GC VIP Stadium Road Audibles — 1/21/19 Edition

By David Wunderlich

How much will you remember about this 2018 season in time?

Right now everything is fresh in our memories. We remember the Savage plan and the debates about Feleipe Franks, Kyle Trask, and Emory Jones from the offseason. We remember the roster surprises, like Nick Buchanan coming out of nowhere to take the center position and Kyree Campbell taking firm control over the nose tackle spot mid-season. We remember the transfer receivers getting their approvals to play right away, the handful of drives when Franks lost his job before Trask got hurt again, the linebackers looking stellar against LSU before looking lost for weeks after, and so on.

Dan Mullen’s first team has generated plenty of memories, ones that inevitably will fade. How quickly will they?

Consider Urban Meyer’s first team in 2005. You certainly remember some things about that season, like the coaches redoing the entire offense in the bye week after losing to LSU and Meyer reading the team the riot act on the plane after losing to South Carolina. You may remember the students trying to generate a Heisman campaign for Chad Jackson, the double-overtime escape against Vandy, or the Outback Bowl win over Iowa that capped the season.

You may remember Wyoming as the opener, but do you remember the second cupcake? (It was Louisiana Tech.) Do you know the complete West division draw besides the annual LSU game and the epic face plant at Alabama? (They beat Mississippi State 35-9 at home.) You probably could guess that Deshawn Wynn was the team’s leading rusher, but do you know who was second by a wide margin? (Markus Manson, not Kestahn Moore as you might’ve been guessing.) Do you even remember that 2005 was still back when college football teams played 11 regular season games, not 12?

A lot of that year has faded as happens over time, but not every first year of a coaching tenure does so. You probably remember more about Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain’s first years than Meyer’s in 2005. Granted, those years being closer to the present helps a lot. However, there is another reason for those seasons being better in your recall.

The 2006 season crowds out a lot of the 2005 season. So do the 2007, 2008, and 2009 seasons. Those far better seasons shine brighter because of their much greater success, whether in win count or just sheer offensive competency. There is less reason to focus a lot of brain cells on the ’05 team when the stuff that came immediately after is so much more gratifying.

I don’t know what the lasting legacy of the 2018 team will be. I do know that it only partially resembles what happened in 2005.

The ’05 team was a case of a new head coach whipping a group of underachievers into shape. The ’18 team was more a new head coach getting about the most out of a set of players as is possible. It’s true that this year’s Gators could’ve beaten Kentucky and could’ve at least tried against Missouri, but a lack of consistent effort was one of the problems that Mullen was hired to solve. He isn’t here if that issue, among a number of others, weren’t also here.

It’s for that reason that it’ll be harder to have a big jump in Mullen’s second year as there was in Meyer’s sophomore campaign. The 2006 team famously had 21 of 22 starters recruited by Ron Zook. The last depth chart of this season only had 19 of 22 recruited by McElwain thanks to Van Jefferson, Adam Shuler, and Trey Dean occupying the top line at their positions.

We may see even more Mullen additions starting next year. Amari Burney will push for a starting spot in the secondary, Kemore Gamble will be the only McElwain tight end left, and the four open spots on the offensive line will probably see at least one of Richard Gouraige, Noah Banks, and Chris Bleich finding a spot. Mullen hit the upper end of the 2018 team’s potential, so steps forward next year would represent the upper end of that squad’s potential too. We’ll all have to watch and see together.

This was the season that reestablished the idea of a high standard that Florida aspires to. It may be a couple of years down the road yet before the team can hit that standard consistently. Zook was a better recruiter than McElwain was, after all, and Mullen signed a small transitional class. Meyer had a small first class too, but he had a ton of future NFL-caliber veterans signed by his predecessor to lean on to compensate. Mullen has fewer, and he’s losing more after this year than Meyer did post-2005.

It’s far too early to start guessing at wins and losses for 2019, so let this 2018 campaign linger in your mind for a while longer. Let the big moments — Donovan Stiner’s blitz against Mississippi State, Brad Stewart’s pick-six against LSU, Lamical Perine’s big runs against FSU and Michigan — marinate for a little while before you go looking up when spring practice is.

This was not an easy year for the program, with Mullen trying to institute a pretty significant culture change on the fly without knowing how many receivers would be eligible for much of the offseason, with losing one of his elite corners in Marco Wilson early, and with playing a quarterback who was infuriatingly up-and-down until somehow getting benched got him to play his best three-game stretch of the year.

But maybe, with some luck, this season will fade just as much as the 2005 season has for the same reasons.

David Wunderlich
David Wunderlich is a born-and-raised Gator and a proud Florida alum. He has been writing about Florida and SEC football since 2006. He currently lives in Naples Italy, at least until the Navy stations his wife elsewhere. You can follow him on Twitter @Year2