Dan Mullen Challenges No. 20 Florida Gators To "Play Better" In Route To 42-0 Win Over Vanderbilt

Emory Jones finished with 313 total yards as the Gators shut out the Dores to get back in the win column. Photo Credit: Chris Spears

Dan Mullen’s halftime interview was four words. And they said everything.

What would his message be to his struggling quarterbacks, Emory Jones and Anthony Richardson?

“Yeah, play better.”

What was his assessment of his defense, that needed to be bailed out on an overturned touchdown call to hold on to their shutout against the worst team in the league?

“Awful.”

He said a bit more to his team at halftime. The No. 20 Florida Gators (3-2, 2-2) were leading 21-0 at that point, and would end up defeating the Vanderbilt Commodores (2-4, 0-2) 42-0. But barring a loss, this game wasn’t about winning or losing. It was about proving this team could still be a contender…albeit one that would now need some help.

In other words, this was a “get-right game” for the Gators. A chance to catch their breath and reset ahead of the second-third of the season. They did that, defeating the Vanderbilt Commodores on Homecoming day, 42-0.

“I love our team. I love the attitude of our team,” said Head Coach Dan Mullen after the win.

“We’ve got to do a better job coaching some things up, get it cleaned up and make sure the exactness of what we want is being executed on gameday, but team certainly great attitude all week and I love the guys in that locker room and their mindset. It's our job as coaches to kind of make sure that the intensity level every snap of the game is where it needs to be at.”

After falling 20-13 to the No. 16 Kentucky Wildcats, the Gators saw the vast majority of their season hopes vanish into the Lexington night. All they can do now—and please pardon the cliche—is control what they can control and pray for some chaos elsewhere in college football.

Controlling what they can control started on Saturday, with a homecoming aura hanging in the air. As eight Gator Nation Olympic medalists got things started, all acting as the honorary Mr. Two-Bits, the standard was set for excellence. Unfortunately, the message got lost in the mail on the way to the Gators football team and didn’t arrive until post intermission, via Mullen’s halftime message.

The first half was clunky at times, punctuated by penalties for the second week in a row. Five for 55 yards in the first half alone, as first down runs were wiped away, fresh sets of downs were awarded to the Commodores and STAR Tre’Vez Johnson was ejected for targeting.

Granted, the Gators scored on their first two offensive drives. The first touchdown was a 1-yard rush by Dameon Pierce, after a 32-yard pass to Trent Whittemore and 34-yard explosive run by Nay’Quan Wright ate up yardage. The duo would come up huge yet again just before halftime.

Following a 5-yard touchdown pass from Emory Jones (14-22, 273 passing yards, four touchdowns; five rushes for 40 yards) to Ja’Quavion Fraziars that sent the Gators up 14-0, Florida stalled on their next three drives. An interception from Anthony Richardson ended one before it began. Mullen, a big believer in letting quarterbacks bounce back from mistakes, had Richardson lead the next drive as well, but the aforementioned penalties stalled it quickly.

After the Gators shutout received a gift courtesy of a Dores doink, defensive lineman Daquan Newkirk intercepted Vanderbilt quarterback Ken Seals. It took two plays to bookend the drive and bookend the half, with Wright and Whittemore. A catch-and-go to Wright went 51 yards then a contested catch in the corner of the endzone from Whittemore put Florida up 21-0.

"He's a guy, to me, he's always reliable,” bragged Jones of Whittemore. "He’s always going to be in the spot I expect him to be in. He does everything right. He's a very smart guy, has a very good IQ of football. I mean he just does everything right and he's always in the right position, does everything, he reads the defense and just does what he's supposed to do. He's just a reliable guy for me."

Then came an extension of the “awful” defensive play Mullen lamented. A 14-play drive that included four first downs put the Dores in the redzone. It was enough for the camera’s to catch Mullen laying into defensive coordinator Todd Grantham on the sidelines. From first-and-goal on the 1-yard line, the defense actually held up the Dores three times. Then on fourth-and-goal, a pass to a streaking Chris Pierce looked to be good for a touchdown.

After review, it was overturned. Freshman corner Jason Marshall Jr. had knocked Pierce and the ball bobbled when hitting the ground. Still, it was a fortuitous call for a defense that had given up 73-yards on the drive and 200 yards total in the first half.

“They played 50 snaps, gave up over 200 yards of offense, couldn’t get off the field. They were on the field the entire half with the exception of our first, I think, two drives were three and outs…Missed tackles. Giving up third-down conversions.”

The Gators were bailed out by Vanderbilt’s deficiencies more than once: an on the money pass that was incomplete because the receiver’s knee was down, badly thrown passes, three missed field goals. But when playing an overmatched team, it’s not so much about what they do or don’t do, it’s about what you’re doing to work on yourself.

