Note from last night: I wrote this yesterday morning around the time that this newsletter went out today. In intervening 24 hours, there were noises that Andrew picked up that Christian Robinson may yet stay in Gainesville. His going to Michigan may not be as done a deal as reporting from last week made it sound. Regardless, there are points in this that are still worth making whether Robinson returns or not. Please accept my apologies and read it knowing that Robinson might actually be back. Or not. We’ll see.
News came with last week that Florida linebackers coach Christian Robinson would be leaving the program to take a job at Michigan. The reactions to it were all over the map.
In line with the general pessimism surrounding Dan Mullen’s decision to retain Todd Grantham, I saw a few people saying something along the lines of Robinson was leaving a sinking ship. That far overstates things.
Robinson is pretty closely tied to Grantham. He played for him at Georgia, was a GA for him in 2013 at UGA and 2017 at Mississippi State, and got his first full-blown coaching job for him in 2018. There is a real loyalty there that isn’t going to end simply because of fans’ grousing about Grantham’s job performance.
I saw some reactions that were more of the “good, glad he’s moving on” as well. I think those overstate their cases too. By all accounts Robinson is a smart, energetic, and personable guy. He’s one of the better recruiters on the staff and is a good presence to have in the locker room. Is he one of the five best linebackers coaches in the country? No, not after just three years’ worth of experience at it. I just don’t think he’s an anchor that the ship of Florida football has been dragging around.
A little context is warranted. For one thing, Jim Harbaugh doesn’t exactly have a long leash in Ann Arbor anymore. After winning ten games in each of his first two seasons, he did it once in the subsequent three. Then in the truncated 2020 campaign, his Wolverines went 2-4.
UM dragged its feet on the decision of whether to extend him or not; he was still on his original contract that expired after 2021. Eventually they did re-up him with an incentive-laden deal featuring a major drop in base salary and a miniscule-by-present-standards buyout. Put it this way: Michigan can send him packing after this year for less than a fifth of what it cost Auburn to can Gus Malzahn.
So go ahead and drop the job security theory as to why this is happening. It’s also worth noting that Harbaugh fired his defensive coordinator Don Brown, who is good against bad teams but who has been rendered clueless on how to stop high powered spreads such as what Ohio State has been running for years.
Brown’s replacement reportedly will be the Baltimore Ravens’ linebackers coach Mike Macdonald. Michigan just had to wait for the Ravens to be eliminated from the playoffs, which they were on Saturday. Maybe by the time you are reading this, that hire will have gone official.
Macdonald is a younger guy, having graduated college in 2010 and worked for two years as a high school coach after that. His first college gig came in 2011 at… drumroll… the University of Georgia under defensive coordinator Todd Grantham. Go ahead and mark it down: Michigan hired someone off the Grantham tree. Ignore the fact that Jim Harbaugh is getting someone off of his brother John’s staff. Nope. Grantham is the key here.
UGA actually is the key for the main story I’m telling here, which is about Robinson. His college career wrapped up in 2011-12 with Macdonald as his position coach. In other words, he’s leaving one mentor to go work for another one.
It’s good for Robinson’s career, as he isn’t going to want to get typecast as a Grantham guy. No, sarcastic friend, not because Grantham will be some kind of coaching pariah in a year or two. It’s just good for younger assistants to branch out on their own to prove their worth as their own guy without being tied to an older coach. Plus, midwest teams like Michigan have been focusing on recruiting Florida ever since the Gators made Ohio State look slow in the BCS title game. Robinson can command a small premium for his experience with such at Michigan in a way that he can’t down south where everyone recruits Florida at some point.
With all that said, it’s not the worst thing in the world for Florida to turn over its linebackers coach.
It’s hard to show real development of too many players under Robinson’s watch. He worked with the linebackers and Buck rush ends, who are technically a kind of outside linebacker. His Florida bio hasn’t been updated to reflect the 2020 season and presumably never will be with him leaving, but it’s still revealing.
The players it gives him credit for are David Reese II, Jonathan Greenard, and Vosean Joseph. Reese and Greenard were well established before they came under Robinson’s tutelage, and Joseph was on his way up and only spent a year with him. The bio doesn’t have anything to say about his year at Mississippi State, and it tries to give him some credit for Robert Nkemdiche and Marquis Haynes at Ole Miss. On the latter point, both players again showed their high abilities before Robinson got there and Robinson was just a GA anyway.
There’s not a lot that a 2020 update could do for Robinson. It would definitely tout Ventrell Miller’s pair of SEC defensive player of the week nods, but the linebacker play wasn’t stellar for a lot of the year. Mohamoud Diabate and Brenton Cox got better as the year went along, but you never know how much that’s coaching versus young players getting experience. Jeremiah Moon, when he’s actually healthy, has shown some improvement over the years as well.
So it’s not all bad for Robinson, but it’s not an unqualified success either. He hasn’t shown to be as good a developer as, say, Billy Gonzales or David Turner. He probably shouldn’t be since he’s only been a full-time coach for three years, but it’s reasonable to ask why a place as high up the chain as UF should serve as someone’s coaching training wheels. And while Robinson is one of the better recruiters on the staff, he’s not a premier recruiter in the broader picture.
Florida has the chance to replace a developmental project of a coach, one with upside but still a project, with a proven figure in both development and recruiting. That’s good. It wouldn’t have happened, though, if Robinson didn’t decide to leave on his own volition. The firing of underperforming assistants already took place, and Robinson wasn’t part of it. I doubt he ever would’ve been fired because of his close relationship with Grantham and the fact he clears the good-enough bar. Is he elite? A coveted commodity? Someone who will get calls about DC jobs sooner than later? No. But he was good enough.
The frustration with Mullen I think boils down to good-enough thinking on his part. He’s not like a Nick Saban or Urban Meyer who reevaluates everything frequently to ask if there’s room for improvement. Saban is the best because he practically does it every day.
Mullen doesn’t appear to operate that way. Maybe his way works best for him and he might end up in a workaholic’s spiral as his old mentor did if he tried. I don’t know. But Mullen does seem to operate with a high degree of risk aversion, preferring not to change anything that’s not dramatically bad. Insert comment about being forced into playing Kyle Trask only due to an injury here.
I wish Robinson well, but I also want to see Florida upgrade from him. It’s certainly possible; there’s no need for Grantham to give a third guy his first coaching job as linebackers coach under him. Will Mullen aim for greatness or settle for good enough? I hope the former.