Back to the Future: New Scheme, Old Concepts for 2021 Florida Gators Offense
“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
Translated literally, that means the more things change, the more they continue to be the same. You’ve heard that all your life. So has Dan Mullen, whose success as a football coach has everything to do with change, yet every time Mullen seems to take a fork in the road less traveled, it’s nothing more than a variation of a well-played theme.
Mullen is largely associated with the spread option that Urban Meyer brought to Florida from Utah in 2005. At the time it was considered so radical that a majority of critics said it would never work in the SEC. Not only did it work but it spawned the era of spread offenses run from the shotgun with dual threat quarterbacks that is so prevalent in today’s game.
The spread option may have seemed brand new back then but it was nothing more than single wing on steroids with a bit of Bill Yeoman and Sid Gillman thrown in for good measure. It was a marriage of the power running game of the single wing in which there are more blockers than defenders, the run-pass option of Yeoman’s Houston Veer that got people into space on the edge and the sophistication of Gillman’s passing game in which the field is divided into sectors and seams that left uncovered receivers in space. These new versions of the spread option, when run properly and with a triggerman whose feet are as nimble as his arm is live, tend to make defensive coordinators often feel they have as much chance as Pharaoh’s armies had when Moses dropped his staff and the parted water walls of the Red Sea collapsed.
The critical element in the spread option or any offense that incorporates the option into a sophisticated passing game is the dual threat QB. Tim Tebow was the perfect fit at Florida just as Cam Newton was ideal at Auburn and both led their teams to national championships. Both Tebow and Cam could run the power game, make the right decisions in the option and could make the throws necessary for a dynamic passing game. But how often do you come up with a Tebow or Cam Newton? They make things work that doesn’t work for your average QB so it’s either try to run the same stuff with less success or tweak away and adapt to the personnel on hand, which is what we’ve seen Mullen do throughout his career.
Here are a few examples of how adapting on the fly have become part of Dan Mullen’s M.O, first at Florida as Meyer’s offensive coordinator, then at Mississippi State as the head coach and now as the head coach at Florida.
2005: An offense so stagnant in a heart-breaking loss to LSU that it brings Meyer to tears in his post-game press conference, is altered on the plane ride back to Gainesville and into the wee hours of Sunday morning at the Meyer compound at Haile Plantation.
“Dan Mullen, Steve Addazio (offensive line coach) and I went to my house and made some changes to the offense the night after the LSU loss,” Meyer recalled. We added a fullback (Billy Latsko) and more physical run game – power and counter.” A season about to go south righted itself for a 9-3 finish that led to one of the great recruiting classes in history.
2006: Tebow arrives to give the Gators the power runner they lacked in 2005 to go with Leak’s ability to make pinpoint passes. Tebow throws just enough that defenses can’t load the box if he’s in the game and it’s more than two yards for a first down. The Odd Couple lead the Gators to the 2006 national championship.
2007: Leak has graduated and it’s Tebow Time in Gainesville. Instead of a midnight meeting between Meyer, Mullen and Addazio, it is as if Bob Neyland (single wing), Bill Yeoman (Houston Veer) and Sid Gillman (attacking the secondary with the passing game) agree to take the best elements of their offenses and spring the concoction on the world. The result is 35-6 record the next three years, a Heisman for Tebow in 2007 and a national championship in 2008. What makes the offense particularly devastating is the Percy Factor. Percy Harvin is the perfect hybrid, able to be the deep threat in the passing game and the home run threat as a runner whether it’s on jet sweeps, handoffs or option pitches.
2013-15: At Mississippi State it’s like Florida 2006 all over again. Mullen has the live-armed passer he needs in Tyler Russell, but he’s immobile. The transition begins to Dak Prescott, who can pick up big chunks of yardage on the option or scrambles and can make all the throws. In 2014, Prescott throws for 27 TDs, runs for 14 and for four weeks the Bulldogs hold down the No. 1 ranking in the country. Prescott throws for 29 and runs for 10 in 2015.