So at halftime, that’s what Mullen challenged the Gators to do.

“Coach Mullen came to us at halftime in the locker room and just told us that, the first half, even though they didn’t score any points, it wasn’t our brand of ball,” shared safety Rashad Torrence (game high 15 tackles). “And just as a defense, we took that to heart. It was kind of like a jab, ‘cause it was kind of disrespectful. We went out in the second half and just played to our brand of ball, and you all saw that.”

Added Jones, “To me basically just I had a couple plays that I had a mental error on and probably threw to the wrong guy. Yeah, he got on me about those plays. I mean I moved on from it, I learned from the mistakes. For him he just wanted me to come back out and execute and just move the offense.”

It’s also what he challenged the coaches to do.

“That's on the coaching staff, of us, of making sure that we have crossed every T, dotted every I, that our execution is exact, it's not just, hey, looking at things as a whole but looking at it individually on every snap of the game. Are we playing at the level we need to play at with the intensity we need to play at?

“I don't know that we did that for the first half as a whole. There's things I can circle in the first half that were great. And there's things I can circle in the first half that just were not up to our standard. And our job as coaches is to make sure we are up to our standard on every snap.”

So on the opening drive of the second half, the coaches dialed up the intensity with a fake punt, deep in their own territory. It worked, as Jeremey Crawshaw scooted for a 28-yard gain.

“I thought he was going to score, actually,” laughed Wright. “Honestly, I didn’t know he was that fast. He showed me something. I didn’t know he was that fast. We gotta put him on offense, maybe throw him at receiver or something. We don’t know.”

Then Emory Jones sent a dump over the middle to Dameon Pierce. The senior running back turned up field and scored on the 61-yard touchdown.

“He’s a pretty short, powerful guy,” described Mullen. “So he ends up being in there a lot in those situations. He’s a strong, very strong physical runner, low center of gravity with power running the ball between the tackle. He gets the opportunity sometimes to go get those carries. He’s done a great job of punching them in the end zone.”

Dameon Pierce scores one of his two touchdowns on the day. Photo Credit: Chris Spears

After Trey Dean (seven tackles, one interception) forced a three-and-out thanks to a textbook pass break-up, Emory Jones and Jacob Copeland used two plays to move 72-yards for another score.

Said Jones of the drive, “That was definitely something that [Copeland] needed. It was definitely exciting for me. That’s my guy. I always want to give him the ball. But I mean, seeing that actually play out and happen. Him going out and making plays and having fun it’s always best for me because that’s been my guy since I first got here. Even before I got here. We were going through the recruiting process. I mean, just seeing him go out there making plays is always exciting for me.”

On the ensuing drive, Trey Dean intercepted Seals for his second turnover of the game. Vanderbilt would have four more drives on the day. In total, the Dores were held to 87 yards in the second half (a 113 yard differential from the first half) and 34 of those yards came on the final drive against backups in garbage time.

“In the second half, I saw us go back to where we were kind of those first two drives at the start to the second half where we completely slammed the door on them and played with an intensity,” said Mullen. “It’s not like hey let them drive the length of the field. You look at the first half, defensively, they missed a couple field goals and they had kind of a drop on an overturned play in the end zone. So in the second half, we made sure they didn’t have those opportunities.”

After Dean’s interception, Florida’s offense has a short field in which to work, and did so in a flash, as Pierce capped the quick change with a 1-yard touchdown, his seventh rushing touchdown this season (currently second in the SEC), eighth touchdown total.

In seven game minutes, the offense scored as many points as they did in the entire first half. They would’t score again, as Anthony Richardson, Lorenzo Wingard and Demarcus Bowman got all of the snaps in the fourth quarter. It was the first time Richardson has looked mortal, and Jones made sure to visit him after the game.

"I walked into the locker room, I saw he was, well I just, I know him so well so I can tell if he's feeling some type of way,” explained Jones. “I just went up and hugged him and grabbed him, I told him, 'Everything is OK. You still learning, you still getting those reps and you still just gaining experience.' I told him I went through the same things for three years and I know how hard it is.

“I mean basically I just told him, 'Just keep going, keep doing what you're supposed to do, whether you know it or not even as a backup quarterback the guys in the whole locker room still hold you up to a certain standard and still look at you a certain type of way.' So I just told him to make sure he's always being positive and looking positive around everybody and making sure he just keeps doing everything right and it's all going to work out for that guy."

Now, the Gators will hit the road and face their permanent crossover, the LSU Tigers. The goal?

Don’t be awful. Play better. For now, it’s all they can control.