After A Season Like No Other, Football Seems Normal Again
On the eve of the first practice that will begin prepping the Florida Gators for their season opening game with Florida Atlantic, Dan Mullen sounded relieved that there is a sense of normal returning to college football. A year ago, Mullen wasn’t even sure there was going to be a football season, but once SEC commissioner Greg Sankey gave the go-ahead to open camp, there were rules, regulations and precautions to be followed to prevent spreading the COVID-19 virus.
There was no spring practice in 2020. There was no offseason workout program and no strength and conditioning so critical to prepping a team for the rigors of a full schedule. It was an abbreviated schedule, all 10 games against Southeastern Conference opponents with a limited amount of on-the-field practice time allowed before the first game. Once the season began, schedules had to be reshuffled as games were postponed from one date to another. The Gators had to sit a couple of games at midseason that were rescheduled for a later date.
The only certainty was the uncertainty.
“Last year was a very different situation in every aspect of the program,” Mullen said at his pre-first practice press conference. “The mental and emotional stress and toll it took on you was very hard. You don’t know if you’re playing a game or who is playing until Friday night or Saturday morning, just from week-to-week with offseason preparation being thrown out.”
Because football is a game of repetition and regimen, the 2020 season was like no other that Mullen has ever coached. Players couldn’t associate and congregate off campus. In-person meetings had to be conducted with social distancing protocols followed. There was no time to make up for the lost tackling practices that are an important part of each spring, something the UF defense paid a stiff price for once the season got under way. Mullen couldn’t afford injuries suffered in practice since he didn’t know if he was going to have enough players in a position group on game day due to the virus. Travel rosters couldn’t be decided until late in the week.
The list of changes and adjustmentswent on and on and on.
“I think one thing you look at is a lot of football players and football programs, you’re used to a very scheduled, regimented approach on how you prepare and how you do things, how you get ready and how you go through a game week,” Mullen said. “When all of that is interrupted by massive amounts of uncertainty, that’s really hard.”
This year there was spring practice. Nick Savage conducted mat drills and he was with the players during the summer getting them in condition and supervising their workouts. As fall practice is set to begin, Mullen feels things are almost back to normal, but he knows that’s not true for everyone.
“I think our guys – you can’t complain – you have kind of had a regimented offseason leading into training camp right now for us.” Mullen said. “But there’s a lot of guys in our program that haven’t learned a routine or schedule yet because they haven’t been a part of it. You look at guys going into their third season. Fifty percent of it is not natural, so it’s still a learning process.”
Yes, it is a learning process, but Dan Mullen would much rather do it this way than last year when a few days into August he wasn’t even sure there would be a season.
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Stress and Stewart Reese became all too familiar with each other in 2020. By nature, Reese is laid back and easy going. Any aggressiveness is channeled to football where he has 45 career starts (34 at Mississippi State, 11 at Florida) as a Southeastern Conference offensive lineman. Reese is a grad student with an eye on med school one of these days when it’s time to hang up his cleats permanently. When he transferred to Florida from Mississippi State last year, he thought it was going to be an easy transition since he was reuniting with Mullen, the coach who signed him to a scholarship at MSU back in 2016, and John Hevesy, who spent two years as his O-line coach.
Of course, this was before the global pandemic slammed the brakes on the world economy and forced lockdowns all over the United States. Classes were canceled at every university which also meant spring football was cancelled as well as off-season workouts and conditioning programs. There were no group offseason workouts permitted. Players went home and all they could do was wait.
And, in Reese’s case, eat.
Eating was Reese’s way to cope with the enforced lack of direction that prevented any organized workouts or players on campus. Whenever the munchies held his stomach hostage and demanded food for ransom, it was like sending up the Bat signal from his refrigerator that it was time to make a raid. While he waited back home in Fort Pierce for word there would be football, Reese ballooned to 367 pounds, a full 22 more than his playing weight at Mississippi State.
“This past year I got kind of undisciplined with my eating and it took a toll on me during the season, catching COVID and all that kind of stuff,” Reese said. “I came in at 367 last year, and then got put up two weeks for coming into contact with someone with COVID and I gained another 17 pounds. So I came in at 380 and had to work my way down in a very short amount of time. Even at 360 it was still a struggle.”
