The Mullen Plan Has the Florida Gators Right on Schedule
Updated: Dec 11, 2020
Call it "The Mullen Plan to Win" if you will. In it are plenty of elements from the "Plan to Win" Dan Mullen learned as an assistant for Urban Meyer at Bowling Green, Utah and Florida, but it was expanded and tweaked many times during those nine years of refining his skills as a head coach at Mississippi State. The plan has always been solid but three games into his second year as the head coach of the Florida Gators, Mullen showed why a successful plan to win always has a contingency plan ready to implement on the fly.
You remember the scene as the third quarter drew to an end at Kroger Field in Lexington. With the Gators trailing Kentucky 21-10 and Franks leaving the field in agony on a stretcher, his ankle dislocated and fractured. There was that sinking feeling in the collective pits of the Gator Nation’s stomach that Florida’s hopes and dreams for an improvement of the 10-3 record of 2018 were being wheeled to a waiting ambulance.
Franks had experience. Although he had this penchant for throwing into coverage, he could also make the spectacular throw and make something out of nothing with his feet. His replacement was Kyle Trask, who had thrown all of 27 passes in his previous three years in Gainesville and who never started a game in high school in Manvel, Texas. There were stories that Trask threw a beautiful pass but couldn’t run a lick.
Two minutes into the fourth quarter not only did we discover that Trask was a very accurate passer but that he had the kind of poise under pressure you have to have to win in the Southeastern Conference. Lost in the many huzzahs of Trask’s 9-13 passing performance for 126 yards that led the Gators to a most improbable come-from-behind win at Kentucky was the fact that Dan Mullen had shifted the Florida offense on the fly. The Gators went from an offense that incorporated Franks’ feet into the running game to a pro-style pocket passing game that relied on the stunning accuracy and solid decision making of Trask.
Just like that.
Part of the original plan to win involves adapting the offense to the available personnel. At Mississippi State, Mullen gets plenty of credit for turning the same Dak Prescott that some schools wanted to convert into a linebacker into a QB who, for four weeks in 2014, had the Bulldogs perched as the nation’s number one team. Mullen doesn’t get near enough credit for revamping his offense to accommodate the running skills of Nick Fitzgerald, whose big offers other than Mississippi State were Samford and Mercer.
Mullen took over a Florida program that had spent much of the previous eight years spinning its wheels. From the moment he got off the plane in Gainesville in December of 2017, he’s had a plan to return Florida football to its championship roots and in doing so has produced consecutive 10-plus win seasons (10 in 2018; 11 in 2019) for the first time since 2008-09. Mullen is 29-6 heading into Saturday’s game with LSU. Florida is a 23-point favorite to improve to 9-1 Saturday and with at least two games remaining (SEC Championship and either a playoff or bowl game) there is a very good possibility Mullen will have three consecutive seasons with 10 or more wins since Steve Spurrier’s remarkable run of six straight from 1993-98.
Getting the Gators to this point hasn’t been easy. The first order of business was to rebuild the roster from one that had far too many holes into one that when someone goes down the next man up is equally talented. He’s done it with solid recruiting – the 2019 and 2020 classes were top ten; the 2020 class is currently ranked 7th and poised to move higher – along with adding plug and play transfers like Van Jefferson, Trevon Grimes, Jonathan Greenard, Brenton Cox Jr. and Justin Shorter.
For 2020, the Gators have a true SEC roster, which, with the global pandemic wreaking havoc everywhere has been a necessity. The original 12-game schedule was rearranged in August to an SEC-only 10-game slate. When Covid-19 took a midseason toll that forced a 10-day shutdown of all football activities, the schedule had to be rebooted again. Because of the virus, hitting in practice has been severely limited and that has affected the defense far more than the offense. Due to the combination of injuries, the virus and suspensions defensive coordinator Todd Grantham has rarely had the 11 players on the field he expected to have when the season began. Fortunately for Grantham, roster upgrades have given him talented kids to step in and play. The results haven’t always been pretty, but progress has been made. In recent games, the Gators have shown they’re capable of playing long stretches in a lock down mode.
