The Florida Gators announced spring game attendance of 39,476 was chosen with a specific purpose.
Florida’s main competition in the East – the Georgia Bulldogs – have gone 39 years and 476 games since its last national championship in 1980. This is something that Gators fans are fond of pointing out whenever they feel that Bulldog fans are getting mouthy.
— David Waters – Gators Breakdown (@GatorDave_SEC) March 13, 2019
This week brought Georgia reporter Mike Griffith firing back at Florida, accusing Florida A.D. Scott Stricklin of being biased in his appraisal of Georgia as one of the four best teams last season and implying that Stricklin was responsible for Georgia being left out of the playoff.
ICYMI. Just a small snippet of the 10 minute conversation pic.twitter.com/7QzYLIew1D
— Patrick Simpson (@_PatrickSimpson) April 20, 2019
That’s quite an accusation, particularly without any proof.
But added to Mullen’s repeated poking of Georgia – he took some veiled shots about lying to recruits after QB Justin Fields transferred to Ohio State – and the rivalry that was always most important to Steve Spurrier has significant juice again.
But talking trash and backing it up are two completely different things. Which coach is better prepared to do just that?
Recruiting
This one should be pretty obvious. Mullen is a good recruiter. Kirby Smart is an elite recruiter.
Well, it’s not quite as cut and dried as that. It is true the Smart has taken Georgia recruiting to a different level. But getting a job at Georgia meant that he didn’t have very far to go.
In the three years prior to Smart’s arrival in Athens, former coach Mark Richt averaged a national recruiting class ranking of 8.7 with 1.7 5-star recruits and 14 total blue chip (4 and 5-star) recruits. Smart’s first four seasons on the trail has seen an increase of the national ranking to 3.0, 5-star recruits to 4.5 and blue chip recruits to 19.
Make no mistake, that is a big deal as a national ranking of third may only be good enough for second or third in the SEC, while Florida came in ninth nationally in 2019 and fifth in the SEC.
But we should still take into account that Georgia was a great place to recruit right before Smart took over.
The same can’t be said for Florida. Because Ron Zook, Urban Meyer and Will Muschamp all recruited well, Jim McElwain seemed like an outlier. But with the proliferation of Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State’s recruiting profiles into Florida, perhaps it is fairer to compare Mullen to McElwain than to the previous three Gator head coaches.
In McElwain’s three years, his classes had a national average ranking of 14.7 with 0.7 5-stars and 8 blue chip recruits. Mullen’s first two classes have a national average ranking of 11.5 and are averaging 15 blue chip recruits, albeit without any of them being rated 5-stars.
The same improvement can be seen if we look at Mississippi State prior to Mullen’s arrival. Sylvester Croom’s last three years in Starkville produced a national recruiting ranking average of 42.3 with 2.7 blue chips. Mullen’s first three years there produced an average national ranking of 29.7 with 4.0 blue chips. Additionally, while Croom averaged 15.7 3-stars during that time, Mullen brought in 20.3.
I still think this category goes to Smart, but it’s not as obvious as just the overall numbers. To take an excellent place to recruit and make it one of the best in the country is a challenge. But Mullen has exceeded his predecessors too and so we shouldn’t just assume he’s a complete slouch.
On-Field Success
Again, this one feels like it should go Smart’s direction. After all, the Bulldogs have played for a National Championship and two SEC Championships during his three years.
But with the amount of talent he has on the field, shouldn’t that be the expectation?
Last year, I performed an analysis of the 247Sports team roster composite rankings from 2016 and 2017 and those teams’ records versus teams with more and less talent. The goal was to understand how often elite teams lost to inferior teams as a means of understanding the ability of a coach.
How teams of varying talent (as measured by the 247Sports roster ratings) fair against more and less talented opponents in 2016 and 2017. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
The takeaway shouldn’t be a surprise, as teams that have higher-level talent do better overall, against less talented teams and against more talented teams than teams with less talent overall.
But this is an average of ten different teams. How do Smart and Mullen do? Let’s take a look at Smart first.
How Kirby Smart has fared from 2016-2018 against more and less talented opponents. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
The first thing to note is that in Smart’s three years in Athens, Georgia has averaged a roster talent ranking of 4.3, meaning there are only a few teams with more talent. But in those two games against Alabama, Georgia has lost both.
Against teams less talented, Smart’s teams have gone 32-8, the 80 percent rate tracking right with what should be expected for a top-10 talented team.
However, when you dig a little bit deeper, Georgia has gone just 12-8 against teams with top-25 talent. That can’t just be excused away by the one sub-par year in 2016 either as Georgia has lost five such games in 2017 and 2018.
Compare that to Mullen. Note that this looks at his last two seasons at Mississippi State and last year’s season at Florida.
How Dan Mullen has fared from 2016-2018 against more and less talented opponents. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
Those teams have had an average talent ranking of 21.7, so there have been many more opportunities to play more talented teams for Mullen. But interestingly, his teams have gone 9-9 in such games. That 50 percent win rate is way above what you would expect for even a team with top-10 talent.
And you might have tried to excuse away Georgia’s 0-2 record by noting that those losses came to Alabama. Well, in 2016 and 2017, Mullen had to play Alabama too.
Mullen has also won against less talented teams 76 percent of the time. Again, this exceeds what we would expect for teams ranked either 11-20 or 21-30 in the talent ratings and is more in-line with what we would expect from a top-10 talented team.
