Florida Gators: The Bromance Between Dan Mullen and the NFL Is Over for Now
Updated: Jan 8, 2021
The bromance between the National Football League and Dan Mullen has been like a blind date that both the guy and the girl are both ready to be over even before they’ve finished the appetizers at the swanky restaurant. It sure seemed like a good idea at the moment they agreed to meet, but for any one of a hundred reasons it just didn’t work out, so barring something dramatic in the next few days, Mullen is going to remain as Florida’s football coach for the 2021 season.
This really wasn’t a serious affair either on the part of Mullen or the NFL. The flirtation began within a day of that disastrous night at Jerry’s World when the Gators, sans their top four receivers and a few others who either opted out or were injured, crashed and burned like a Yugo with bad brakes and bald tires skidding on slick pavement into one of those trucks with the words inflammable embossed on tanks filled with volatile liquids. There was a certain amount of contact between Mullen – most likely made through the lawyers of agent Jimmy Sexton – and the NFL. As many as four teams that were expecting to pink slip their head coaches made the contact to gauge the interest of Mullen, a quarterback whisperer of some repute. In a quarterback-centric league like the NFL, a coach who can transform a career backup like Kyle Trask and turn him into a possible first rounder piques the interest of owners whose bottom line has something to do with how often their scoreboards light up.
Contact was made and Mullen let it be known he would listen. Key word LISTEN because in the days since the Cotton Bowl loss it has become obvious that things haven’t gone beyond the appetizer stage.
Once it became public knowledge that Mullen had (a) agreed to hear out any NFL proposals and (b) would be willing to make the jump to the No Fun League if a near perfect situation was in the offering, the internet exploded with speculation that he had one foot out the Florida door and his other foot in the door of some NFL team. This was largely the work of over-zealous beat reporters intent on getting the jump on the next head coach or some keyboard cowboy leaking out his wish list. In the case of Mullen, there WAS some interest from the Chicago Bears, New York Jets and Los Angeles Chargers. Were they kicking tires or making serious overtures? It’s improbable that we’ll ever know the answer to that question. We do know the answer to the reports that surfaced of Mullen interviewing with the Atlanta Falcons. That DID NOT happen.
NFL teams were indeed interested in Mullen and Mullen was interested to hear what they had to say but that’s about all it was. Unless something changes dramatically in the next several days, in part because of the Rooney Rule which requires every NFL team to interview at least one minority candidate before any decision can be made regarding the next head coach, there won’t be a bombshell of Spurrier proportions (See January 2002 when Stephen Orr Spurrier resigned with the intention of coaching in the NFL) when it comes to Dan Mullen.
Spurrier’s resignation led to a hastily arranged coaching search, rumors that either Mike Shanahan or Bob Stoops would be UF’s next head coach, and the ultimate hiring of Ron Zook. That was the first of five football coaching searches conducted by the University of Florida. Until there comes a time when Mullen decides he would like to scratch an NFL itch – if there even is one that won’t go away – he probably will be coaching at the University of Florida.
When considering Mullen and the future, two things should be understood. First and foremost, Dan Mullen is not in any hurry to exit stage left from his gig as head football coach at the University of Florida. He’s made it known to plenty of people that there is no interest in any other college coaching job. He loves Gainesville. His wife and kids love Gainesville. He loves the Gators and loves the challenge of restoring Florida football back to the championship level it was in the days of Spurrier (1990-2001) and Urban Meyer (2005-10). Spurrier won six SEC titles and the 1996 national championship. Meyer won both the SEC and national championships in 2006 and again in 2008. Mullen was part of the two championship runs by Meyer so he knows what the UF program is capable of doing. He also knows what can happen to a championship program when allowed to take steps backward.
After Meyer resigned from Florida following the 2010 season, Florida football hit the skids. Meyer’s six-year run that saw a 65-15 record (fourth best mark nationally) turned mediocre from 2011-17. Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain combined to go 52-36 and both endured one losing season. The 52-36 record would be cause for celebration at Division I schools that haven’t scaled the heights of national championship runs, but at Florida that’s a disaster. It wasn’t until Mullen was hired away from Mississippi State following McElwain’s 4-7 swan song that the Good Ship Gator stopped taking on water and listing badly. Only Meyer (31 wins from 2005-07) has won more games in his first three seasons at Florida than Mullen (29), who is tied with Spurrier (29 from 1990-92) for second place.