The offense has had no such problems. Mullen continues to adjust on the fly to take advantage of Trask’s improvement that is the result of experience. Understand this, in Trask’s 24 games – 19 as a starter – he’s thrown for 6,410 yards and 64 touchdowns. He averages 9.1 yards per pass attempt. Put in perspective, Trask is now sixth on Florida’s all-time touchdown pass list and ninth in career passing yardage. His career efficiency rating of 172.7 is the best in Florida history.
This season alone, Trask has thrown for 3,243 yards (fifth all-time) and 38 touchdowns (second only to Danny Wuerffel’s 39) while averaging 10.1 per attempt. His 193.1 efficiency rating is nearly 15 points better than the best Wuerffel ever did. And this is in nine games. With 44 yards against LSU, Trask will pass the best season Tim Tebow ever had throwing (3,286). Wuerffel set the TDP record in 13 games in 1996. Tebow’s best year for yardage was 2007, also in 13 games.
If Trask lights up LSU and then is impressive while leading the Gators to a win over Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, he could join Wuerffel, Tebow and Steve Spurrier as Heisman Trophy winners and could join them outside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium with a statue.
In 2018, Mullen had an experienced offensive line that allowed the Gators to run for 213.5 yards per game. Last year’s line was the third most inexperienced in the country and the Gators transformed from a balanced run-pass team to one that took advantage of Trask’s skills throwing the ball. The line is experienced this year but because Trask is so good throwing it, it’s pass first. Florida has allowed only 10 sacks in nine games, the second best total in the SEC.
From the 2019 team, Mullen lost four receivers (Van Jefferson, Freddie Swain, Tyrie Cleveland, Josh Hammond) to the NFL. At most places, that would cause a dip in production, but not with this offense. With Kadarius Toney (53-649, 8 TDs), Kyle Pitts (36-641, 11 TDs) and Grimes (30-413, 8 TDs) leading the way, the Gators have eight receivers with at least 10 catches which shows that Mullen has the ideal distributor in Trask.
In Mullen’s first two seasons on the job at Florida, fans were much too quick to criticize his coaching staff but the myth that wholesale changes need to be made continues to be debunked. In O-line coach John Hevesy, Mullen has a trusted lieutenant who has adjusted what his troops do every time Mullen goes through a reboot of the offense. Van Jefferson, who plays for the Los Angeles Rams now and whose dad is an NFL assistant, says that wide receivers coach Billy Gonzales is the best in the country. What the Florida receivers have done lends credence to that. Tim Brewster coaches the tight ends. If anyone but Pitts wins the Mackey Award as the nation’s best tight end something is seriously wrong.
Quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson is getting head coaching interviews due to his work with Trask. Running backs coach Greg Knox also coordinates Florida’s special teams, which rank among the best in the country.
Over on defense, Grantham has gotten plenty of criticism this year because the defensive numbers are unusually high, but they’re high everywhere in the country and for the same reason – lack of hitting and tackling in practice. In spite of this, the Gators defense still leads the SEC with 29 sacks on the season. Still, his group of assistants – David Turner, Christian Robinson, Torian Gray and Ron English – have kept the defense improving. The perfect example is the Georgia game. Georgia put up 136 yards and scored two touchdowns on its first two possessions. Grantham and the defense adjusted on the fly. Georgia got one offensive touchdown and 141 yards the rest of the way.
All this is proof of a coach who has a plan and who has the Gators right on schedule. Mullen’s plan to get the Florida program back on track after eight years of wandering in the proverbial football desert is working. He has the Gators back in Atlanta where they might be the one team in the country capable of matching Alabama touchdown-for-touchdown. He has the Gators poised for a third straight season of 10 or more wins.
Restoring championship tradition was one of Mullen’s goals when he took the job at Florida. The goal has always been championships. The plan to get there has been rock solid but flexible enough to factor in the unexpected. The Gators aren’t where Mullen wants them to be but they’re getting there and doing it methodically in such a way that the foundation for long term success is in place.
The Mullen Plan is a good one and it’s working.
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