Gator fans right to ask questions after three straight losses, Cotton Bowl loss

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In 2018, I wrote an article after Dan Mullen’s first spring game at Florida that got the most negative feedback of anything I’ve ever written. The pushback was so strong that I wound up inviting fans to submit rebuttals and published two of them.

The word I used to describe that game was unbecoming.

It struck me as beneath a blue-blood program to have to resort to gimmicks to make players and fans feel better about themselves. Being good at football should take care of that.

Well, after the 55-20 loss to Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl on Wednesday night, I’m back to that word again: unbecoming.

I don’t blame the players for that. I was actually really proud of the way they fought back after falling behind 17-0 early in the first quarter after Kyle Trask’s three interceptions. I think they played hard, at least in the first half. And had Keon Zipperer not dropped a Trask throw deep in Oklahoma territory at the end of the second quarter, this one would have been much more interesting.

No, in this case I think the blame lies with one entity: $4 million.

That’s the payout Florida received for getting spanked in the Cotton Bowl. It leaves a bitter taste in Gators fans mouths, and time will tell whether getting paid to be embarrassed on national TV was worth it. But make no mistake, the money is why Florida played the game.

Dan Mullen made it pretty clear in his presser after the SEC Championship that this game wasn’t going to be a priority, not committing to playing a bowl game right then. Then he sent his players home for Christmas and only hosted three days of practice prior to the game.

That’s his prerogative and he gets to run the program the way he wants. But essentially, Florida took the money and still opted-out. The optics of that are bad and unbecoming of a top-tier program. If you’re going to go, go compete. If you aren’t going to compete, then don’t go.

The Game

After a full season of carrying the team, Kyle Trask finally came back down to earth.

His three interceptions in the first quarter were killers. The first was a bad read where Oklahoma changed coverages post-snap and he didn’t recognize it. The second was a timing thing, where he threw the ball a little bit behind Kemore Gamble. The third….well, I don’t know what the hell that was.

All of a sudden, Oklahoma was up 17-0 and Florida was in catch-up mode the rest of the way.

But let’s not pretend that this game is all on Trask. Oklahoma went right down the field on its opening drive – targeting safety Donovan Stiner the entire time – to go up 7-0 while the Florida defense barely put up any resistance before Trask ever saw the field.

And Florida had an opportunity to pull within four points at the half when Trask threw a gorgeous pass to Keon Zipperer deep in Oklahoma territory. Zipperer – in what would be a theme of the night for all Gators receivers – dropped the pass and Florida was forced to settle for a 58-yard field goal attempt.

Evan McPherson’s try was short and Oklahoma went the other way for the score that really put the game away. On the drive, the Sooners converted two third downs, one a third-and-11 draw where it seemed like every Florida defender had a shot to bring the running back down and missed.

The Gators outgained the Sooners in the first half, but that’s only because Florida ran 20 more plays than Oklahoma (51-31). Oklahoma was way more efficient, averaging 8.9 yards per play compared to 6.1 for Florida.

The Sooners finished the game averaging 10.5 yards per play, which is more than three yards per attempt more allowed than the worst FBS defense this season. It’s quite a feat to be that bad, and  Florida accomplished it by giving up 11 explosive plays that totaled 391 yards.

All year long fans have wondered why younger players didn’t get more playing time instead of some of the veterans who were out there already. Well, we got our answer.

I should have seen this coming. My reasoning behind picking Florida to win close was that the defense had been bad all year anyway, and I figured that Trask would be able to do just enough to get the win because he’s usually good at finding the open man.

But just like in 2017 against Michigan when Florida went out onto the field severely undermanned because of a credit card scandal, this time the Florida offense went out onto the field undermanned because of opt-outs. The offense – which had carried things all year – just wasn’t capable of doing that anymore, and the same defense we saw all year showed up yet again.

There’s not a lot you can do to explain this one other than just congratulate Oklahoma and go home and lick your wounds.

Grantham’s Performance

No play exemplifies the Florida defense of 2020 quite like this one.

It looks like a relatively simple completion. But that’s the problem. Florida had 12 men on the field and still left the tight end uncovered.

At that point, all you could do was chuckle at the absurdity of it all.

The Gators gave up over 600 yards for the third time this year. They have surrendered 30.8 points per game this season and gave up an average of 46.3 in their four losses.