A second reason why Mullen is not in any hurry to leave for the NFL is the amount of work that has been done is dwarfed by what still must be done at Florida to restore the program to the championship level it was when he left after the 2008 national championship to go out on his own at Mississippi State. Just as Mississippi State was a challenge to make that program into a consistent winner, there is a huge challenge to make Florida consistently better than Georgia in the SEC East and to challenge Alabama for ultimate supremacy in the league. When he left for Starkville, Georgia had only beaten Florida three times since 1990 and Nick Saban was trying to get “the process” going at Alabama. Now Alabama is the gold standard for the entire country and Georgia has consistently outperformed the Gators.
In those nine seasons at Mississippi State Mullen knew fully well that it would take a miracle of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace proportions to bring an SEC championship to Starkville. The fan base was content when Mullen took the Bulldogs to a school-record eight consecutive bowl games. They thought they had died and gone to heaven during that four-week interval when Mullen had the Bulldogs ranked No. 1 in the nation. Getting there for four weeks thrilled the masses, who understood how difficult it would be to maintain that level of winning for an entire season. Dreaming it is one thing. Doing it is something else altogether different.
That’s why when Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin called in December of 2017 to ask if Mullen had an interest in becoming the Gators’ head coach the answer was yes and without the slightest hesitation. Championships are dreams at Mississippi State. They are very real possibilities at the University of Florida. If Mullen needed a selling point to take the Florida job, that was it.
At a speaking engagement in Ocala prior to the start of the 2018 season, Megan Mullen recalled the night Stricklin called. The Mullen clan was in Starkville watching a football game on television when the phone rang. Seeing on caller ID that it was Stricklin on the other end, Megan Mullen told Dan, “If he’s offering the Florida job, we’re taking it!”
This was Mullen’s dream job therefore very little negotiation was necessary to make coming to Florida a done deal. It was simply a matter of agent Jimmy Sexton’s lawyers and Stricklin agreeing on the details to make it official.
In three years on the job in Gainesville, Mullen has done a solid job of taking a program that spent 2011-17 letting the Florida brand slip. Florida’s streak of 33 non-losing seasons as well as a streak of 22 straight years going to a bowl game ended with a 4-7 record in 2013. In 2017, the Gators suffered the indignity of a second losing season within five years. A 10-win season in 2018 was followed by an 11-win season in 2019, both seasons ending with victories in New Years Six bowl games. In 2020, the Gators were within a single possession in two regular season season losses and a loss to mighty Alabama in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game of an undefeated record.
It was the 52-46 loss to Alabama that probably did the most for Mullen’s NFL stock. Prior to that game, Alabama had allowed only 53 points in its last 22 quarters. In torching a Nick Saban defense loaded with future pros, Mullen’s play calling drew comparisons to that of Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, considered the best in the NFL. Mullen was already a person of interest to the pros, but that performance took things to another level.
Even though it’s unlikely Mullen leaves for the NFL this year, the interest in luring him to the league isn’t going away anytime soon. The NFL was interested in Spurrier every year for one basic reason – his teams put points on the scoreboard and points put fannies in the seats of NFL stadiums. Mullen’s offenses put points on the scoreboard. Always have and always will, which is why we can expect Mullen will be on somebody’s short list every single year.
Now, go back to that key word – LISTEN.
Some Florida fans might consider it a sign of disrespect that the head football coach will listen whenever there is an offer to leave but understand something once attributed to Bear Bryant. The story goes that Bryant was asked if it’s a sign of disrespect when he listened to offers to coach somewhere else. His reply went something like this: If no one is interested in talking to your coach, then he’s not winning enough football games.
If you’re not attracting the interest of other teams either college or pro, then it’s entirely possible the people who pay your salary will grow complacent. There is nothing like listening to incoming offers to remind the powers that be exactly what you’re capable of doing.
Scoring points puts fans in the seats. Winning football games, especially when accompanied by points on the scoreboard, keeps them coming back week after week, season after season. Mullen scores points and he wins games. In the coming years, he will win more games with potent offenses and if the defense comes around, championships will follow. Now some might think the moment Mullen has won that first big championship that he will bolt for the pros but there is an addiction to winning titles. If you don’t believe that then ask yourself why Nick Saban remains at Alabama even though he knows he can name his price to go coach in the pros. Mullen might find that first big championship won at Florida will have the same effect and keep him in Gainesville.
Professional coaches are hired to be fired. A college coach who sets his program on a consistent championship course can have a long, happy run and winning cures a lot of ills. We won’t know what course Dan Mullen’s career will take in the future but for now, he's in the process of conducting exit interviews for players and re-tooling his coaching staff. So, for this year, at least, it seems the NFL will be like the blind date at the swanky restaurant, something that seemed like a good idea if only for a minute.
Comments