New Year's Resolutions: Florida Gators Football Needs More Than A Diet
A three-game skid isn’t exactly how one wants to close out its season.
But with an unspeakable loss to LSU, falling to Alabama in the SEC Championship by one possession and a humiliating curb stomping from the No. 6 Oklahoma Sooners in the 2020 Goodyear Cotton Bowl on Wednesday night, Head Coach Dan Mullen and the No. 7 Florida Gators take exactly that into the offseason.
However, if one thing is for sure, you always learn more about a team in a loss than in a win. And Florida has three of them to learn from.
Unfortunately, in those losses the Gators learned that improving in 2021 isn’t just a matter of losing quarantine weight. Instead, Florida will have to get an introspective look at itself when formulating a path to self-betterment. And there’s no better time to do that than during New Year’s.
Here’s three New Year’s resolutions the Gators can focus on to kickstart their 2021:
1. The Gators must find offensive balance
Like anyone else with eyeballs, I thought Florida’s offense was one of, if not the most entertaining offenses in college football this year. The amount of grace the Gators’ offense operated with exemplified the “dance” of college football we all love.
But the Gators peaked at the wrong time.
The three game stretch of Missouri, Georgia and Arkansas saw Dan Mullen’s offense orchestrate offensive clinics The Gators tallied 514 yards, 571 yards and 593 yards, respectively.
In those three games, Florida tallied a total of 474 rushing yards. In five games that followed, the Gators rushed for 485 rushing yards. Excluding the Oklahoma game, Florida went from posting 158 rushing yards a game during that three game time frame, to tallying just 97 rushing yards per game -- including a performance in Knoxville that saw the Gators post just 19 rushing yards.
And while I understand, “If they can pass, why do they need to run?” There is a lot of truth to that. And I selfishly don’t mind watching Mullen call an air-raid offense that punishes opponents. Yet, before long, those same opponents learn from one another and start sniffing things out. Though guys like Kyle Pitts, Trevon Grimes and Kadarius Toney present matchup nightmares for opposing defenses, it’s only a matter of time before opponents learn how to do just enough to slow Florida’s offense.
Florida’s run game doesn’t reside on this side of the sun. If one takes away the passing attack, there’s not much of an attack.
Look at the disgraceful loss to the Sooners on Wednesday night.
The passing attack wasn’t thriving as Kyle Trask quickly threw three interceptions, shoving a dagger in the sternum of his Heisman campaign.
However, the Gators did manage 250 rushing yards against the Sooners. But it’s no coincidence that in the game Florida had to rely on the ground game the most, also saw the Gators post the lowest number on the scoreboard all season.
And without the likes of Trask, Pitts, Grimes and Toney next season, the Gators will likely have to find ways to establish a run game prior to the 2021 season.
2. Dan Mullen must be willing to clean his house when it gets dirty and the HOA complains
Dan Mullen has been no stranger to criticism both this season and in the past when it comes to keeping assistants, er… longer than he should. And personally, I think that’s very admirable.
Loyalty to a coaching staff typically breeds success. When you can create a cohesive staff that works for a program, half the battle is won. And in Dan Mullen’s first two and a half years, he had that.
But like much of Florida’s overall production and efficiency on both sides of the ball, come midseason, a downward trend got underway. The first murmurs (this season) of Florida fans’ displeasure with defensive coordinator Todd Grantham came after the Gators’ loss to Texas A&M in week three.
Florida’s defense gave up 543 yards to the Aggies. But more alarmingly, the Gators’ defense allowed Texas A&M to convert 12 of its 15 third down tries—hence the glorious term “Third and Grantham”.
Yet, even then I wasn’t sold on Mullen giving his defensive coordinator the boot. Afterall, take a peek around the league and try to tell me that even the “good” defenses are great. For whatever reason, the oddities of 2020 spilled into the defenses of the SEC. But as the defensive troubles bled into midseason, and I still dug my heels into the ground and would make claims like, “Well, Todd Grantham isn’t the one missing all those tackles.”
But as the fanbase continued to call for Grantham’s head, it became more and more evident that it might be time for Mullen to assess that spot on his staff. Not because Florida’s defense was bad -- in fact, that’s not the case at all, I think there is way more that goes into defensive planning than the Florida Faithfull realizes -- but because the friction is being felt now.
Calling for Dan Mullen’s job is absurd. But some are doing it. Simply because he isn’t remedying the issue that we all see crystal clear.
As Gators Territory’s Nick de la Torre pointed out, in the last three games of the season, the Gators defense allowed 1,707 yards, 144 points and 7.29 yards per play. And as noble as Mullen wants to be, that blame for that can’t be placed on the offense.
Again, I think it’s asinine for Gators fans to even hint at ridding of Dan Mullen, but it’s happening.
As the title of this section suggests, when the HOA tells you to clean your house and you don’t do it, you might be asked to leave. And there’s not better time to break out the cleaning supplies than the New Year.
3. No more “seven points away”
This has dual meaning.
The first: three of Florida’s four losses were lost by less than a touchdown. There’s not really a reason Florida shouldn’t have won at least one of those.
The second: When there’s obvious issues during a game, reminding fans that the Gators were “seven points away” does no favors for Dan Mullen.
The first meaning points to Florida’s inability to close games in 2020. In basketball, every team has a series of plays to help them come from behind and put up points if they need them. Now obviously scoring is a lot easier in basketball than in football, but still. There should be some plan… some scheme that the Gators can fall back on when in those tight situations.
Obviously a few poorly timed missed field goals came back to haunt the Gators in 2020. But Florida left a lot of points on the board when it really needed them.
And now for the latter part. This simply boils down to accountability.
I’ll happily admit that I’m a big Dan Mullen fan. I think he is 100% the perfect guy for the Florida job and I get the feeling that he genuinely wants to be in Gainesville. Compare him to Jim McElwain and tell me they aren’t night and day differences… except for one small thing: accountability.
Fortunately, Mullen doesn’t use the word “neat” nearly as much as McElwain did, but there are a lot of similarities in their postgame demeanors. And while I’d never want to see a coach ream his players or assistants for a loss during a press conference, sometimes you just need to hear something more stern than the moral victory of being seven points away from a win.
The Florida job is a tough gig to have. Everyone knows that. The expectations are painfully high.
And with that comes the need to address issues when they arise. Trask threw a bad game? Say that. The defense couldn’t stop a nosebleed? Say that. But stating the obvious in saying the Gators were seven points away won't cut it… not with this fan base.
And Mullen is a good guy. He cares about his team and his staff. It’ll be a hard adjustment for him. But fans aren’t asking for him to be demeaning or degrading, just to identify the issues and speak on them.
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