2016-17: Prescott has gone to the Dallas Cowboys, leaving behind Nick Fitzgerald, whose best two offers out of high school other than Mississippi State were Mercer and Samford. Fitzgerald is a power runner who makes good decisions on the option and an adequate thrower. In 2016 he throws for 2,324 yards and 21 touchdowns, runs for 1,375 and 16 TDs. The numbers drop off in 2017 because of an inexperienced offensive line but before he breaks his ankle Fitzgerald throws for 15 TDs and runs for 14 more.
2018: When Feleipe Franks finally figures it all out and starts playing like he’s been coached, he leads Florida to four straight wins including a hammering of Michigan in the Peach Bowl. Franks transitions from a scatter-armed QB who drives coaches crazy with his inconsistency into one who puts up the best quarterback numbers at UF (2,457 passing yards and 24 touchdowns, 350 rushing yards, 7 touchdowns) since Tebow’s final year of 2009.
2019-20: When Franks breaks and dislocates his ankle at the end of the third quarter in game three against Kentucky, Mullen adjusts the offense on the fly during the game. Trask lacks Franks’ mobility but Franks can’t throw like Trask. From that moment forward the offense transitions from one with a dual threat QB into the Gators will start throwing as soon as the bus taking them to the stadium comes to a complete stop. In two years, the QB who hadn’t started a game since 9th grade throws for 7,224 yards and 69 touchdowns and becomes a Heisman finalist after a 4,283-yard season with 43 touchdowns in 2020.
The key word in this exercise is adjust and with Mullen the adjustments are always personnel driven. What has earned him the offensive genius label is his ability to assess his personnel and do what they do best, but it all starts with the quarterback. With Trask and his ability to fit a football with astonishing accuracy into the tightest of windows gone to the NFL, the Gators will transmogrify into an offense that will resemble the one Mullen ran in the Tebow years in many respects but may take on more characteristics of Bill Yeoman’s Houston Veer of 1969.
In 1969, Houston averaged 196.8 passing yards and 317 rushing yards per game. The numbers would have been better if Yeoman had a better passer to take advantage of dynamic wide receiver Elmo Wright, who invented the touchdown dance at Florida Field that year. The offense was designed to create one-on-one opportunities for receivers because the quarterback was a dynamic runner who could tuck and run or pitch on the option, taking the safeties out of the equation by forcing them to play the run.
The same concepts will apply to the 2021 Gators with Emory Jones (92-514 career rushing for 6 TDs; 55-86 passing for 613 yards, 7 TDs and only 1 interception) taking over at QB backed up by second-year freshman Anthony Richardson. They offer fleet feet and elusiveness in the running game that was missing with Trask but they will also have a deep, talented stable of weapons to work with both in the passing and running game.
The 2021 season is likely to afford Mullen more possibilities with his play calling since he arrived back in 2017.
“You know we have the flexibility to go throw for 400-yards a game like last year,” Mullen said. “We have the flexibility to go back and be 50-50 balanced. We can be a run ball control team and control the clock. We can be up-tempo or slow tempo, whatever is going to fit the program or team as a whole within the framework of our offense and then we just kind of like evaluate this spring, throw a bunch of stuff, there will be some varied, some things that we did last year we won’t do as much this year and some things that we didn’t do last year that will be thrown into the offense for what we think off of the strengths of our players right now.”
Jones and Richardson can run, for sure, but we haven’t seen enough in their body of work to indicate that either one can fit the football into small windows when they throw but, like Tebow, they are such threats to make big plays with their legs that they may not have to throw lasers to create big gainers.
Tebow completed 66.4 percent of his passes during his Florida career but the numbers hide the fact that he didn’t have to make many throws to well covered receivers. Instead of the three-foot window that Trask showed he can consistently place the football, Tebow had much more wiggle room and that was because he could take off running once he got outside the pocket. The receivers were open and big plays were there to be made since the threat of the run kept safeties occupied so they couldn’t offer over-the-top help. Florida receivers had cushions that Tebow never saw when he tried to make it in the NFL. In the NFL the secondaries are so good that ball has to be delivered on time and with little room for error, unlike the sometimes five and six-foot cushions Florida receivers enjoyed in those days.
Mullen has seen enough of Jones and Richardson in practice to say they both have “cannon arms” but Mullen probably isn’t going to call plays for them to make throws against tighter coverage. Instead, he will try to get them outside the pocket where they can have the run-pass option that will create wider windows in which to fit the football if they elect to throw.
