It’s Groundhog Day as Dan Mullen’s 2021 early signing day looks a lot like 2018, 2019 and 2020

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Early signing day snuck up on me this year. With the Gators competing for high-level prizes on the field, and with the season being pushed back due to COVID, the biggest day associated with building a program came on the Wednesday before the biggest game of the year so far, the SEC Championship.

You might have noticed that I haven’t written much about recruiting lately.

One of the reasons is that there’s actual high-quality football going on (excluding last week against LSU). Another reason is that I’ve said my piece and you can judge Dan Mullen within the framework that this site (and others) have put forth.

But the biggest reason is that the story is the exact same.

Dan Mullen’s initial class in 2018 had a 247Sports average playing rating of 90.75. His 2019 and 2020 classes had average player ratings of 90.56 and 90.74, respectively.

After early signing day 2021, Florida’s class stands at an average player rating of Heading into early signing day, Florida’s 2021 class stands at 90.10.

Give me a second while I steal the groundhog from Brian Doyle Murray and drive it off the cliff.

To be honest though, at this point that kind of class rating is exactly what we should expect at this point. Mullen did the exact same thing on the trail when he was at Mississippi State.

Recruiting by Dan Mullen at Mississippi State and Florida from 2009-2021. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

What the chart above shows is the 247Sports average recruiting rating for all of Mullen’s classes at Mississippi State and at Florida. There’s quite a lot of noise in the Mississippi State data, but the take-home is that only one class ranked better than his first class.

The same appears to be true in his time at Florida. You could actually make an argument that the rankings are going in the wrong direction, but I think that’s probably noise rather than a trend at this point.

But what it does suggest is that the level of player that Mullen has been bringing in is the exact level of player that he’s going to continue to bring in. In one respect, that’s great because Mullen is now 29-7 thus far in his first three seasons.

But it does mean that we need to take a closer look at each class, as Mullen is trying to thread a needle.

Championship Classes

Florida’s last four classes (2017-2020) have averaged a national ranking of 10.8.

That is well within the range of teams that win National Championships, but it’s towards the low end. I looked at this back in 2018 and found that the average national recruiting ranking the four years prior to winning the title from 2004-2017 was 6.1. The minimum was 14.8.

So that means Florida in 2020 was below average but above the minimum requirement.

So what did I learn when I looked at the teams at the bottom of the spectrum? Well, the “worst” team to win the title was Auburn in 2010. Those Tigers had wide variation in its recruiting classes the four years’ prior, placing 9th, 21st, 23rd and 6th. Of course, that team also had a transfer QB named Cam Newton.

Newton was awesome that year, putting up a QB rating of 182.0 and rushing for 1,473 yards for a Yard above Replacement (YAR) value of 3.10 (remember, average is 0.0 and Heisman-level is 2.0). But even with that performance, Auburn still had to go 7-0 in one-score games to win the title. That’s an incredible amount of luck.

The next team on the list is 2016 Clemson. Those Tigers had a national recruiting ranking average of 12.8 and had a big-time QB in Deshaun Watson. That team went 7-1 in one-score games, including the 35-31 win over Alabama in the championship game.

2004 USC? 8.0 national recruiting ranking average. Matt Leinart at QB. 4-0 in one-score games.

Florida came really close to getting to the playoff this year. Perhaps not a coincidence, they have a recruiting ranking of 10.8, a Heisman-level QB in Kyle Trask, but went 0-2 in one-score games.

It turns out, when you don’t have elite level talent all over the field, you have to get lucky.

Positional Dependence

It also means you have to spread out where you are recruiting talent.

In the 2017 to 2020 recruiting classes, including transfers Florida recruited zero top-100 ranked safeties and one top-100 offensive lineman (Richard Gouraige, I’m counting Tedarrell Slaton as a DT).

Perhaps not a coincidence, the weakest links on the 2020 Gators have been at safety and offensive line.

In that same time period, the Gators have recruited seven safeties overall and seven of them have been considered blue-chip (i.e. 4 or 5-star) recruits. Now some of the players who were recruited classified as corners (Brad Stewart, Shawn Davis) have been moved to safety but some who were recruited as safeties (Amari Burney) have been moved to linebacker.

Yes, I’m thrilled that Florida brought in 5-star cornerback Jason Marshall. Having him and Kaiir Elam on the outside next season should be a lot of fun.

But Florida is going to need to hit on Tre’Vez Johnson, Rashad Torrence or Kamar Wilcoxson at safety. The numbers say based on their recruiting rankings that only one of those guys is probably going to be NFL-caliber, which means you need to find that additional guy somewhere else.

But Florida again didn’t bring in a top-100 safety in this class. Corey Collier (110th nationally) is really, really close. Or maybe the Gators decide to have 2020 recruit Jahari Rogers (87th nationally) play STAR, especially if Elam and Marshall are locking things down at corner.

Maybe Trey Dean steps up and becomes a solid starter in his second year back at safety. Or maybe Marco Wilson comes back in 2021 and redeems himself for the cleat toss by locking things down.

Grading this class

This class isn’t elite, but it is pretty good.

