Mullen vs. McElwain: Reasons why Dan Mullen may be able to beat the third-year dip in 2020

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Dan Mullen has just completed his second season as head coach at Florida, going 21-5 in the process.

Things are looking up for the Gators program. On the field, the Gators have a functioning offense. Recruiting is improving, albeit slowly. There have been a few disciplinary issues, but those players have been dismissed.

But we could have said that after Jim McElwain’s second season at Florida.

McElwain had just completed his second straight season of winning the SEC East. The Gators went 19-8 in McElwain’s first two years, but that included a loss of a cupcake due to the Hurricane Matthew rescheduled LSU game in 2016 and two losses to an Alabama team in the SEC Championship Game that were expected.

The point isn’t that McElwain’s record was better than Mullen. It wasn’t. The point is that there was plenty of reason to believe that McElwain had the Gators on the right track, but then the bottom fell out.

So what makes me more confident that the same thing won’t happen to Mullen?

Recruiting

Jim McElwain was a terrible recruiter. Dan Mullen is not.

I’ve criticized Mullen for his recruiting, and I think he has deserved some of that criticism. Florida is one of the premier programs in the country and he should be able to get top-tier classes regularly, but he hasn’t done that yet.

But McElwain’s recruiting borders on dereliction of duty.

If Mullen’s 2020 class stays right where it is, he will have averaged a top-10 class over his three years at Florida. McElwain sits at the 15th best program in the country, and the seventh best in the SEC.

That translates to Mullen having a ton more firepower coming into 2020. McElwain had a total of seven top-100 players from his three classes to draw on, and only 13 players ranked from 101-300. Mullen has 11 top-100 players and 24 players ranked 101-300 to rely on in 2020.

I wrote last week about how performance in year three is typically tied to the first class of a coach, and many times that means a dip in performance because of the difficulty of recruiting during a transition.

This was certainly true for McElwain, as we should have expected a dip in 2017 just based on his having the 21st ranked class in 2015. You can actually make the same argument for Mullen, as his 2018 transition class was only ranked 14th, below where the Gators have ended up the past two seasons.

But Mullen has bolstered that 2018 class recently. With the additions of 5-star running back Lorenzo Lingard and 5-star defensive end Brenton Cox via transfer, not only has Mullen added two top-100 players, but he’s added potential difference makers.

While I am loathe to do so because every school has attrition and brings in transfers, I do think it is instructive to see where Florida’s 2018 class would have been with the additions of Lingard and Cox.

Florida’s class that year finished at 259.6 points, good for 14th, just narrowly behind Oregon. The additions of Cox and Lingard bring that point total up to 278.09, which would have been good enough for 9th.

Now, if we’re going to play that game, we should also probably subtract the attrition that Florida has seen from that class as well. With Justin Watkins, Lucas Krull, Malik Langham, Noah Banks, John Huggins, Chris Bleich and Randy Russell no longer playing for the Gators, the point total falls to 254.72, even with Lingard and Cox.

But that still would have been six spots ahead of McElwain’s 2015 class, with more top-100 and top-300 talent. Combine that with classes in 2019 and 2020 that are better than McElwain’s classes in 2016 and 2017, and the Gators just have more talent coming into 2020 than they did coming into 2017.

Suspensions

Gator Nation was in shock when suspensions for a credit card scandal were announced just prior to the opener against Michigan in 2017 but there was still hope the team would compete. Looking back, there shouldn’t have been.

If we do the same exercise with McElwain’s 2015 class factoring in the suspensions that we just did with Mullen’s 2018 class, things get really ugly. Subtracting Jordan Scarlett, Antonio Callaway and Keivonnis Davis lowers the Gators point total to 213.39, which would have ranked 29th.

Add to that the transfer of Jordan Cronkrite and D’Anfernee McGriff not qualifying, and Florida only had Martez Ivey and CeCe Jefferson as blue chip recruits eligible to play.

That lack of depth was further exacerbated by the rest of the suspensions. While Kadeem Telfort, Richerd Desir-Jones, Jordan Smith, James Houston, Ventrell Miller and Rick Wells may not have been big contributors, there wasn’t anybody to step in when injuries mounted.

Hopefully Mullen has no such issues.

