Dan Mullen Will Be the Florida Gators Coach Next Year, But It's Time To Make Changes

Photo by Chad Ritch

“Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting” – Author unknown

We live in a country where sharp political divides have become the norm. It seems there is no middle ground to be had. You’re either on one side or the other with little hope to understand the vision and direction of the other side. We could almost say the same thing about the Gator Nation, which finds itself at a most unexpected crossroads.

Who would have guessed when the season began the first Saturday in September that so many Gator fans have reached a crossroads when it comes to the performance of Dan Mullen. While most fans and boosters seem supportive it seems there is a growing number frustrated that three-and-a-half years into the Mullen Era the Gators are 4-3 overall, 2-3 in the SEC and their shot at a return trip to Atlanta for the Southeastern Conference Championship Game has been completely derailed.

Mullen detractors would say we’re back to being “wait ‘til next year” Gators and that is unacceptable. Mullen supporters, on the other hand, preach patience, offering the Rome wasn’t built in a single day analogy in the head ball coach’s defense. Mullen is 33-12 since taking over for Florida after the disastrous 4-7 final year of Jim McElwain. That’s the best four year run since Urban Meyer was the head coach but there is that element of the Gator Nation that says this just isn’t good enough, that Mullen should be much further along in year four than being completely out of the SEC East race a couple of weeks prior to the annual showdown with Georgia in Jacksonville.

The impatience is understandable to a certain degree. The Gators, after all, won two national championships in three years (2006 and 2008) and put together back-to-back 13-1 seasons in 2008-09. Tim Tebow won the 2007 Heisman Trophy and should have won it in 2008 when he led the Gators to a national championship win over Oklahoma, clearly outclassing Sam Bradford, the OU quarterback who did take home the big trophy.

Fans remember those days and they’ve been aching for a return to that time when the Gators were the most feared team in college football and nearly every 5-star prospect in the country had the University of Florida on its short list. Mullen supporters point to what happened between 2010-17 as the chief reason why UF isn’t back in beast mode. Detractors point to Mullen’s choice of defensive coordinators and an inability to land top five recruiting classes.

There is a measure of truth in both theories. What happened between 2010-17 set Florida football back years and the return to excellence is not on speed dial although Mullen has certainly made progress. While Mullen made scoring points trendy once again, it is Grantham’s defense that hasn’t produced at a high level with any consistency in the last two years.

Supporters point fingers at Grantham and say if only. Detractors point fingers at Mullen and ask why someone else isn’t coordinating the defense.

No matter whether you are preaching patience, that Mullen will deliver championship-level football at Florida, or you’re in the patience is wearing thin group, that it’s time to make changes with UF football starting at the top, understand this first and foremost: Dan Mullen is going to be the football coach at the University of Florida in 2022. You can get your hammer and chisel out and etch that into stone.

Dan Mullen will be Florida’s football coach next year. He’s 33-12, has taken the Gators to three consecutive New Year’s Six bowl games and got the Gators to the SEC Championship Game last year. You don’t fire a coach who’s done that well, particularly when you consider the SS Gator was a sinking ship when Captain McElwain was in command back in 2017.

Of the 12 losses, eight have come down to a single possession. What frustrates the Mullen detractors the most is that five of those eight losses have come in the last two years. Three of Florida’s four losses in 2020 – to Texas A&M, LSU and Alabama – were by a combined 12 points. Not only were the Gators the only team eventual national champ Alabama didn’t stomp by 17 or more points, but if there had been another minute on the clock UF would have won that game. Florida was a single possession or defensive stop in three games from an 11-0 record that would have made the Gators the top seed in the College Football Playoff.

Florida’s three losses in 2021 – to Alabama, Kentucky and LSU – are by a combined 16 points. Just like last year, one more possession or one more stop and the Gators would be 7-0 with next week’s annual Florida-Georgia game a battle for the No. 1 ranking in the country.