After getting some stops and turnovers in the second quarter, I tweeted this.

Fun to see them pick up Trask. He’s tired after carrying them all year 😂 https://t.co/cb0mLSwyBV

— Will Miles (@WillMilesSEC) December 31, 2020

Of course, about two minutes after I hit send, the defense fell apart and gave up 14 points to end the first half.

When you’re evaluating a team or a unit, you want to take the entire season into context. For instance, in 2018 it was really clear that the Florida offensive line was getting better as the season progressed. John Hevesy has a track record at Mississippi State of coaxing that kind of improvement over time from his guys, so I’m not all that worried about the OL moving forward long-term.

But at no point did the 2020 Florida defense ever appear to be getting better. The Oklahoma game may have cemented my comments from earlier in the year that the back-ups weren’t going to be any better than the starters, but the fact that the starters were this bad is a major issue.

Guys like Brad Stewart, Donovan Stiner, Marco Wilson and Shawn Davis were all inconsistent last year, but they weren’t this bad. I think you can fairly say that each of them took a step back in 2020 compared to 2019.

I mean, none of them could get lined up properly the entire season. I get that you didn’t have time to work with everyone in the spring, but that is a ridiculous inability to adjust to your circumstances by Grantham.

For Christmas, my brother got me a book on defending spread offenses. Here’s what it says in the very first chapter:

“There is nothing more important than being able to line up correctly and execute a base defense. This starts at the foundations of defensive design. When developing a base defense, it is important to formulate how the defense will line up against every possible set (2×2, 3×1, 3×2, 2×1, etc.).”

“The base alignments used in any defense should be sufficient, and sound enough to carry a team through any game. Defensive coordinators that feel they have to ‘run something’ tend to panic and call the wrong play, or blitz into a situation that calls for them to be passive.” – Cody Alexander, Cautious Aggression: Defending Modern Football

I wouldn’t have thought anything of these passages had I read them a while back. They seem pretty common sense and something nobody is really going to argue about.

But it describes pretty well why this Todd Grantham defense has struggled so much in 2020.

Dan Mullen’s Performance

I’ve seen some Gators fans express frustration with Dan Mullen over the past three games. This tweet seems to sum up the frustration best.

Here’s what I’ll say – this year is weird, etc. I get it and I can excuse/find moral victory in a lot. However the last 3 games this year have shown a lot – and it’s not great for us as a program. “The gator standard” has been preached – but has not been met. What do we do now?

— Ryan (@GatorRyan) December 31, 2020

I certainly think Mullen deserves some criticism coming his way. You can’t drop three games in a row at Florida and avoid it, particularly when the season finale is a shellacking like this one.

But…some perspective.

If we exclude SEC Championship Games, Dan Mullen has as many SEC wins as Steve Spurrier (granted, with two more tries). But his SEC win percentage is better than Urban Meyer, who I think we can all agree is a pretty good measure of the “Gator Standard”.

Yes, Meyer won his shot in the SEC Championship Game and won a National Championship, which is obviously the important standard. But Meyer also had the benefit of coming into a program with Ron Zook’s recruiting (5.3 average national ranking, 2.0 average SEC ranking) the three years prior. Meyer kept up that recruiting in his first three seasons (5.0 national, 1.7 SEC), but let’s not pretend his players weren’t better from the start.

Bill Sikes did a great job a few weeks ago outlining SEC Championship teams and how you can understand the quality of a team by how many players they have named to the All-SEC team. What Bill found was that a championship template requires a minimum of 6 AP All-SEC selections with an ideal number of 8.6 (not counting punters and kickers much to the chagrin of Nick de la Torre).

Chris Leak, Dallas Baker, Steve Rissler, Phil Trautwein, Drew Miller, Derrick Harvey, Ray McDonald, Earl Everett, Brandon Siler, Ryan Smith and Reggie Nelson all made first or second-team All-SEC in 2006. Only Smith – who came in as a graduate transfer from Utah – was someone Meyer brought into the program.

Mullen inherited players recruited under McElwain at a much lower ranking (14.7 national, 7.0 SEC), yet has the Gators as the third best team in the SEC over his first three years. But this is the rub. Mullen’s recruiting has been better than McElwain’s (10.7 national, 5.0 SEC), but certainly not up to the standard set by the Meyer/Zook combo.

