensive line can’t run block reliably. Neither can the tight ends. I heard a host of a different site’s podcast remark that he had a contact who talked to college coaches who are dumbfounded at how UF has been winning without much of a run game. Much of it has been with the backup quarterback who hadn’t started since his high school freshman JV team.
Switching gears, the defensive line gets a lot less scary without its top two players, and those two have been in and out of the lineup constantly. The star position has been a mess most weeks. There are multiple positions staffed by players that apparently can’t have the bad angles and overpursuing coached out of them because they’ve done it for years under multiple staffs.
But just like how spring games are ambiguous — did the offense make a good play or did the defense make a bad play? — so is a coach who does well overcoming obvious deficiencies. If the team had obvious deficiencies, isn’t that on the head coach too?
In Mullen’s case this year, some yes and some no. Mullen saw the tight end run blocking issues early on and implemented some bunch formations with the bigger receivers like Trevon Grimes and Tyrie Cleveland doing some tough blocking. Those didn’t work any better initially, but they did begin to have some effectiveness before Mullen basically gave up on the run in the bye week before Georgia.
It also took a lot of courage to choose to give up on his preferred method of moving the ball (the run game) and put the entire offense on the right arm of Kyle Trask. If it ever could work it’d be this year with the tremendous depth at receiver, but most coaches would never acquiesce to reality so thoroughly when it goes against their deepest instincts.
On the other side of the coin, Mullen doesn’t personally coach the offensive line, but he could’ve directed lineup changes earlier and more frequently to try to find something that worked better. He didn’t personally set up the four-man safety rotation despite two of them consistently playing better than the other two, but he allowed it to happen and continue. He didn’t personally direct the soft coverage that LSU torched, but he didn’t step in to stop it either.
Bad luck is certainly involved with some of the struggles. The roster still has plenty of holdovers, and plenty of them have been great. However, a lot of the defensive veterans are of backup caliber compared to Florida’s own recent history. You can’t turn a whole college football roster over in two years, so he has to deal with what he has in a lot of places.
The offensive line is another place where the veterans have not been up to what UF is used to. Mullen signed four linemen in his first class in 2018. One medically retired before the season and two more have started. Richard Gouraige looks better in his starts than Chris Bleich did before he left the team, but only one of the four (Griffin McDowell) just hasn’t won real playing time on offense yet. He has appeared in every game on special teams, though, and that’s after missing the spring following a scooter accident.
There was some good luck too. The schedule delivered a lot of mediocrity past the three headlining conference games of Auburn, LSU, and Georgia. The Gators got Tennessee before the Vols figured out what they were doing and Missouri after the Tigers forgot how to play offense. FSU is bad enough that the head coach was fired barely more than a season and a half into his tenure. The only thing they didn’t luck into was playing Kentucky with wide receiver Lynn Bowden behind center, though the original starter Terry Wilson was already gone when the Gators faced the Wildcats.
Auburn is clearly Florida’s best win. Which is second-best?
The Miami team that just lost to FIU? Quarterback-less Kentucky? Is it… Tennessee? Look, good on Mullen for keeping the team together despite all the adversity, but one win and two close-ish losses are what we’re all focusing on for a reason.
This season had plenty of chances to go off the rails, but it didn’t. The team has played close to its ceiling. The fact the ceiling is below championship level isn’t Mullen’s fault, but the fact they haven’t completely met that ceiling goes on the coaches too. No player plays a perfect season; no coaches coach a perfect season either.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that expectations are everything with sports. I vastly enjoyed a 13-1 Florida season where the average game score was 30-14 than one where it was 36-12. How can that be? I didn’t expect the 2006 team to go all the way. I did expect the 2009 team to, though, and it played more close games than I thought it would and got schooled in Atlanta.
That’s why so many people who cover the team have been playing the what-if game where they ask if you’d take the team’s record at the point in the season it was given the injury challenges. If someone offered you 9-2 with the starting quarterback going out for the year in Game 3 and the three best defensive players each missing time for stretches, would you take it? Of course.
And that’s why Mullen is rightfully in the mix for at least one coach of the year award. The guys who win those tend to either be national title game participants or genuine surprises. Mullen himself will tell you that he doesn’t care about these kinds of awards (all coaches do), but regardless he’s done a great job overall.
Just don’t blow it against FSU, Dan, and it’ll all be gravy.