PD’s Postulations: The A&M Game
by David Parker
In the words of the famous metaphysical philosopher Ace Ventura, MAN I’m tired of being right!
To quote myself from last week’s column, after watching South Carolina come a few bad breaks from beating us: “…the failure to fix the issues can and will make the difference between championships and no championships…. offenses will always hit some bumps in the road….when the offense isn’t running on all cylinders. A lost fumble…”
And there we were, less than a week later, late in the fourth quarter, tied with Texas A&M for NO other reason than our defense can’t stop any play of any offense, ever. We were at midfield, and all we had to do is keep moving the ball as we had all day, and either score a TD or kick a field goal without leaving A&M any time left to score. And what happened? The offense had a hiccup. It fumbled. The very FIRST thing I listed as what could and would trip us up at some point down the line. Well, the line ended in College Station, because we coughed up the ball and instead of waltzing downfield and scoring while leaving them no time left to respond, THEY did it to us.
Maybe Jimbo Fisher reads GatorCountry. Dan Mullen certainly doesn’t. Or he would have fired Todd Grantham after 2019. No, he would have fired him after the 2018 season. No, he would never have brought that inept, incompetent clown to Title Town in the first place.
Mullen assures us that he will spend a lot of time with the defensive coaches this week and reevaluate everything about the defense. Who cares, Dan? What good will that do? Again, I quote myself, this time from two weeks ago, after watching Ole Miss come a few bad breaks from beating us: “…I for one have right around zero confidence that Todd Grantham will do anything to change. I eagerly wait to be proven wrong.”
Sadly, Grantham proved me, a poor man’s Ace Ventura, right. Again.
Help Is On The Way (pause for laughter)
Word is, we will have starting defensive tackle Kyree Campbell back for the LSU game. Conventional wisdom is that he will help improve our completely ineffective defensive line. That’s the same conventional thinking that believed that getting Shawn Davis and Brad Stewart back would help improve our completely ineffective secondary. It of course did nothing to improve them. Likewise, Campbell’s return will make ZERO difference for our defensive line or defense as a whole. He can’t even be in game shape at this point. And you can put in the D-line of the ‘75 Steelers, and Grantham would STILL give up 40 points every game to average-to-bad college offenses.
I keep telling everyone, it’s the coaches that matter, not the Jimmys and Joes. Having the best players makes it easier, but the players don’t matter if they’re not coached well or schemed properly. And even when our players get into position to make a play, they don’t, because they haven’t been coached well enough to. Case in point, A&M’s tying touchdown pass in the fourth quarter, setting up the winning outcome minutes later. Marco Wilson was in perfect position to not only defend, but to intercept the deep bomb. The receiver should have had to go into full defensive back mode. But Marco did literally everything wrong. Rather than leverage his body against the receiver, jump to block him completely out of the play and high-point the ball in his chest, he just jogged under the ball and waited for it to fall in his outstretched hands. Any Power 5 receiver would have just plucked the ball over his shoulder, which the Aggie’s wideout did with ease. Because either Marco has still not been coached on how to play defensive back by Florida coaches, or he hasn’t been in position to actually make a play enough times to be able to do it when the chance finally presents itself. He was as highly regarded as a player gets out of high school, and yet in Grantham’s defense he is just raw meat that opposing offenses tear to pieces. This is just one of hundreds of examples the last 3 years under Grantham’s negligent incompetence. He is the only person in America that has ever made CJ Henderson look like a bad player.
It’s like baseball – even bench players can hit .300 off the best pitcher in the league if they know which pitch is coming every time. When an offense knows exactly what the D is going to do on every play – like they do with Grantham’s defenses – any offense can beat any defense, no matter who the players are. Did Dan Mullen not even watch Bull Durham? Any offense that gets that many yards in a game should have a stewardess on it, don’tchya think?
Fill The Swamp… Empty The Brain
As if not recognizing the desperate need to get rid of Grantham at any point in the last three years weren’t bad enough…as if answering questions about three straight games of completely worthless defensive floundering in the most frustratingly evasive and disingenuous way…Dan had to put a big, fat cherry on top with his comments about the College Station crowd being a huge factor in the loss, and worse yet, that he wanted UF to toss their science-driven safety guidelines on attendance limits, and allow the entire stadium to be packed rim to rim, 90,000+ strong.
The university quickly released a statement that they will continue to comply with UF policy.
I expected Dan would be quickly issuing a retraction, after his boss rightly chewed his butt out. But he disappointed me once again by refusing to even address the question early in the week.
He should be chewed out just for making such a stupid comment as saying the crowd was a major factor. We were only confused and clueless Saturday on defense. Crowd noise is QUIET when the visitors are on defense. On every play. So the home team offense can hear its signals, call audibles, and not get distracted. On offense, when the crowd was making all the noise it could, we scored a TD on almost every drive. So the crowd had nothing to do with anything. Dan was just fishing for anything he could blame other than the ONE PERSON who was completely to blame: Todd Grantham. It was an asinine comment to cover for the incompetent clown coordinating the defense.
But then to follow that up with the call to disregard UF safety policy to fill the swamp just doubled down on his stupid comments. It wasn’t stupid just because he knows he would be skewered like a steak, inside and outside sports networks (one headline, from Deadspin: “Florida’s Dan Mullen wants to risk 90,000 lives because he can’t coach under pressure”). It was firstly stupid because aside from the avalanche of negative outcomes he had to know this would create. This is by far his worst failure of optics in his career. We have already had multiple blue chip recruits from the Miami area spurn us and commit to the ‘Canes because their families are concerned about the pandemic, and want their kids close to home. Now, regardless of the fact that he cares deeply about his players and their safety, the optics broadcast to the families of all our recruits that he would rather risk their children’s lives for an advantage in a football game than fire an incompetent assistant coach.
But beyond that, it violated the first primary rule that every employed person in the world knows, or should know: you NEVER put your employer in the position to have to apologize for what you said, and issue an official statement contradicting and/or condemning what you said. Dan’s comments had his boss yelling at him, and had his boss’s’ bosses yelling at his boss, probably before Dan even left the post-game press conference.
To be clear, I still love Dan Mullen, still think he is the guy to put us back on top of the college football world, and still want him to retire from UF an old man. On every level, he is the perfect guy at the perfect time for the Gators.
But his loyalty to an incompetent clown on the coaching staff has created this immense convergence of calamity, destroying what should have been a championship season, and making the UF program the butt of jokes and outrage not just across college football, not just nationally, but amazingly internationally. It’s a terrible mistake that is now in full snowball phase, and will continue to gain speed and size until it ultimately buries Dan’s Florida career, if he doesn’t get rid of Grantham and stop the bleeding. It’s not just Grantham, of course. Dan has a handful of coaches on staff who are not Florida quality, either in coaching or recruiting abilities. But he keeps them on, Lord knows why. And it will bring him down – either hamstringing his Florida career or ending it – if he doesn’t cut them loose eventually.
In the meantime, I hope Dan takes advice from a fan nation who wants him to stay and succeed at the highest level, and stops saying stupid things. He can coach and manage the team as he will, and be judged on those merits, but he has to go back to saying all the right things. Which frankly, he has done almost the entire time since stepping off the plane at the Gainesville airport. Go back to that, because the claptrap about crowd noise and filling the Swamp was the stupidest thing he has ever said.
And remember, he once said, “Todd, will you be my defensive coordinator at Florida?”