I hope you find that I have a unique voice that adds to the discourse of Gators football. If you have enjoyed Read and Reaction over the past two years, please consider supporting the website by contributing to my Patreon or buy some Gator gear for a loved one for Christmas from the links below. I am so appreciative that you take the time to read my work. Thank you!
Coming into early signing day, recruiting experts felt that the Gators had a chance to have a really good day.
#Gators fans are gonna be happy this week. pic.twitter.com/KlPWSRTGbC
— Mike Farrell (@rivalsmike) December 17, 2019
Boy, were they wrong.
With the smoke cleared, Florida ranks eighth nationally according to the 247Sports Composite rankings. More importantly, the Gators rank sixth in the SEC. And more than that, there is a definitive separation between Florida and Alabama, Georgia and LSU, the three teams Florida is going to have to play to win the SEC.
All is not lost. These players are going to do a good job representing the Gators. Florida is going to win a bunch of games with them making big plays and shutting down the opposition.
But if history is any guide, I’m just not sure they’re going to make enough of those plays to win either an SEC or National Championship.
Evaluating the Class
This is Dan Mullen’s third recruiting class at Florida.
He has gone 20-5 on the field and turned a terrible offense into a pretty good one. He has helped develop Feleipe Franks into a really good QB. He transitioned to a pass-heavy offense to play to the strengths of backup QB Kyle Trask and his stable of wide receivers.
He’s done all he can to show the results on the field that I was told I needed to wait for when I raised some concerns about recruiting prior to last season.
Yet, this class has zero (!) top-100 recruits on the offensive side of the ball. His 2019 class had zero (!) top-100 recruits on the offensive side of the ball. The Gators have four top-100 recruits on the offensive side of the ball in the last four cycles.
Georgia has six…..this year.
But perhaps the biggest flashing warning light is the following:
Third-year recruiting classes for last five Gators head coaches. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)
Anytime your recruiting is being compared to Jim McElwain, that’s a problem.
Because Florida’s class is pretty full, teams like Texas, Notre Dame and Oklahoma have an opportunity to pass the Gators, potentially sinking the Gators below eighth.
But more critically, there is really a lack of top-end talent.
This past offseason, I went back and looked at how often players ranked at various spots in the 247Sports rankings were drafted for the 2013 and 2014 classes.
What I found was that players ranked in the top-15 got drafted 78 percent of the time. That dropped to 57 percent for players ranked 15-30 and 29 percent for player ranked 76-90. The likelihood of getting drafted then leveled off to around 20 percent for players ranked 101-300.
The reality is that you either need to focus on those high-end (i.e. 5-star) players or you need a ton of players in that 100-300 range to work out. Those high-end guys usually make an immediately impact as well.
Clemson is often held up as a model that Florida is following. The Tigers signed two top-100 players in Dabo Swinney’s first two classes (2009 and 2010). The Tigers went 15-12 in those two years.
In the 2011 class, Swinney signed five top-100 players. Sammy Watkins caught 82 passes that season (led the team). Stephone Anthony had five tackles for loss and two sacks. Mike Bellamy rushed for 343 yards. Three of the five top-100 players eventually were drafted.
That 2011 team was led by a 5-star QB (Tajh Boyd). The leading rusher was Andre Ellington (ranked 107th, so just barely outside of the top-100. It also played in a weak conference and got dismantled by West Virginia 70-33 in the Orange Bowl.
Clemson went on to play for the National Championship in 2015. The prior recruiting class, they signed six top-100 players. They added six more in 2016 prior to winning the championship and another eight the class prior to winning again in 2018.
My point isn’t that the Gators can’t follow the Clemson model. It’s that Clemson’s recruiting picked up considerably before the Tigers started winning. Then it went up another level before the Tigers started winning championships.
Florida’s 247Sports average recruiting ranking was 90.75 in 2018, 91.06 in 2019 and is currently at 90.04 in 2020. That is an enormous step up from Jim McElwain (87.26, 88.72 and 89.11 in his three years) and Mullen should be lauded for that. He also should be lauded for his work with the QBs and the toughness that he has instilled in his players.
But the reality is that based on the recruiting trends, we should expect Florida to be just about as good this upcoming season as it was the year before.
And unlike Clemson, Florida has to go through some pretty tough teams to take the next step.
With the 2020 class, Georgia and Alabama have essentially maintained the pace they were at before. But LSU is the SEC team who has made the recruiting jump. The Tigers were ranked 15th nationally in 2018 and jumped to 5th for the 2019 class. And the 2020 class has taken another leap, with an increase in average player rating from 90.75 to 92.93.
It’s easy to attribute that to this season, but the Tigers were recruiting at that elevated level before Joe Burrow started playing well.
History says the same thing will need to happen before Florida takes a huge step forward.
Takeaway
I think Dan Mullen is a damn good football coach. And he’s proven that he can take top-10 recruiting classes and win at a level for his team to finish in the top-10 nationally.
But at the close of the early signing period of his third recruiting class, the truth is unavoidable. He struggles to recruit at a truly elite level.
Let me be clear. Florida just got better today by signing a bunch of really good football players. That’s especially true on the defensive side of the ball, where the defensive line recruiting really shined.
I have no doubt that these players are going to represent the university well and lead the school to a bunch of wins. And with Mullen in charge, I’m sure there will be a handful who will overachieve.
But even with all that, competing with Georgia, LSU and Alabama is going to be difficult. Basically, this recruiting class sets Florida up to be exactly what it has been the past two seasons. Good enough to get up all of our hopes, but not quite good enough to run the SEC gauntlet to a championship.
For some fans, that isn’t enough. A bunch of wins over Kentucky and Missouri isn’t going to be seen as a success now that Mullen has established that as his baseline. They want Georgia and they want championships.
And those are expectations Mullen has set for himself. He always references the “Gator Standard” when talking about his program. Like it or not, the Gator Standard means SEC and National Championships.
At the end of the day, Mullen is getting paid $6 million per season to manage a program. That includes coaching at an elite level. It includes developing talent at an elite level. But it also includes recruiting at an elite level.
Some might blame the recruiting woes on certain assistants….but Mullen hired them. And let’s not forget that wide receiver coach Billy Gonzalez – the ire of much of today’s criticism – was once the primary recruiter for Percy Harvin.
Some might blame the recruiting woes on other programs bending the rules regarding player compensation….but the reality is that all programs are bending to some degree (don’t kid yourself) and so Florida needs to figure out a way to do it better.
I don’t want to hear about how this staff’s evaluations of players are different than the recruiting services. There is a large body of evidence that these rankings matter. To believe that a staff can canvass the same breadth of players that people paid to put together these rankings do is laughable.
Do these services make mistakes? Absolutely. But so do staffs that have the hubris to believe that they know better than everyone else while the programs that are following the rankings keep winning big. And it’s also not like Florida wasn’t trying to recruit a bunch of the same players who make up Georgia and Alabama’s classes. Those players just didn’t choose the Gators.
Following the Missouri game in 2018 – after the Gators laid an egg for the second game in a row – Mullen came out with a quote that the players and fans rallied around.
“They keep score. Someone wins and someone loses. I don’t care what we’re doing. If you want to thumb wrestle me right now I’ll kick your ass.” – Dan Mullen
They keep score for recruiting too. And right now, Mullen isn’t the one doing the kicking.