If he’s able to avoid offseason shenanigans that affect his 2018 class, he should get significant contributions from at least seven of his 10 top-300 recruits: Jacob Copeland, Richard Gouraige, Emory Jones, Kyle Pitts, Amari Burney, Trey Dean, and Dameon Pierce. He also still has a chance to get contributions from another two (Andrew Chatfield and David Reese).

So while McElwain was handcuffed by having to rely on ultra-young players, Mullen will be able to rely on experienced guys who have already contributed at multiple areas. That makes a huge difference.

An actual, functioning offense

McElwain was able to get to two straight SEC Championship Games, but that didn’t have a lot to do with his offensive brilliance.

The Gators ranked 102nd and 100th in yards per play gained in 2015 and 2016 and that continued in 2017. Despite the protestations of the fan base, Douglas K. Nussmeier was allowed to continue to guide the offense and the Gators continued to be putrid on that side of the ball.

Florida actually got worse on offense in 2017 (104th in yards per play gained). Yet, McElwain never made any adjustments at all.

The Gators offenses in 2015 and 2016 were fairly similar, in that they both passed the ball better than they ran it. The 2015 team ranked 113th in yards per rush attempt and 62nd in yards per pass attempt. The 2016 team ranked 103rd and 81st in those categories. Yet, McElwain and Nussmeier ran the ball 56 percent of the time in 2015 and 52 percent of the time in 2016.

In 2017 – with a passing offense that just couldn’t get the job done – McElwain and Co. ran the ball the exact same 56 percent of the time that they did in 2015.

This is perhaps the thing that differentiates McElwain and Mullen the most and gives me the most confidence that we won’t see a repeat of 2017. Not only are Mullen’s offenses pretty good (32nd and 35th in yards per play in 2018 and 2019), but Mullen plays to their strengths.

The 2018 offense ranked 19th in yards per rush attempt and 71st in yard per pass attempt. Mullen ran the ball 61 percent of the time. The 2019 offense was the complete opposite, ranking 106th in yards per rush and 26th in yards per pass. Mullen ran the ball 44 percent of the time.

Mullen adjusts to his personnel just about as well as anyone out there. And in the case of relying on the passing game, that was an in-season adjustment.

In Florida’s first three games up until the third-quarter injury to Feleipe Franks, Florida ran the ball 85 times and threw it 80 and ran the ball more than they threw it in all three. He tried again against Tennessee (37 rush, 34 pass) and Towson (32 rush, 28 pass), but made the switch against Auburn (33 rush, 39 pass).

That’s even more impressive because the Gators led that game the whole way. They could have tried to shorten the game by running it, but Mullen understood that his team needed to throw the ball to get out with a win.

By the time Florida got to its annual matchup with FSU, there wasn’t even any pretense anymore. The Gators threw the ball 48 times against 25 running plays. That’s who they were.

And Mullen’s ability to shift mid-season when McElwain could not is why the Gators were able to have a functioning offense.

Beat who you’re supposed to beat

The headline of my story after Florida beat Vanderbilt was “Brighter days ahead as Florida beat Vandy the way Florida is supposed to beat Vandy.”

That was how I felt after enduring story after story about how Vanderbilt always gave Florida trouble. That was a recent phenomenon though, because Vanderbilt never gave Florida trouble when Steve Spurrier or Urban Meyer were coach. The Commodores were only an issue under Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain.

That “Vandy Effect” showed elsewhere under the McElwain regime. Perhaps obscured by the big win over Ole Miss in 2015, the Gators were really poor against inferior opponents in 2015 and 2016 under Mac. Conversely, Mullen has been excellent thus far.

If you examine Florida’s opponents in both coaches’ first two seasons, what you find is that Mullen is better against every set of opponents (based on FPI at the end of the season) except for top-5 teams. This is what I mean by the Ole Miss win obscuring things. The four touchdown victory over the Rebels is the only thing keeping this from being a clean sweep.

But look at all the other comparisons. Both coaches faced three opponents ranked 6-10, but Mullen’s teams have been 10.5 points better. Mullen has faced nine opponents ranked 26-50 vs. seven for McElwain, but has been nearly two touchdowns better. And against cupcakes, Mullen is absolutely dominating while McElwain’s teams won by between 7-10 points.

