Mullen retains Grantham….but is that the right decision?

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It is probably the least pleasant part of this job to call for staff firings.

I try really hard not to do so unless it is obvious a change needs to be made. Often this means that I am seen as defending coaches who the fan base wants gone. That certainly was the case with Jim McElwain, who I defended until he threw his players under the bus after losses to LSU and Texas A&M for not executing his plan well enough.

What it does mean is that when I’ve called for a change, I hope you know that I’ve spent a lot of time looking at film, statistics and the dynamics within the program to come to that decision. That’s why it has been a big deal for me over the past two weeks to call for a change at defensive coordinator for the Gators.

So I am a little bit surprised that head coach Dan Mullen did not come to the same conclusion. Mullen does have a reputation for being extremely loyal, but this one also seemed pretty obvious to me.

Instead, Mullen decided to dismiss secondary coaches Torrian Gray and Ron English. Certainly, the play in the secondary this year has been underwhelming. But it’s not as though you look at the defense as a unit and think it is really well coached except for the corners and safeties.

So I decided to take an even closer look, not just at Grantham’s abysmal 2020 but at his entire tenure at Florida. What is Mullen seeing that I’m not? Am I wrong to think that Grantham can’t turn things around?

Or do the underlying statistics indicate that Mullen’s loyalty is going to eventually end up causing him more headaches in the very near future?

Grantham pre-Florida hire

I wrote a big piece about Grantham’s hire right when it was announced. I think it’s helpful to revisit a couple of charts from that piece.

This first one is why I wasn’t a huge fan of the hire. Overall, Grantham has made very little difference in a whole host of stats compared to the three years prior to his arrival. Whether it’s points per game, yards per play, yards per pass or passer rating, there just wasn’t much difference between Grantham and his predecessors.

You could excuse that if he was a dynamic recruiter. After all, Jim McElwain had struggled recruiting so any addition there was going to be a big benefit.

Grantham did make a little bit of a difference overall, but it was much more at the 4-star level than the 5-star level. It’s also such a slight difference that it probably should be considered negligible.

So what we had coming into Gainesville was a defensive coordinator who essentially made no difference in performance of the defense compared to his predecessors and didn’t appreciably move the needle in recruiting.

It should be pretty clear at this point why I was lukewarm on the Grantham hire back in 2018.

Florida Performance – On Field

Of course, what really mattered at that point was how Grantham’s defenses performed on the field once he got to Florida.

Often fans and pundits look at how a coach ranked against other programs, and that’s a valid way to do things. Then you can look at points per game, yards per play or even advanced metrics like S&P+ and compare. In those comparisons, Grantham’s defenses of 2018 and 2019 were pretty good.

But what if we did what I did above when he was hired and compared the previous Florida administration’s performance to Grantham’s? After all, if Grantham is really a difference maker, shouldn’t we have seen an uptick compared to Geoff Collins and Randy Shannon?

And unfortunately the answer to whether he’s making a difference is pretty clear.

The above chart shows Florida’s defense from 2015-2017 in the Jim McElwain era and Florida’s defense from both 2018-2020 and just 2018-2019. I included that last line just so that if anyone claimed this was just a poor 2020 for Grantham skewing results, we could compare his “good” seasons against the previous administration.

Yes, Florida had really good defenses in 2015 and 2016, but it turned into a dumpster fire in 2017 under Randy Shannon, so it shouldn’t be that hard for Grantham’s 2018 and 2019 to beat the aggregate three years, right?

Well, if you look at all three years, Grantham’s defenses are worse in points per game, yards per play, yards per rush, yards per pass, QB rating allowed and third-down conversion. His defenses are even worse in turnovers per game, which is supposed to be his specialty.

Even if you compare Grantham’s first two years to all three under McElwain, the numbers are all roughly equivalent except Grantham is still significantly worse in QB rating and third down conversion percentage allowed.

The argument against this comparison would be that Grantham’s defenses had less talent than those that McElwain stewarded with Will Muschamp’s recruits. That is actually true, but comparing the talent of those defenses – using the starters listed on the depth chart against FSU (or Alabama this year) – definitely makes this a more nuanced argument.

It is absolutely true that Grantham’s 2018 and 2019 teams had less talent than any of the defenses that McElwain presided over. There was a lot of top-100 talent on those defenses the first two seasons and those guys played really well. Once they left, the wheels fell off in 2017.

Had I looked at Grantham’s numbers after 2018 and 2019, I would have said he did a pretty good job putting up equivalent numbers to the Gators from 2015-2017 considering he had less total talent. But that’s a problem if you’re going to try and explain away 2020.

