(Since this is an off-week, this week’s edition will only have Parker’s material. The rest will come back next week. Happy Halloween! -Ray)
By David Parker
The off week is a good time to look around and see, irrespective of the AP and Coaches’ polls, where the Gators rate in the SEC and among the nation’s elite.
In the SEC, despite all the evidence in, it’s still too early to set a solid pecking order. Here’s why:
— Florida stood toe to toe with LSU for 3+ quarters and was just 2 bad plays from taking them to overtime. It would be easy to say that game demonstrated that Florida is behind LSU, but not as easy to say it with confidence. Because if Florida got to play them on a neutral field (or in the Swamp), with star defensive ends Jonathan Greenard and Jabari Zuniga, and the most electric offensive weapon on the team and possibly in the conference, Kadarius Toney, all in the game, Florida might beat LSU instead – perhaps handily – and the narrative would be very different right now.
— Regardless of how we rate compared to LSU, we won’t know for 3 more weeks how they match up against Alabama. So there are two West teams that could possibly be better or worse or equal to Florida.
— Obviously we still have yet to play Georgia, so despite the convenient South Carolina transitive measuring stick provided in consecutive weeks that would suggest that Florida is the better team, we won’t know until they suit it up and kick it off in Jacksonville.
But regardless of how Florida rates against those three teams, one thing is known about the final true SEC pecking order in 2019: Florida has a very high ceiling and a very high floor. At year’s end, they will be at worst the 4th-best team in the SEC. At best, they will be #1. Yes, #1 – winning the SEC is absolutely a possibility if our health improves and holds up.
When trying to find Florida’s slotting nationally, right now I would have to say they are the best 1-loss team in college football. And it’s really hard to argue against Florida being the best 1-loss team, resume-wise. Of the 1-loss teams, only Florida and Oregon have a quality loss. And to harken again to the transitive property, Florida beat Auburn pretty handily, and Auburn bested Oregon without too much trouble. The rest of the highly rated 1-loss teams? Well, that is a short list: Georgia, Utah and Oklahoma. And they all lost to unranked teams. Florida also has a quality win – over then-#7/now-#11 Auburn. Georgia has a win against then-#7 Notre Dame, but they are now a 2-loss team sitting outside the top-15. Oregon only beat one ranked team (then-#25, now unranked Washington). Oklahoma might have a slightly better win, over then-#11, now unranked Texas. Utah meanwhile has a win over then-#17, now unranked Arizona State.
Some people – certainly the people laying money on the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party – still argue that Georgia is better than UF, but let’s be honest, that’s based on nothing but recruiting rankings and the last two years of plowing through an SEC East that had no other team either healthy or ready to play at a high level. However, as alluded to earlier, UGA just lost to a 2-3 South Carolina team at home, and the very next week, Florida beat SC on the road in businesslike fashion without their two best defenders. And the Gators did this despite the game being played in a torrential downpour that mitigated their athletic advantage and had a significant negative impact on the passing game, which is UF’s whole offense, and despite it being the perfect trap game: a lightly-regarded team sandwiched between an emotional slugfest against LSU and the biggest game of the year against UGA.
So recency bias and the transitive property of common opponents tell us that Florida is better than Georgia. But we all know that those “metrics” are meaningless. The beast of the East will be decided Saturday in the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.
But until then, and until LSU and Alabama play (and dare I suggest, before we face one of those two teams in the SEC Championship Game?), we Gator fans will have to just be happy with our hard floor of #4 in the SEC and about #10 in the nation, and remember that after the Miami game, the vast majority of Florida fans were predicting the 2019 Gators to be a 7-win team, absolute max. Well we’ve already got 7 wins, we were the first bowl-eligible team in the SEC, and we still have 4 games left. Four regular season games left, that is.
Bask in that. It feels great!
