Florida Gators: Dan Mullen Doesn't Have One Foot Out the Door
Spring has definitely sprung for the Florida Gators, whose 15 NCAA allotted practices will conclude with a Saturday scrimmage rather than the annual Orange and Blue dog and pony show in The Swamp. While the Orange and Blue game is nothing more than a show for the fans, in the past it has at least given a glimpse of what went well during practice. Dan Mullen has kept a rather tight lid on things and information leaks have been held to a minimum.
Typically, spring practice begins mid-March and ends mid-April, but there has been nothing typical about the Florida football program dating back to the blowout Cotton Bowl loss to Oklahoma. That was Florida’s third consecutive loss and it brought an overwhelming feeling of disappointment to a season that was filled with more offensive excitement than Gator fans had seen in more than a decade. Couple the losing streak at the end with Mullen’s failure to promptly address rumors that he was seeking an NFL job, the early start to spring football and the lack of a spring game and there is a prevailing sense of unease among the Florida fan base.
Whether intended or not, Mullen may have turned what fans perceived to be a chaotic situation into advantage Gators. Connect a few dots if you will.
(1) Considering the way the 2020 season ended, it was important for Mullen to get things pointed forward in a hurry. Scheduling spring practice a month earlier than usual got the Gators on the field, effectively putting 2020 out of sight and out of mind. Rather than another month to dwell on the past, it was full steam ahead toward the future for returning veterans, early enrollee freshmen and a few transfers.
(2) Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Orange and Blue Game would have been reduced to a crowd perhaps 60 to 70 percent less than the normal 40,000 or so who show up in April. Since the NCAA limits spring practice to 15 days Mullen concluded that it would be best to hold a real scrimmage that might last three hours rather than a staged event in which the scrubeenies and walk-ons get more playing time than the veterans. The Orange and Blue game actually takes up two practice days away because there has to be a walkthrough day once teams are divided up and then there is game day itself. Instead of a show game that accomplishes nothing more than to hide all the things that weren’t accomplished in the previous three or four weeks, Mullen will get in two solid final practices that will help him and his staff evaluate where things need to be when football resumes in August.
(3) By starting practice in February and ending it in mid-March, players will have approximately six weeks without the encumbrance of football practice to make sure their academic house is in order.
(4) The cancellation of spring practice and offseason conditioning due to COVID-19 in 2020 had the dual effect of too many players who struggled with football condition throughout the season and a lack of leadership since leaders always emerge during summer’s dog days when workouts are voluntary. The early start and finish of spring football will allow players to get a head start on conditioning and for leaders to emerge. Coaches can’t participate in the summer workouts so the players have to take the reins and lead. Another of the damaging effects of the lack of a 2020 offseason was inadequate leadership.
(5) Was Mullen keenly aware of the NCAA plans to end the recruiting dead period on May 31 when he scheduled the earlier than usual spring schedule? It seems far too coincidental that Florida will have a full month head start on the rest of the SEC when it comes to prepping for the end of the almost year-long ban on official visits and coaches being able to interact face-to-face with high school and junior college kids. The early end to spring practice gives the coaches a chance to do their post-practice evaluations, make decisions about position changes, figure out depth charts and coming up with play lists for game planning purposes all ahead of May 31. Already the Florida recruiting staff is being bombarded by a larger than usual number of requests about camps as kids who have been unable to take recruiting visits get ready to descend on Gainesville.
(6) The NCAA, also in its infinite wisdom, is expected to announce implementation of a one-time transfer rule that should take effect about the same time as the end to the dead period. Getting spring practice over earlier will give kids who intend to transfer out extra time to locate a new landing spot and will give coaches more time to evaluate a growing stack of requests from kids who are looking to leave their current situations. Florida added several transfers to its 2021 recruiting class. At least 2-3 more are expected to choose the Gators in May or June.
This sequence of events isn’t the result of some cosmic big bang theory in which two random football atoms collided to set things in motion. There seems to be a master design to all this and despite the uncertainty moving forward, Mullen has the Gators well prepared to take advantage of whatever situation presents itself. While the rest of the Southeastern Conference will be pressed to get everything in order prior to the lifting of the dead period, Mullen and the Florida staff will have been working for more than two months to prepare for what is expected to be an absolute onslaught of visitors.
In preparation for the June camp season and subsequent recruiting blitz, Mullen and staff have the next two months to take what they saw during the 15 practice days and formulate plans that will be put in place when football reconvenes in August.
“There's a lot of things we're doing that we're probably not going to do in the fall, but we want to evaluate those things first,” Mullen said. “So what we're gonna do is go through – we install, we put everything in, we look at where the strengths of individual players are, we mash those strengths together and how we put that all together within the package – and then we go forward from there. So, you know, I, there's a lot of things I like, but I couldn't sit here and tell you this is the strength of this team yet because we were still evaluating it all.”
