Coaching quality: The Case against Kirby Smart (and for Dan Mullen)

Kirby Smart is a great recruiter, but an average coach. Dan Mullen is an average recruiter, but a great coach.

Both fan bases may view that characterization as a swipe, but it’s true based on objective data.

Support my daughter by buying her book. Aimed at ages 3-8, it has a Gator family defeating Florida’s rivals to accomplish their goals together.

I’ve written a lot about recruiting, both because it is important and because it is the one area that if Mullen could improve, I believe he’d win at a championship-level consistently. Though without truly elite recruiting, Mullen makes things fun for me because it forces the question of whether coaching or recruiting is truly the difference maker.

Smart helps force the question in the other direction. There’s no doubt that he is an elite recruiter, on-par with his mentor Nick Saban. That has paid off the past three seasons as Georgia has won the SEC East three straight times and has one SEC Championship.

And while Georgia fans might rue as bad luck the blown coverage against Alabama in the National Championship Game two years ago, the truth is that you can find plays in that game – and others – where Smart has made the wrong coaching decision.

It turns out, that shows up in the numbers.

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, you’ve probably seen a meme showing that Mark Richt’s first four years at Georgia produced one SEC Championship and a 42-10 (.808) record. That same meme points out that Smart’s record in his first four seasons is 44-12 (.786), also with one SEC Championship.

But forget about Richt’s first four years, Smart’s .786 winning percentage is only slightly better than Richt’s last four seasons (.755). I think it’s a valid question to ask whether Smart is just Richt but with slightly better players.

That shows up if you look at how Smart has fared using ESPN’s FPI.

Average recruiting rank against average ESPN FPI ranking for a group of SEC head coaches. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

This is a list of SEC coaches who showed up on 247Sports list of the 25 best coaches in college football. But what I’ve done is looked at how they’ve recruited (since 2011) versus how their teams have performed.

What you see is that Mike Leach and Dan Mullen are the only coaches who have outperformed their recruiting ranking. Kirby Smart ends up third from the bottom. And yes, this is impacted by his first season in Athens, but that excuse hasn’t drug Mullen down, now has it?

But let’s compare Smart to Richt. From 2011-2015, Richt averaged a national recruiting ranking of 8.4, but his teams finished with an average FPI of 12.0, better than Smart’s 13.0. Meanwhile, Mullen’s predecessor’s had a recruiting average of 10.0 and an FPI of 28.1 while Mullen has a recruiting average of 12.5 with an FPI of 10.0 in his two years at Florida.

Still not convinced Mullen is superior at developing and getting talent to perform?

For the 2016 and 2017 seasons, I examined how often teams with more talent win against more talented and less talented opponents. Here’s the result.

How teams of varying talent (as measured by the 247Sports roster ratings) faired against more and less talented opponents in 2016 and 2017. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Teams with Smart’s talent profile (1-10) win against more talented teams 38.5 percent of the time and against less talented teams 78.9 percent of the time. Teams with Mullen’s talent profile (20-30 at Mississippi State and 10-20 at Florida) win much less often.

But that’s not what’s happened in real life.

Kirby Smart and Dan Mullen’s records against more talented, less talented and top-25 talented opponents. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Since 2016, Smart has put up an oh-fer against more talented teams while Mullen has won 50 percent of his games. Mullen has actually out performed Smart against less talented teams too, though Smart has won those games at an acceptable clip.

But the thing that shocked me when I compiled these numbers is the last column. Both Smart and Mullen have identical 17-10 records against teams with top-25 talent (according to 247Sports roster rankings). That’s in a situation where Smart had more talent than 25 of his 27 opponents while Mullen only had more talent than 5 of his.

It also includes two years where Mullen was at Mississippi State. In those seasons, Mullen went 6-7 against Top-25 talent. With the talent upgrade he’s enjoyed at Florida, he’s 11-2 against Top-25 talented teams since becoming a Gator while Smart is 9-5 during those seasons.

So maybe Georgia just faced more difficult opponents? Nope.

Since 2016, Mullen has lost to only one team with a talent ranking outside of the top-10 (Ole Miss, ranked 18th in 2017). His other losses have come to the big boys: Alabama, LSU, Georgia and Auburn. The average talent ranking of his losses: 5.3

Meanwhile, Smart has lost to four teams outside of the top-10 (Tennessee (14), Florida (15) and Ole Miss (16) in 2016 and South Carolina (21) in 2019). The average talent ranking of his losses: 9.8. He’s 2-6 against top-10 talented teams, 0-4 in the last two seasons.

In that same timeframe, Mullen has defeated five teams ranked in the top-10 of the talent rankings (2017 LSU (6), 2018 LSU (7), 2018 FSU (5), 2018 Michigan (8), 2019 FSU (6)). Smart has only defeated one top-10 talented team in the same timeframe (2016 Auburn (7)).

The average talent ranking of wins for Mullen is 14.5 against 14.7 for Smart.

Takeaway

None of this takes away the fact that Georgia has now won three straight against Florida, two against Mullen. It turns out, Smart’s teams are able to flex their muscles against teams with slightly less talent than them.

But even the playing field, and Smart immediately starts to look mortal. In fact, even the playing field and he starts to look like a fairly pedestrian coach.

You can actually see this even further if you look at the 2017 recruiting class. Georgia has had seven players drafted from that class. But Jacob Eason transferred, Isaac Nauta underperformed and only one 3-star recruit (Solomon Kindley) was drafted out of eight 3-star recruits (12.5%).

Again, compare to Mullen’s 2017 class at Florida (which he didn’t recruit). He also had seven players drafted. But four of those players were 3-star recruits: Lamical Perine, Vosean Joseph, Jachai Polite and Jawaan Taylor. All four of them were drafted higher than Kindley.

It’s incredibly frustrating (as a Florida fan) to know that all the numbers point towards having a better on-field coach but getting your butt kicked repeatedly on the recruiting trail. But I’d be equally frustrated as a Georgia fan watching Smart blow the immense talent advantage he has against teams Georgia has no business losing to.

South Carolina last year is just one example. He has made coaching decisions that cost Georgia dearly each of the last two times they’ve faced Alabama. His team came out completely unprepared against LSU in a 36-16 drubbing in 2018 and looked completely uncompetitive against the Tigers in the SEC Championship Game in 2019.

Now he has to break in a new quarterback, manage a QB controversy now that J.T. Daniels is eligible, and integrate a new offensive system with Covid-19 swirling around the program.

Hall of Fame 49ers Coach Bill Walsh, in his seminal book “Finding the Winning Edge”, stated the following in the very first page of his book.

“Over the years, I have always accepted the fact that one of the most critical roles a coach has is to utilize his players to their full potential. Against equal competition, great coaches are distinguished by their ability to fully utilize the talents of their individual players.”

He’s describing Dan Mullen, not Kirby Smart.

Featured image used under Creative Commons license courtesy Matt Velazquez