TNBC: The New Ball Coach
Now that we’ve taken a little stock of the team and program, let’s check the oil on TNBC. We’re a long way away from knowing what kind of a ride the Dan Mullen era is going to be. Will we become the premiere program in the SEC, and have 2-3 year spurts where we’re the premier program in the nation, like we were under Spurs and Meyer? Have both the SEC and national landscapes changed and become too competitive, and we’ll instead be one of the elite, but just win titles every few years? Or will the worst case scenario happen where we are always flirting with elite, only to come up short in the biggest games again and again?
I say that the last scenario is a worst-case, to underline that even though that’s far below our desire and expectations, we might be able to appreciate how great it will be just to be a consistent winner again, an upper echelon perennial top-10 team again.
Because no matter what we think, or what we know, or what we think we know, things could be a lot worse at Florida. We could still have Will Muschamp, for instance. Imagine what is going on in the psyche of South Carina nation this week. They just knocked off top-5 Georgia – between the hedges – and were as high as the program has been since toppling Alabama under Steve Spurrier. Then the next week, they host top-10 Florida, and lead in the 3rd quarter 17-10…Florida is struggling mightily to get an offense generated in the often driving rain, and SC is barely over a quarter away from doing what the program has never done before: beat 2 top-10 teams in consecutive weeks. The Muschamp plan is FINALLY coming together. The ‘Cocks are poised to grab the mantle as he best team in the East this year, and for the future, the sky is the limit!
Then on the VERY next play, Florida busts a 75-yard touchdown run and never looks back. Then the very next week, they get blown out by an absolutely miserable Tennessee team. Blown. The Hades. Out.
In 5 short quarters, they went from precipice of greatness to unmitigated, unadulterated disaster. Muschamp is always going to Muschamp.
And Mullen is always going to Mullen. We know that Mullening is winning a LOT, always getting more out of his players than other coaches, and always having that Spurrieresque knack for calling great games on offense and mixing in sometimes jaw-dropping, always entertaining trick plays.
What we don’t know yet is if Mullening means winning championships. It did when he was the offensive coordinator, but this is another level. He’s got the boys poised for a run, just one victory in Jacksonville away from a virtual lock for winning the SEC East title and playing for the SEC championship in Atlanta. And that’s 1 or 2 years ahead of schedule, at least.
What You Know
One last commentary on Dan Mullen. Great Coaching is not just knowing what your players and team can do, and getting the most out of that ceiling. It is also knowing what your players can NOT do, and coaching around such limitations.
To be a successful coach, you must know what your players can do. And what they can’t do. Mullen has demonstrated this often at Florida, Mississippi State and at Florida again. But I think the axiom is better proven by what it looks like when a head coach doesn’t demonstrate this.
Auburn’s Gus Malzahn gave us another great example Saturday in Baton Rouge. He continued to ask his true freshman quarterback Bo Nix to do things against LSU that he simply can’t do. Just as he did against Florida. Things Gus knows or should know he can’t do. Mullen doesn’t do that with his quarterbacks, or any other players, even to the point of great frustration to UF fans. In the Auburn pregame in the locker room this year, Coach Mullen even told the team he was not asking them to do anything they can’t do. He put it in those exact words. And he didn’t and doesn’t.
Gus is a bad coach. Because only bad coaches do this. I don’t care what he might know about offensive Xs and Os. I don’t care what kind of motivator he is. He stole a national title from his players in 2013, and he’s done nothing since then but consistently underachieve with his talent. Mullen has done the opposite.
As I watch Gus abuse Bo Nix’s psyche this way, I am reminded of another bad coach who makes a ton of money messing up kids’ football development. Asking players to do what they can’t do. Like asking defensive ends to play tight end, and then asking those defensive ends who can’t catch the ball to be the team’s go-to receivers in the red zone. Something the head coach knew they couldn’t do. Something every coach, every fan, and every inanimate object in the stadium knew they couldn’t do. But I’ve already talked enough about Will Muschamp.
That’s all, folks!
All the best,
Your friends at Gator Country
…where it’s GREAT to be a FLORIDA GATOR!