That’s further exacerbated by the fact that the two teams with better winning percentages in the conference that Mullen – Georgia and Alabama – are the two teams that consistently recruit better than Mullen as well.

That shows up on the All-SEC list from 2019, as Mullen’s 11-2 Gators squad only had four players named to the first or second team: Kyle Pitts (recruited by Mullen), Jonathan Greenard (Mullen), C.J. Henderson (McElwain) and David Reese (McElwain). So Mullen brought in just as many All-SEC performers in year two as Meyer did, but he didn’t have the nine guys Zook provided to help out.

But….and this is a big but….a key cog in that 2006 team was SEC Freshman of the Year Percy Harvin, as well as Brandon James and Tim Tebow, all of whom made the Freshman All-SEC team. Only Kaiir Elam was named to the Freshman All-SEC team in 2019.

And in Meyer’s third season in 2007, Florida had Tebow, Harvin, Brandon Spikes, Brandon James, Derrick Harvey, Cornelius Ingram, Carlton Medder, and Jim Tartt named to the All-SEC team and Maurkice Pouncey, A.J. Jones, Joe Haden and Major Wright named to the Freshman All-SEC team.

If we look at All-SEC performances in 2020, we have Kyle Pitts, Kadarius Toney, Kaiir Elam, Kyle Trask, and depending on which teams you look at, Brenton Cox and didn’t have anyone make the Freshman All-SEC team this year.

Why is this important? Because in 2008 – the year Meyer truly had a great team – the Gators had eight AP All-SEC players (12 if you count the Coaches All-SEC team). Of those 12 guys, only Phil Trautwein was a Zook holdover. That 2008 team was also supplemented with Freshmen All-SEC players Jeff Demps, Chris Rainey, Janoris Jenkins and Will Hill.

Meyer had talent from Zook, which is why he outperformed Mullen in 2006 compared to 2019. But he was building a level of depth in ’06 and ’07 that led to the championship in 2008 as those Freshman All-SEC performers turned into All-SEC and even All-American performers.

Mullen has just not been able to acquire that degree of talent.

Particularly at defensive back, Florida has struggled. The 2018 and 2019 signing classes included Trey Dean, Amari Burney, Randy Russell, John Huggins, Chris Steele, Kaiir Elam, Jaydon Hill and Chester Kimbrough. Burney is now a safety. Russell, Huggins, Steele and Kimbrough are no longer with the program.

Elam has been a hit and Hill has looked pretty good in limited play, but Dean looked out of place last year at the Star and didn’t get a lot of time at safety this year. That – combined with the cancelation of spring practice due to COVID-19 – is how you end up giving up 40+ points and 600+ yards on a consistent basis.

So what does all this mean?

Well, I think it means that Dan Mullen is a really good coach, much better than anyone who’s been in Gainesville since Urban Meyer. I think it also suggests that Meyer – helped by Mullen – was able to extract value out of Ron Zook’s players that Zook himself could not extract. But Meyer’s baseline talent level coming in was higher than Mullen’s.

However, Meyer was already supplementing the team with All-SEC level talent right from the start while Mullen has not.

Stars still matter (actually top-100 talent)

The explosiveness of Kyle Trask, Kadarius Toney and Kyle Pitts – along with the decrease in productivity of the Florida offense when Mullen left for Mississippi State in 2009 – makes me believe that Florida is going to continue scoring points so long as Mullen is in charge whether Emory Jones, Anthony Richardson or someone else is at QB next fall.

But a while back, I looked at elite defensive play and found that recruiting star power was far more important on that side of the ball – particularly on the defensive line – than on the offensive side of the ball.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to tell you that Florida needs to focus on getting better on the defensive side of the ball, but it’s how they approach getting better on that side of the ball that I think is important.

Based on the recruiting numbers – and the overall and Freshman All-SEC teams – Florida has a talent deficit on that side of the ball compared to the big boys in the SEC. You’re not going to coach and scheme your way out of that problem.

You can criticize Todd Grantham for the complexity of his schemes, his inability to adjust, or for running the best shoe tosser in the country out there at corner all season long and all of those criticisms would be valid.

But the biggest criticism of Grantham – and of his boss as well – should be that while Florida has tilted recruiting heavily towards the defensive side of the ball since arriving, they have only brought in seven top-100 players from 2018-2020 (Chris Steele, Kaiir Elam, Khris Bogle, Ty’Ron Hopper, Gervon Dexter, Derek Wingo and Jahari Rogers).