Top-10 classes are necessary building blocks. And clearly when you look at history, you can win championships without consistently being in the top-5.

History also tells us that it does require excellent QB play and a lot of luck. Additionally, it also requires clustering of All-SEC players from particular classes, as outlined by my colleague Bill Sikes a couple of weeks ago.

That’s really been the problem with 2020. Florida was able to convert recruits Kyle Trask, Kadarius Toney and Kyle Pitts into All-SEC players on the offensive side of the ball. I’m not sure there are any All-SEC players on the defensive side, unless you think Kaiir Elam may sneak onto the third team.

But from this class, Marshall should be able to come in and contribute immediately. If the Gators can lock down both cornerback spots, that will really increase the flexibility that they have on the back end.

Jeremiah Williams is a good player, but I have my doubts that he’s going to contribute right away. That’s because he’s 6’3” and 224 pounds, which is a little bit bigger than Khris Bogle but not by much. It has taken Bogle a while to break into the lineup because Florida has so many guys who can play the Buck position, so I do wonder whether Williams will get a whole lot of playing time early.

However, I expect Tyreak Sapp to get a lot of playing time next year. A strong side defensive end who weighs 255 pounds, Sapp is someone who would free up Zachary Carter to slide inside if needed. With the likely departures of Kyrie Campbell and Tedarrell Slaton – and zero blue-chip defensive tackles signed this cycle – flexibility up-front is going to be paramount.

And while it may please many Gators fans, 2021 will likely see the departures of Shawn Davis, Donovan Stiner, Brad Stewart and Marco Wilson. Obviously, those guys haven’t had very good seasons, but that’s also a lot of experience to lose at the Star and safety positions.

Tre’Vez Johnson, Rashad Torrence and Kamar Wilcoxson will get chances for some playing time, but so should Corey Collier, a 170 pound safety from Miami Palmetto High School. Add to that Donovan McMillon, a safety from Canonsburg, PA and Florida has done a good job of bringing in safeties with significant upside in this class.

You can’t say the same thing on the offensive line.

The Gators are bringing in five offensive linemen, but only Yousef Mugharbil fits in the blue-chip category as a 4-star guard. One potential wild card is Deyavie Hammond, who committed to the Gators in 2019 as a 4-star guard out of Lakeland but wound up having to go to junior college. He’s now ranked as a 3-star, but he was the number one ranked guard coming out of Juco.

The Gators are still in the running for 5-star (11th nationally) tackle Tristan Leigh. If they can add Leigh, that would be a huge deal given the struggles the team has had at that position the past two seasons.

Takeaway

Early signing day has really supplanted national signing day as the main event when it comes to recruiting.

There may be some movement around the edges – particularly with Leigh – but the reality is that Florida is pretty much set where it is going to end up, ranked 8th nationally in the 247Sports rankings.

The Gators do have 26 commits, which is more than some of the teams with higher average player ratings who trail in the rankings. That means that Florida isn’t going to move up higher than 8th but could slide down 2-3 slots depending on what happens in February.

Is that good enough? Well, that’s the big question.

Lots of fans saw depth issues on the defense in 2020. All season long fans called for younger guys to be inserted, but what they were maybe missing is how many young players are missing from the 2018 class.

The guys I mentioned earlier (Stiner, Davis, Wilson, and Stewart) were all signed in 2017. In 2018, the Gators only signed three defensive backs, all safeties. Randy Russell had to retire for medical reasons, Amari Burney is no longer playing safety and Trey Dean couldn’t supplant the starters despite showing flashes.

In fact, if you look at the 2018 class, the attrition is remarkable. Justin Watkins, Lucas Krull, Malik Langham, Iverson Clement, Noah Banks, John Huggins, Chris Bleich and Randy Russell are all gone. I actually look at that and am really impressed that Mullen was able to piece together an 8-2 season.

Of course, 8-2 isn’t good enough in Gainesville, at least not long-term. Based on what we’ve seen historically, that means Florida is going to have to get elite QB play and have some luck in one-score games.

The departure of Kyle Trask makes that an unlikely occurrence for 2021, as I don’t think it’s fair to expect Emory Jones to put up that kind of performance as a first-time starter, especially with the departures of Kadarius Toney and Kyle Pitts.

But that’s what Mullen is going to need to do to get to where he – and we – want to go. I’m not sure I could pick a better coach when you say that you have coax elite play out of your QB.

The hope was that as Mullen rebuilt the program on the field that recruiting would pick up. That hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t think we should expect it to. Mullen is who he is. An average recruiter (for Florida) who is an outstanding in-game coach and talent developer.

That may or may not be enough to take down Georgia and Alabama regularly. I suspect it won’t be, at least not on a regular basis.

But Mullen has proven to be an even better coach than I thought he was coming in. He avoided a third-year dip in 2020 the same way the Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer were able to avoid it in their third years, as opposed to the losing records put up by Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain in their third years.

It’s an interesting experiment. He’s trying to build a program in a way that other coaches typically don’t. It may work. It may not. But it is different.

And it’s fascinating to take a step back to see if he can pull it off.