Point differential does a much better job of telling us about the true talent of a team than record. What this says is that Mullen is winning the games against the teams he should by the scores he should. You can’t say the same about McElwain.

One score victories

This is actually a place where I think McElwain didn’t get enough credit.

In his first two seasons, Mac was 7-1 in one-score games. In fact, he was 9-1 in one-score games after the Heave to Cleve against Tennessee and the 28-27 escape against Kentucky after the Wildcats decided covering Gators wide receivers was overrated.

I do think some of that success for McElwain was because of his coaching. He was much more aggressive on fourth down than most coaches are and it paid off for him multiple times. The result is that McElwain’s actual win percentage was higher than you would expect for the Gators score differential.

The problem is that one-score game results also have a significant amount of luck attached to them. That luck ran out for McElwain against LSU (16-17), Texas A&M (17-19) and South Carolina (20-28), sandwiched around two humbling losses to Georgia and Missouri.

Mullen has also had success in one-score games, as the Gators are 6-1 during his stead. The difference is that the average FPI of the opponents that Mullen has played in one-score tilts is 25.3 vs. 50.1 for McElwain.

Yes, Mullen has been lucky to be so successful in one-score games. But he’s been playing close games against the teams you’re supposed to play close games against.

And he has also been aggressive on fourth down as well, averaging 22.5 fourth down attempts per season against FBS opponents. McElwain averaged 21.5 in 2015 and 2016. Will Muschamp averaged 13.5 fourth-down attempts in his stint as Gators coach. Muschamp’s record in close games? 9-10.

So the next time you see Mullen going for it on fourth down, be assured he’s doing the right thing because it’s the opposite of what Will Muschamp would do.

Takeaway

I wrote last week that 2020 was the year that Florida had to make its move.

There is a ton of turnover at QB in the SEC. Georgia is losing a ton on offense and bringing in a graduate transfer QB with an unfavorable profile. Since I wrote that, the Bulldogs have brought in a new offensive coordinator and LSU’s entire team seems to have declared for the NFL and they’ve lost both Joe Brady and Dave Aranda. Mighty Alabama is going to have to replace Tua. FSU is down more than they have been since Bobby Bowden took over there.

But there’s often a third-year dip for head coaches. We saw it with Steve Spurrier (10-2 to 9-4). We saw it with Urban Meyer (13-1 to 9-4). We saw it with Will Muschamp (11-2 to 4-8). And we saw it with Jim McElwain (9-4 to 4-7, fired).

The schedule is way easier for Florida in 2020 than it has been recently. And as I said earlier, Mullen has feasted on inferior teams thus far in his time at Florida. So Eastern Washington, South Alabama, Vanderbilt, Missouri, New Mexico State and Florida State should be guaranteed wins.

Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina and Ole Miss fit the profiles of those nine opponents who were between 26-50 in the FPI that Mullen has faced and gone 8-1, with the only loss to Kentucky early in his tenure.

So that puts Florida at 10 wins with games against LSU at home and Georgia in Jacksonville.

I’m not sure Mullen has quite the firepower necessary to beat a truly elite team yet. But with all of the attrition on both of these teams, I’m not sure if they’re going to be elite.

Georgia brings back a ton on defense from a unit that ranked 2nd in yards per play allowed in 2019. They are going to be a force, especially if new offensive coordinator Todd Monken can get the most out of his talent.

But Kirby Smart is still the head coach. He’s been conservative in key moments since he took the reins and it has cost the Bulldogs. Monken can be the best OC in the world and it won’t matter if he’s handcuffed by Smart in a close game (10-7 in close games).

And LSU just got one of the best performances by a quarterback that we’ve seen. Joe Burrow is going to be a Bengal (sorry, Joe) and to expect even a poor imitation by Myles Brennan is expecting a lot.

All signs point towards the Gators being set up with a wide open path if they are able to take it. The stats say that Mullen is a far superior coach McElwain, both on the field and on the recruiting trail. Florida is set up to have a bunch of experienced, talented players be major contributors in 2020.

LSU will still be good. Georgia will be good too. Florida is going to have to play well to beat either.

But Dan Mullen may have a team that can do just that.

Featured imaged used under Creative Commons license courtesy Darastar