That sounds like a decent amount until you look at Alabama, who has 17 in the same time-frame. Add to that only two top-100 players brought in by McElwain in 2016 and 2017 (Antonneous Clayton and Tedarrell Slaton) and that is why the defense looked the way it did this year.

The only one of those players to make a major impact for Florida thus far is Kaiir Elam, with some good play from Bogle and Dexter.

Alabama just had two top-100 players make the All-SEC team (Patrick Surtain and Dylan Moses) with another (Christopher Allen, ranked 104th nationally) making it and just missing the top-100 cut. On the offensive side of the ball, top-100 players who made the All-SEC team include Najee Harris, Alex Leatherwood, Landon Dickerson and Devonta Smith.

If you count Allen, Alabama made Bill’s All-SEC threshold with top-100 players only. Hitting on Deonte Brown (ranked 177 nationally), Christian Barmore (176), Malachai Moore (211) and Mac Jones (399) as All-SEC players was really just the difference between a championship team and an all-timer.

And that’s with Jaylen Waddle (39th overall recruit in 2018) going out with an ankle injury early on when he was playing just as well as Smith.

Grantham’s scheme may be terrible. But this reminds me of Doc Brown in Back to the Future when the Libyan terrorists show up with a machine gun and Doc pulls out a freaking revolver.

You’re not going to consistently outscheme the big boys with that kind of talent deficit, but you should be able to shut down teams that start inexperienced QBs like South Carolina and LSU this year with the talent on-hand.

Takeaway

So where do we go from here?

Well, Grantham needs to go. He’s not a good recruiter, certainly not good enough for this many questions to be swirling around his schemes and for the lack of improvement from the guys he’s putting out there.

Mullen has to emphasize defensive recruiting at the top-100 player level. He can probably get away with recruiting top-300 players on the offensive side of the ball because he’s a gifted offensive coordinator. I don’t care if the defensive coordinator wants to run a prevent defense all game long, if he can recruit at an elite level – not just good, but elite – sign him up tomorrow.

Does this sound critical? It should. That’s what happens when you come to Gainesville talking about the Gator Standard.

Because the Gator Standard is being the favorite in the SEC Championship Game. The Gator Standard is playing for National Championships. The Gator Standard sure isn’t blowing off the Cotton Bowl and getting embarrassed on national TV.

I defended Mullen after his comments about packing the Swamp after the A&M loss. I thought it was amusing when he dressed up as Darth Gator following the win (and fight) against Missouri, enough that I used a picture of it as the thumbnail for my game recap.

I’ll defend him now as well. His SEC record is on-par with Urban Meyer through three seasons at the helm. Even if you wanted to make a change (I don’t), you’re going to be challenged to find anyone better.

But this is a proud fan base. Florida football is a precious commodity to those of us who live and breathe this stuff. This is our program, not Urban Meyer’s, Steve Spurrier’s or Dan Mullen’s.

We don’t take very well to being embarrassed.

A segment of the fan base was embarrassed by Mullen’s “pack the Swamp” comments. More were embarrassed with the Darth Vader costume. More were embarrassed by the loss to LSU, particularly given that it occurred because of a ridiculous lack of discipline at a critical moment. More were embarrassed by the revelation that Mullen has a show-cause penalty for recruiting violations.

And now a further segment has been embarrassed by a poor performance in the Cotton Bowl.

Taken individually, none of these things is big enough to break trust with Florida fans. But taken in aggregate, I can understand why I’ve had people reach out to me in the last 24 hours to ask if Mullen is the right guy for the job. It’s unbecoming for a top tier program to have all of these issues.

Mullen has stated repeatedly that he understands that Florida fans don’t just want wins, but want wins with style (i.e. points). That’s very true.

But more than anything, I think we want to be proud of our program. No Gator fan – no matter how devoted – was proud of that performance last night. In the grand scheme of things, the game probably doesn’t mean very much.

It certainly didn’t mean much to Mullen, who stated in the postgame presser that the last game the 2020 team played was 11 days ago in the SEC Championship. But that’s a problem.

Because the Cotton Bowl shouldn’t matter more to the fans than to the man in charge of the program.