And if we look at Mullen’s record versus top-25 talented teams, he sports the exact same 12-8 record that Kirby Smart has over the past three seasons. I noted that was a disappointment for Georgia – and it is – but only because Georgia has had the fourth most talented team during that time-frame.
But it’s not a disappointment for Mississippi State, or at least it shouldn’t be. Top-25 teams were almost always equal or more talented than the Bulldogs. You would expect a record below .500 for Mullen but instead he’s winning at a 60 percent clip.
This suggests that Mullen can win at the same level as Smart with less overall talent. While there is definitely still a significant talent gap between Georgia and Florida, that gap is a lot less than LSU and Mississippi State in 2017.
Game Management
I’m not a Georgia fan. I don’t watch Bulldogs games unless I’m trying to understand how Florida might attack them or if there are implications for Florida based on how Georgia plays.
Yet, I’m able to pinpoint multiple boneheaded coaching decisions by Smart over his first three years just from the limited amount of Georgia football that I have watched.
There’s this doozy against Tennessee. After taking the lead on a deep throw with ten seconds left, Smart decided to pooch the kickoff back to the Vols.
That allowed Tennessee’s returner to get a running start, and opened up lanes that wouldn’t traditionally be open on a regular kickoff. I guarantee Georgia hadn’t practiced the pooch more than their regular kickoff defense and with only ten seconds left, all they had to do was keep Tennessee out of Hail Mary range.
They did not.
This isn’t the only time that Georgia has lost a heartbreaker at the end (obviously). The next play that jumps to mind is the final play of the 2017 Championship Game against Alabama.
A blown coverage on second-and-25 like this is a pretty significant blunder. But it shouldn’t have even really come down to this.
Georgia took over the ball with 9:20 left in the game and a seven-point lead. There was an opportunity to salt the game away.
Instead, the Bulldogs ran the ball three straight times and had to punt. On third-and-2, they went to a Wildcat formation with Mecole Hardman at QB and handed the ball off to Sony Michel.
Michel getting the ball isn’t the issue. The issue is that you just announced that you’re one-dimensional against a defense that thrives on that sort of knowledge. Georgia is outnumbered at the point of attack simply because of its play call.
And of course, perhaps we have the most visible Kirby screw-up this past season.
My issue isn’t actually going for it on fourth down. If he gets the first down here, Georgia likely wins the SEC.
My issue is that for the second year in a row, Smart had someone other than Jake Fromm making decisions on key plays. Fromm has ranked near-elite using my yards above replacement (YAR) stat for two straight years (1.07 in 2017 and 0.96 in 2018). To not trust that guy at QB says something about his head coach.
Takeaway
I watched Georgia dominate Florida in 2018 (429 to 275 total yards, 0 turnovers to 3) and still Florida was only down six with 11 minutes left in the game.
The Franks fumble deep in Gators territory should have been a dagger. Instead it became a rallying point as Georgia showed no creativity on offense and was unable to punch the ball in.
Had Florida had even competent QB play that day, the score would have been much different. And the expectation is that Florida will have competent QB play in 2019.
That means that any discussion about Georgia and Florida is a discussion of the talent gap, and whether Mullen is good enough to overcome it. At some point, you need the horses to win big. But Mullen has shown he can rise to the occasion against elite competition even when his guys are overmatched.
Smart has yet to show that. And in 2019, Georgia will have out-recruited every team that it plays until the SEC Championship game. If he’s truly an elite coach, Georgia can’t just compete for the title. It has to win it.
That’s a lot of pressure for a coach who has repeatedly butchered decisions in key games and at key moments within those games.
In just the past three seasons, Smart has lost on a Hail Mary after being up three with ten seconds left to Tennessee. He has blown a two-touchdown lead to Georgia Tech in the fourth quarter at home. He has blown both 13 and 14-point leads to Alabama’s backup QB to cost his team both a National and SEC Championship. He has gotten waxed by 20 points as a touchdown favorite versus LSU.
I’m sorry to relay the hard truth to Georgia fans. Scott Stricklin isn’t the reason why Georgia didn’t play for the championship last season.
That honor lies squarely on the shoulders of Kirby Paul Smart.
Happy Easter
If you’ve ever spent any significant time in a church, chances are you’ve been hurt – or at least disappointed – by a Christian. I know from experience.
But yesterday, I went to a gathering to celebrate a family who has fulfilled the requirements of the foster care system to bring a child back home. We also got to celebrate with the foster family – our dear friends – who watched over the child while those requirements were met.
I have a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. I like facts and reason. I have a hard time believing that Noah loaded the Ark with animals two-by-two or that Moses parted the Red Sea. And while I do believe there is solid evidence for Jesus’ resurrection that Easter is celebrating today, I understand if you’re skeptical.
But the group of people that we’ve connected with through this church are some of the most loving, giving and kind people I’ve ever met. That particular family isn’t the only one in our group that is caring for a foster child.
My immediate family doesn’t live anywhere near where I do. Our family has had to learn to rely on this group of people in a way that goes beyond just being good friends. They are our family too.
Perhaps you already have that in your life. Perhaps you don’t believe you will find that in a church. I certainly didn’t think so. It required opening up to being hurt again by the very kind of people who had let me down before.
But that risk has been worth it. It has changed my life; my ability to empathize, to trust and to love.
There are still things I doubt about my faith on a daily basis. But I have no doubt that I saw God yesterday when seeing that little boy with his two families. And there was nothing more fulfilling than knowing that our family has played a small role in enabling that to happen.
I urge you to use today to seek out that kind of community; that kind of love.
Happy Easter!