This year’s defense had a talent level right between the 2015 and 2016 teams, whether you use star ranking, 247 ranking or national ranking. It also had three top-100 players and another four top-200 players. Perhaps not coincidently, those top-100 players (Brenton Cox, Tedarrell Slaton and Kaiir Elam) were the best players on the field, followed closely by Zachary Carter (130). The fact that Brad Stewart (150), Amari Burney (178) and Marco Wilson (183) all underperformed is a point against Grantham.

And you might make an excuse for Randy Shannon in 2017 by saying that not only did he have less talent, but it was a young defense. That is absolutely true, as he was starting true freshmen Marco Wilson, C.J. Henderson and Donovan Stiner in the defensive backfield.

Two of those three guys were starting for Grantham this year and seem to have significantly regressed. Only Henderson kept up his level of play, but he was already being talked about as an NFL prospect before Grantham ever came to town. In fact, Grantham’s defense was chock-full of experienced players this year, which is what made the awful play so maddening.

The reality is that I think it is fair to expect Grantham – if he’s really a difference-maker at defensive coordinator – to have outperformed his predecessors, or at least match them. Especially when talking about 2015 and 2016, that’s a pretty high bar, but that’s the expectation in Gainesville.

Also, it’s not like he outperformed even Randy Shannon in year three. Those Gators gave up 27.3 points per game, 27.8 in SEC play. This year’s team gave up 30.8, including 28.6 in SEC play.

Florida Performance – Recruiting

All of this would be forgivable if Grantham was making a huge difference on the recruiting trail. After all, if you stock the cupboard continuously, then we’re only a coaching change away from being elite.

Here, I do need to give Grantham some credit, as his and Mullen’s defensive recruiting is better than his predecessors, even if it lags well behind Alabama and Georgia.

Across the board, Florida’s defensive recruiting has improved under this regime. Note that this does include transfers, so guys like Brenton Cox and Jon Greenard are included and that makes a difference. But I felt I should include them because the transfer portal has become such a big part of these discussions nowadays.

But there is one huge issue with this staff’s recruiting that these numbers don’t account for: attrition.

You likely wondered why even after Donovan Stiner, Marco Wilson, Shawn Davis or Brad Stewart made multiple mistakes that they were left in the game. Well, take a look at the defensive players recruited in both 2018 and 2019 since Mullen came into the program.

I’ve color-coded this where green is a starter, yellow is a contributor and red is someone no longer with the program. It should jump out to you that Florida only has one starter from classes that will be heading into their true junior and senior seasons in 2021. And to have a nearly 40-percent attrition rate is a disaster, even if the vast majority of those who are gone are 3-stars.

I love 5-star commits, but 3-stars like Bryan Cox, Jr., Quincy Wilson, Joey Ivie, David Reese, Jabari Zuniga and Vosean Joseph were key cogs to some of those great Florida defenses. They weren’t all All-SEC players, but many were good, solid defenders, which is what you need when your stars need a rest or go down with an injury.

Burney and Dean are specifically guys to take note of on this list. Florida’s safeties really struggled this year (and last year too), yet Burney and Dean – who had both been recruited as safeties – were converted to other positions to paper over other holes. They haven’t become difference-makers at those positions, with the staff finally giving up and moving Dean back to safety.

So if Grantham didn’t think Jaydon Hill or Chester Kimbrough were better than any of the guys they had out there, then where were they supposed to turn? Steel and Huggins had already left the program, and Russell was out because of an unfortunate medical issue. Dean and Burney were no longer defensive backs.

To their credit, the staff recognized this issue and recruited five defensive backs in 2020. But with no spring due to COVID, there just wasn’t any way Mullen or Grantham were going to play them significant snaps given their preference to play more experienced players in general.

We saw what happened when the Gators played 11 true freshmen on defense in the Cotton Bowl against Oklahoma. But there wasn’t any middle ground once the seniors came out because the staff hadn’t recruited anyone better to step-in who was still around.

Look at that list from 2018 and 2019 again within the context of what’s coming in 2021. There is one defensive tackle on that list (Jaelin Humphries) and he has yet to record a tackle for the Gators. Kyrie Campbell has already said he is leaving. Tedarrell Slaton is likely gone as well.

When I was putting together my list of projected starters for 2021, I had no idea who to replace Campbell and Slaton with except for Gervon Dexter. The options are rather limited, as it’s either Humphries (who is injured), Dante Lang (converted TE), Lamar Goods (no tackles in 2020), Jalen Lee (2 tackles in 2020), or true freshmen 3-star recruits Desmond Watson or Christopher Thomas.

I know fans want Mullen and Co. to hit the transfer portal for offensive linemen, but if it comes down to a choice, they need to take a defensive tackle.