Think about this for a moment: A single offensive play or one defensive stop in six games and instead 33-12, the Gators could be no worse than 39-6 since 2018. Do you know how many schools have a better record than 39-6? There is Alabama 43-4, Clemson 42-5, Ohio State 38-4 and Oklahoma 39-6. That’s it.

Because the Gators aren’t 39-6 and because half of Mullen’s losses have been in one-possession games, both supporters and detractors are frustrated. Optimistic supporters, however, will tell you that it’s only a matter of time before the Gators start finding ways to win the close encounters. Pessimistic detractors regularly ask will Mullen ever be able to seal the deal in those white knuckles games? Will he always be that close but no cigar coach who can only take the Gators so far?

It is the combination of close call losses with Mullen’s inability to bring in even one top five recruiting class that has critics invoking that famous line from former UF athletic director Jeremy Foley, who said when talking about the right time to fire one coach and hire another, “What should be done eventually must be done immediately.” In their way of thinking, it’s either fire Mullen now or forever lose recruiting battles to Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Texas A&M. They also point out that within a few years, Oklahoma and Texas will be joining the SEC, making recruiting all the more difficult.

Although the critics insist that if Mullen is not replaced now, he will forever set the Gators on a cycle of good but not great finishes from which they may never emerge, replacing him at this juncture probably isn’t the right path to take. If you see the world through orange and blue glasses you might think that every coach in America would crawl backwards to Gainesville for the chance to be the football coach at the University of Florida. Tennessee had a similar attitude back when it replaced Phillip Fulmer after the 2008 season. The Vols are on their fifth coach since then.

Replacing Mullen is a dubious proposition at best, but demanding change instead of status quo is not out of line. Mark Twain has often been quoted as saying, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be what you’ve always been.” Something different has to be done if Dan Mullen is to take Florida to the next level.

Something different should include a change of defensive coordinators. To jettison Todd Grantham will not be an easy proposition for Mullen. Grantham has been with Mullen since the 2017 season at Mississippi State. He’s the longest serving defensive coordinator in Mullen’s head coaching career. For Grantham, four years at Florida and five years under the same boss is his longest tenure since the first six years of his coaching career (1990-95) when his boss was Frank Beamer. He left Virginia Tech for a three-year stint working for Nick Saban at Michigan State.

The Gators improved defensively in 2018 and 2019, but things have gone sideways in the two years since. The 2020 Gators were statistically the worst defense in school history, giving up a whopping 30.8 points and 428 yards per game. Contrast that to 2019 when UF gave up 15.5 points and 304.8 yards. A year later, Florida is better than last year – how could the Gators be worse? – but the inconsistency has fans contemplating yanking their hair out. In the game three loss to Alabama the Gators were owned by the Crimson Tide in the first quarter when they scored 21 points. Florida dominated Alabama defensively in the final three quarters to the point the Tide couldn’t run the football. Two weeks later UF held Kentucky to 224 yards, a loss that can’t be hung on the defense due to a plethora of offensive mistakes that gave the game away. The same Gators that Kentucky couldn’t move the ball against, struggled in the first half to Vanderbilt. That Florida earned its first shutout since the 2016 season was a miracle since Vanderbilt missed three point-blank field goals. Then there was last week’s LSU debacle in which the Gators gave up 321 rushing yards to a team that was averaging 80 per game on the ground in the six games prior.

A certain amount of leeway should be given Grantham for 2020. Because COVID-19 eliminated spring football and offseason training, nearly every defense in the country took a hit and not just Florida. Georgia, for example, which led the nation in scoring defense in 2019, gave up 7.4 more points per game in 2020 and that was against a noticeably softer schedule. In 2019, for example, Georgia faced Notre Dame, Florida, Auburn, LSU and Baylor, all of whom were nationally ranked. Until Georgia faced Cincinnati in the Peach Bowl, Florida was the only ranked team the Bulldogs had faced.

The worldwide pandemic seemed to justify why Mullen gave Grantham a Mulligan for 2020 but the experience gained in those 12 games should have translated into a better 2021. This year the overall stats are improved – through seven games the Gators are giving up 21.1 points and 338.4 yards per game – but the Gators can only point to the Kentucky game for a four quarters of solid defense.