He was sluggish and slow last year, not the same guy who was so versatile at Mississippi State that he played all five positions on the offensive line, once starting 26 straight games at right tackle. The emotional and mental stress was every bit as difficult as the physical stress of trying to play football at an uncomfortable weight.
When things got back to normal on the Florida campus this past spring, the stress began to disappear. Instead of isolation, players were able to work out together and socialize. Team dinners and dinner among position groups was back in vogue. Strength and conditioning coach Nick Savage put everybody through mat drills to toughen them up and prep them for spring practice. Then there was spring practice followed by a summer conditioning program and workouts with his offensive line teammates.
Things were normal again and with teammates able to work out together once again, camaraderie has come back that was missing last year.
“All the big guys push each other,” Reese said. “All the offensive linemen, especially … because we’re the biggest group and we struggle the most with trying to maintain weight. We all kind of lean on each other to work on losing the weight, maintaining the weight and cutting down on fat and eating better.
“It’s not fun. It’s not fun at all. I would rather be able to go to McDonald’s at 2 in the morning and get a Big Mac meal, but I know I can’t do it. If I want to move forward with my life with what I want to do and help the team move forward and compete at a high level, I have to be disciplined not to do that type of stuff. Discipline, eating right and being able to work out were my three big things. Having my teammates to lean on really helped me lean up this offseason.”
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From a strictly athletic standpoint, Jeremiah Moon is a total freak, a plug and play guy that defensive coordinator Todd Grantham can use effectively almost anywhere on the field. When he’s healthy – he wasn’t last year – he can be a major contributor. He knows the value of the offseason conditioning programs and the benefits of those 15 practices during the spring.
“Spring this year definitely helped a lot,” Moon said. “Coach (David) Turner, Coach C-Rob, Coach Gran, Coach Jules … everybody coming together and just leading the way and everything just being scheduled. I know during [last] spring we didn’t have a schedule. Everybody did everything on their own. Just coming back in the facility and being able to just be together definitely helps.”
Like Stewart Reese, the COVID-19 virus took a toll on Moon. He’s not sure which was worse: the mental or the physical part.
“I definitely missed everybody during quarantine,” he said. “I know we couldn’t really be together, but I would say both mentally and physically played a big role. Obviously, the mental part. You have your guys pushing you every rep. Then the physical part. I know everybody went off and did what they wanted to do, but I know Coach Savage is the best strength coach in the country. That would have helped.”
Moon suffered a season-ending injury two games into the 2016 season. He started five games at linebacker in 2017 while playing in 10 of Florida’s 11 games. In 2018 he had four starts in 13 games as part of the regular defensive rotation. He was nine games and eight starts into the 2019 season when he went down with another injury, cutting short a promising and productive season.
Moon started all four games he played in last year. The lack of offseason conditioning very well might have had something to do with the injury that ended his season. For sure, it had something to do with Florida’s slide from the No. 9 defense nationally in 2019 to No. 83 in 2020.
“It [conditioning] definitely plays a big part,” he said. “Like I said, we have a really tough strength and conditioning program and I know if we would have had that whole offseason like we just did it would have helped a lot.”
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Justin Shorter transferred in from Penn State last year. The lack of spring practice and being in Gainesville in the offseason prevented him from getting the reps that could have made him more productive in the fall. It’s not that he had a bad season – 25 catches for 268 yards and three touchdowns – but he was behind receivers who had been at UF awhile and already knew the offense.
Back home in New Jersey while waiting on word that there would be a football season, Shorter ran routes with a quarterback but it wasn’t the same as being in Gainesville working out with teammates and catching passes from Kyle Trask and Emory Jones. Once he got on campus in August, he had the advantage of getting coached up by Billy Gonzales, widely considered one of the best coaches in the country at preparing receivers to be productive in college and then move on to the next level.
“Coach G did a great job of getting me right with all the plays and stuff like that,” he said. “I feel like everything wasn’t all that bad.”
A former 5-star recruit, Shorter expects to have a much larger role in the offense in 2021. Instead of almost exclusively running drag routes out of the slot, he figures to be more of a downfield threat in the passing game this year. Having a season under his belt and now a spring practice to go with offseason workouts and conditioning, Shorter should be able to take advantage of his size (6-5, 228) and speed (sub-4.4) that will make him a matchup nightmare.
“Having spring ball this year was awesome because you get to go out there and we got the other guys who came in from high school and we were all learning the playbook early,” he said.
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