Remember early in the year before Campbell came back that the Gators were having to play Brenton Cox out of position at defensive end rather than Buck because they had to shift Zach Carter inside? Well, without another defensive tackle through the portal, that’s probably the solution in 2021, with Cox or Khris Bogle manning the defensive end spot. Yikes!

The addition of 5-star cornerback Jason Marshall may be enough to help the defense improve, but I don’t suspect this team is going to be able to stop the run or put the kind of pressure on the QB with the front-four that Grantham is going to want without trying to manufacture success.

So that means that we’re going to see a bunch of corner blitzes once again in 2021.

Takeaway

Grantham is coming back. I don’t agree with the decision, but Mullen’s made it and so I’m willing to see what kind of strides the defense can make with a full offseason and the guys from the 2020 recruiting class being given some playing time.

As you can see from my projected talent level, this is going to be a more talented defense than any that Florida had under Jim McElwain. But as I discussed with the defensive tackle situation, it’s going to be a really unbalanced defense.

And we just haven’t seen Grantham develop the talent he’s recruiting in any appreciable way. Eight of the starters were from the 2017 recruiting class, with one a transfer (Cox) and two from the 2019 class (Diabate and Elam).

There are places where the defense is paper thin. One separated shoulder, one torn ACL, one guy who gets unhappy and enters the transfer portal or one guy who underperforms consistently and the defense is going to have issues that it can’t rectify by bringing in the young guys or just changing things schematically.

Sounds familiar, right?

I actually don’t think it’s right to just look at Grantham’s 2020 season and call for his dismissal. The question is, how has his process been over the entire three seasons?

The fact that his veterans on defense looked so lost doesn’t give me any confidence that those problems are going to go away with younger players. They’re just going to show up on a different unit as the youth gets shifted around because the numbers are so unbalanced.

The fact that Grantham hasn’t really improved things substantially on the field compared to his predecessors at what is now four previous stops doesn’t give me much confidence that he’s a good enough teacher to make adjustments when things go a little bit haywire or a critical spot suffers an injury. We see that every year when his defenses gets picked apart by experienced QBs.

And while I admire his players putting the Oklahoma loss on them, even that is somewhat problematic. I think his starters love him because he gives them really long leashes and is loyal. But that means you have a bunch of young guys sitting on the bench wondering when it’s going to be their turn as they watch their teammates blow assignments repeatedly.

Florida took a gamble in 2020. They saw all of the attrition from 2018 and 2019 and still decided not to play the young guys from the 2020 class very much chasing a championship. Now Grantham is going to have a very young defense coming into 2021.

And that’s where I get worried because Grantham couldn’t get his experienced guys to line up correctly and now we expect him to do it with sophomores coming off of only one spring camp?

I do think Florida’s defense will be better in 2021 just due to regression to the mean, but the question I’m struggling with is how much better is good enough? If the Gators end up back to where they were in 2019 then that’s probably good enough. But what if they just give up 25 points per game in the SEC? That’s more than a three point per game improvement, but it’s still pretty bad for Florida historically.

I started this article by wondering whether there was something about Grantham that Mullen was seeing that I wasn’t. I obviously don’t have access to practice, can’t see the amount of time he’s putting into things, and don’t have a front seat to whether his players are executing his scheme appropriately.

But even when his defenses were good, they were pretty poor against quality competition. The Gators had one sack of Jake Fromm combined in the 2018 and 2019 matchups against Georgia. There were zero sacks against Joe Burrow and LSU in 2019.

So let’s go back to that first chart. Even in just 2018 and 2019, Grantham’s defenses allowed third downs to be converted 37.6 percent of the time. Even Randy Shannon’s 2017 defense wasn’t that bad (33.8).

His defenses have averaged giving up 7.2 yards per attempt  over his three seasons,  which would have ranked 50th against FBS in 2019. That’s with two seasons of a lock-down, first-round draft pick manning the boundary.

In a game that is moving more towards throwing the ball all over the lot, that’s just not good enough.

So I guess that’s the metric I’d look at for 2021 were I a Gator fan.

In 2015 and 2016, the Gators defenses gave up 6.0 and 5.9 yards per pass, respectively. Grantham and Mullen decided their issues against the pass were due to Torrian Gray and Ron English. That means if it doesn’t improve to levels we’ve seen in Gainesville before, then it has to be Grantham’s fault.

And we’ll be right back where we were at the end of 2020.

On to 2021

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2020 was a tough year for everyone. But I find that every hard time I go through ends up with a series of lessons that I can take from it. I never want to go through a pandemic again, but hopefully we’re all better people because of it.

So here’s to making 2021 the fruit from the 2020 season of pruning. Happy New Year, blessings to your family, and hopefully I can have a beer with some of you all at the Cocktail Party next year!