Four quarters of solid defense against Kentucky, four quarters of inept defense last week against LSU when the Tigers kept running the same counter trap play over and over again. The only attempt to deceive Grantham was sometimes the Tigers went left and other times they went right. Bamboozling, right?

Even Mullen supporters have reached their fork in the road when it comes to Grantham. Speak to anyone who follows the Gators closely and you’ll find near unanimous agreement that Grantham’s sell-by date has expired and it’s time for someone new with a fresh approach to coordinate the defense. Those with intimate knowledge of the football program say the Gators have good enough defensive personnel to win games but they point to schemes that are far too complicated.

“The defensive playbook is thicker than the one Mullen uses for the offense,” a regular observer of Florida’s football practices told me. “Every team we’ve played this year runs some version of the spread and the way that spaces you out, you don’t have a lot of time to think. It’s all about reaction but if you’re thinking too much, your reactions are way too slow.”

In only two of Florida’s seven losses – Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl in 2020, this year’s Kentucky game – have the Gators failed to score more than enough points to win the football game. In 2020, the Gators scored 38 against Texas A&M (gave up 41), 34 against LSU (gave up 37) and 46 against Alabama (gave up 52). This year, the Gators scored 29 against Alabama (gave up 31) and 42 against LSU (gave up 49). When you score 29 or more points in a football game, you really shouldn’t lose.

But lose the Gators have which means it is time for a divorce no matter how painful that may be. Staff changes are never easy because lives and families are disrupted and relationships are severed. There is also the matter of bringing in new people whose first line of business is to earn the trust of 18-22-year-old kids who have the leverage of a transfer portal if they don’t like the new coaches.

If Grantham goes, it’s almost certain the entire defensive staff will also be pink slipped and the replacement process isn’t easy. There is also no guarantee that Mullen will only choose to replace defensive coaches, but remember, this isn’t quite as easy as picking up the phone and making a few phone calls. Simply because it’s Florida doesn’t mean that Mullen will have the pick of the best assistants. If you don’t believe that look at what happened at Florida following the 2009 season when Charlie Strong, Vance Bedford, Billy Gonzales and Kenny Carter left following a 13-1 season. Established coaches with strong recruiting ties and who were perfect fits within the Florida football culture were replaced by coaches who didn’t measure up on one or more of those qualities. The replacements were inadequate and one of the reasons why the Gators dipped to 8-5, the first and only 5-loss season Meyer ever suffered as a collegiate coach.

So, if and when Dan Mullen elects to make changes on his coaching staff he will have to find people who (a) know how to deal with players who have the transfer portal option; (b) can fit in with the Florida football culture; (c) get the job done as coaches on the field; and (d) make a difference on the recruiting trail. That’s not an easy thing to do, but Mullen has to understand that his long term success at Florida depends on finding the right assistants as well as maybe finding a personnel/recruiting coordinator like Mark Pantoni. Pantoni is the unsung hero behind Florida’s great recruiting classes under Urban Meyer. He is also the ongoing energy behind Ohio State’s recruiting juggernaut since 2012.

Dan Mullen has definitely reached a point when it’s time to evaluate everything in the Florida football program starting with the way he delegates authority to making changes in his staff to changing the perception that Florida’s coaches are lazy, disinterested recruiters. Once he’s taken stock of the program, he’s got to do whatever is necessary to make some changes.

Not everything is wrong with Florida football. Far from it. The changes made in the program since Mullen took the job are not insignificant, but it is time to make the decision whether to always be what the Gators have always been since 2018 or take the next steps to do something differently.

It is never easy to make changes, but without change there is no growth and there is no question that Mullen’s supporters and detractors alike want to see visible signs of growth. Florida has traveled quite a distance from where the program was when Mullen replaced Jim McElwain. The time is now to start making the next steps that will take the Gators to the next level.

That’s where everyone, especially, Dan Mullen wants to be. There may be much division within the Gator Nation right now, but that’s one thing that everyone can agree on.