What little we know about what has taken place during practice is that the quarterback position has been inconsistent as has the offensive line although it seems that Richard Gouraige, Ethan White, Stewart Reese and Josh Braun have established themselves as starters. Running back is deeper, more talented and faster than it has been in years with Lorenzo Lingard showing that he’s regained the speed and elusiveness that made him a 5-star recruit before he went to Miami and hurt his knee. Although Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney are gone, there shouldn’t be much in the way of dropoff at wide receiver, particularly with Justin Shorter and Xzavier Henderson emerging as big play types. The interior of the defensive line, bolstered by wide body transfers Daquan Newkirk and Antonio Shelton, has been improving on a daily basis. The back seven is much improved, especially in the secondary where new assistant Wesley McGriff has brought in much-needed energy. The Gators are going to be young but there is no shortage of talent, particularly at corner where Kaiir Elam is likely to be named to nearly every preseason All-America team.
Emory Jones will finish the spring as the No. 1 quarterback. From the few leaked practice and scrimmage reports, it appears Jones was hot and cold throughout the spring, often on the same day. He has enormous physical gifts but has to figure out on his own that his job is to be the first Emory Jones and not the next Kyle Trask.
Years of churning out quarterbacks who make an offense hum along at a highly productive level should erase much of the worry among the Florida fan base, but Trask was so successful last year that he at times seemed robotic and few think Jones can put up numbers anywhere close. Mullen has made it perfectly clear he believes Jones has everything necessary to be very successful but he still throws caution to the wind because once practice comes to a halt on Saturday he can no longer coach Jones up until fall camp opens up in August.
“The most important time I always think for a quarterback is the end of spring ball to the start of training camp,” Mullen said. “You go back to the interview last year and I bet you hear me say that and you can go back to the interview before that and you’ll hear me say that and the one the year before that and you’ll hear me say that again. The end of spring ball to the start of training camp is one of the most developmental times for the quarterback and I’m not allowed to be with him for that time on the field. What they do and how they’re able to handle it is critical.”
From Saturday through the end of May, everything will be geared toward preparing for an anticipated record camp season. It might be the single most important evaluation period for recruiting since Mullen came to Florida in 2017. There have been no official visits for more than a year and with the NCAA mandated recruiting dead period in existence for at least two more months, the evaluation process has been put on ice, replaced by a good bit of guesswork.
Complicating matters is a lack of clarity from the NCAA, which hasn’t indicated when the current rules become obsolete and when new rules are put in place. In past years, the NCAA had clear guidelines for when camps could be held, how many official visitors are allowed and which periods on the calendar allow for coaches to have contact with recruits, their coaches and families.
“It’s obviously a very different calendar still with the NCAA rules this year,” Mullen said earlier in the week. “We’re still adapting to all of that, how we kind of work and set our schedule and our work schedule and how we define what we’re going to do over the next couple of weeks, couple months really, from Saturday, [when] spring ball ends.”
At its best, recruiting is always a crapshoot, but there was nothing normal about the 2021 class for any school in the country. It is thought that Mullen and staff landed a very good 2021 recruiting class, but a good portion of the signees never took an official visit or had any substantial amount of time on campus or with UF coaches. No summer camps and the inability of coaches to get on the road to recruit only highlighted the need for the Gators to bring in as many early enrollee freshmen as possible back in January. Thirteen freshmen joined three scholarship transfers and two other transfers who arrived as walk-ons.
The return of the camp season should add a feeling that things are at last getting back to normal on the recruiting trail since the Florida staff will once again have the opportunity to evaluate potential recruits in person, see how they respond to coaching and see how they interact with potential teammates. Even though a record number of kids are expected to camp with the Gators in June, there is nothing concrete until the NCAA issues its latest edicts.
“There’s still just so many questions,” Mullen said. “Is it June 1 and life back to normal? Does it include the summer dead period? Is it official visits, unofficial visits, camps, everything?”
Although there are vaccines that appear quite effective and the number of COVID-19 cases seems to have flatlined recently, the virus is part of a new reality and it will factor in what happens moving forward.
“That’s something we have to be smart and careful about with COVID to avoid a spike, to avoid issues within our team when there’s this mad rush of kids trying to get to every campus as fast as possible,” Mullen said. “It will be interesting. Hopefully they’ll get us the information sooner rather than later so we can have the opportunity to put a strategy in place before it gets thrown on us.”
Whether the information comes sooner or later, it’s doubtful Mullen will be caught flatfooted. Nothing about his recent decisions would indicate he will be anything less than prepared no matter what the NCAA or the virus or anything else dictates. Just a month ago, some national pundits speculated that the decision to begin spring football a month early was just the latest dumb move by a coach with one foot out the door. A month later, it’s fairly clear that everything Mullen did was calculated and insightful and not the moves of a coach with his eyes set on a new destination
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