“I think we saw even a couple glimpses of it in the bowl game, that the field’s spread out and someone loses a rush lane,” Mullen said. “That turns into a 20-30-40-yard play with those guys on the field. With Kyle, it might not have been. They bring a very different skillset to the table.
“So ours is to kind of manipulate around the strengths of what those guys are going to do well within quarterback runs, zone reads, the ability for them to scramble and improvise and even have to be more complex in the pass game because you’re multi-dimensional because some of the threats they pose to the defense.”
Their skillset combined with those of the deepest stable of running backs the Gators have had since the Tebow years will change the way Mullen calls the offense but it might be every bit as explosive as it was the last two years when the play calls leaned so heavily on the pass. From the moment spring practice began, there has been emphasis on running the option to take advantage of Dameon Pierce (1,232 career rushing yards, 10 touchdowns; 26 catches for 206 yards, 2 TDs); Clemson transfer Demarkcus Bowman, who brings the most explosive element to the running game since the days of Percy; Nay’Quan Wright (54-213 rushing, 2 TDs in 2020; 19-219 receiving); Malik Davis (983 career rushing yards, 3 TDs; 47-509 receiving); and former 5-star recruit Lorenzo Lingard, who battled Covid-19 and a high ankle sprain after transferring from Miami in 2020.
What the Gators are running out of a shotgun is being called the Power Veer, but with so many running backs, Mullen is likely to use one in the slot to provide a Percy factor that will create havoc with opposing defensive coordinators. Wright and Davis, for example, are proven pass catchers and both have a make-you-miss element when they are in open space. Lingard has track speed when healthy. All three may see time in the slot as Mullen forces defenses to deal with backs who can catch the ball whether out of the backfield or in the slot, run jet sweeps or shift into the backfield for that true two-back veer look.
Another option in the slot may be Jacob Copeland (45-724 receiving, 5 TDs; 5-45 rushing). That would put Xzavier Henderson (9-148, 1 TD receiving in 2020), Justin Shorter (25-268, 3 TDs), Trent Whittemore (10-128, 1 TD) and Rick Wells (12-120) on the outside. Expectations are so high for tight end Arik Gilbert (35-368, 2 TDs at LSU as a true freshman in 2020), who has Kyle Pitts-like ability. Kemore Gamble (10-160, 3 TDs in 2020) and Keon Zipperer (11-145, 2 TDs) will be on the field a lot as will true freshman Nick Elksnis, another long, lanky freaky athlete.
There is no lack of weapons for Jones and Richardson to work with. Although the Gators are losing Trask, Pitts and wide receivers Kadarius Toney and Trevon Grimes to the NFL, the talent drop off is not going to be all that significant thanks to good recruiting, both in the traditional vein of bringing in high school kids or mining the transfer portal. Mullen has the Gators in a strong, next man up mode that bodes well for 2021 as well as the future.
The offensive scheme is going to change in 2021 out of necessity. Instead of a wide-open throw first passing game that looks straight out of the Kansas City Chiefs playbook, Mullen is going to go with something that looks like it could have been developed by Bill Yeoman back in the 1960s at the University of Houston. What the 2021 personnel can do is going to determine how game plans are developed and what plays are called.
It was, is and will always be about the players as we’ve seen from the time Mullen broke onto the scene as Meyer’s quarterbacks coach at Bowling Green back in 2001-02. It was at Bowling Green that Mullen transformed a 245-pound tailback named Josh Harris into a dual threat quarterback who terrorized defenses in the Mid-America Conference. In the years since, talent comes and talent goes. Consistency is always based on the ability to make changes, sometimes on the spot as in 2019 at Kentucky when Franks went down and Mullen plugged in Trask, who led the Gators to 19 straight fourth quarter points to snatch a win from almost certain defeat.
Schemes can change. Schemes can be tweaked and like at Kentucky in 2019, they are adjusted without warning on a moment’s notice. Whatever the circumstance, success always comes down to the ability to adapt to the skills of the available talent.
That is exactly what the Gators will be doing in 2021.
“We’re going to adapt to the strengths of our players,” Mullen said. “We're going to adapt to our guys and what they do well and put the guys in position to do well.”
In the immortal words of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, the more things change the more they continue to be the same.
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