Transcript: Dan Mullen Breaks Down Florida Gators Win Over USF, Duel Quarterbacks and More
The No. 13 Florida Gators defeated USF Bulls 42-20 on Saturday, giving Head Coach Dan Mullen his 100th win as a head coach. Mullen met with local media after the win to break down the rotation between quarterbacks Emory Jones and Anthony Richardson, running back and tight end usage, and more.
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Congrats on the 100th win.
"Thank you. I'd forgotten all about it until Megan and them came on the field afterwards. Like 'Hey I've completely forgotten all about it.' She's like, 'Congrats on number 100.' I'm like, 'That's pretty, that's pretty awesome."
Anthony Richardson, my God, it's like every time he touches the ball, he does something special. What would you think of his performance today and what's his status? Did he pull a hammy?
"Yea, hamstring tightened up on him. Yeah, he does special things; doesn't always do the right thing but he does special things, you know. So, you know, we got to keep coaching him to be efficient and make sure we're making all the right reads."
You know how fan bases are, I mean we're watching the game up here. What is he not doing too [be on the field?'
"I mean I can, I mean, it'll bore you—"
What is it?
"It'll bore you actually, but I mean we're pretty lucky. We have two quarterbacks that are pretty talented guys, can make plays happen out there on the field. But there's a lot of things. You got to read, there's a lot that the quarterback has to do, a lot of different reads that are out there on the field, so if that makes sense, I mean a lot. And you're like, 'oh what a spectacular run.' The long touchdown was a great read. He read it properly, broke a tackle, scored a touchdown...But I mean, there's, I mean, I don't know I mean, I have great appreciation, our fans, have great appreciation of, you know, watching things and watching great athletes out there on the field. And great guys make great plays out there on the field. We're pretty fortunate, we have two quarterbacks right now that can make great plays out there on the field, play both of them. Both of them, I thought were pretty efficient in the first half. Both of them were so-so at times with different situations in the second half with things that go on. You know, it's a long season and we have young quarterbacks that I got to continue to grow and continue to develop into being really good football players." Does seniority play a factor in Emory starting over Anthony “Nope. We’re trying to win football games. Know what I mean? I have a responsibility to put everybody on the team in position to win and there’s an awful lot that goes into that. I know everybody loves just looking at the two quarterbacks. There’s 10 other guys on the field until I put in our two quarterback offense, which I haven’t shown yet. Then there’s only nine other guys on the field. When you look at those things my job is to put us in the best position to win football games and develop this football program to be the best it can be. That’s what we’re doing.” Dameon Pierce started but didn’t play much late what did you see from the RBs “Dameon Pierce, I know Greg rotates those guys. We have a bunch of good backs. That’s probably a good question, why did Pierce, I mean you saw the spectacular touchdown run that he made, I mean unbelievable run. We have a bunch of good backs that we roll through and, again, long season we want to keep those guys fresh, keep those guys healthy. Those guys usually do a good job for us on special teams as well. So, you know, that’s kind of part of it.” Disappointed about the performance in the 2nd half? “Yeah. I thought we, I didn’t think we were very efficient in the second half. We made some critical errors. Now, we did some good things there. You know what, we played a lot of guys as we want to do early in the season and see where we’re at, give guys opportunities. When you give guys opportunities to get on the field and everybody wants chances, everybody wants opportunities and if you get it though you better live up and play to the Gator standard. Guys are going to be able to tune on the film and watch the film and realize, you know what? I didn’t play to the Gator standard today. That’s not what it’s about. that’s not playing and executing, and I don’t mean with the attitude, the effort, the energy, I think our guys have great attitude and energy. I think with the execution with every single play, the detail that goes into every single play, and how exact you have to be on every single play. We have a lot of guys missing those things. We’ll say, hey, we’ll coach, hey, I did it right four out of five plays and that’s not the Gator standard. The Gator standard is doing it right five out of five plays with relentless effort.” Jean Delance on crutches after the game “No. I don’t have updates on any of the injury guys right now. They came to me, they didn’t think there was anything real serious with anybody but I’ll find out later.” How did Emory respond to interceptions? “Uhhhhhhhh … he was fine, you know, he was fine. He came back in, continued to manage the game. Those are just some growing mistakes. The first one was a bad one. The second one, he just has to speed up his read. He was just late on his throw on the second one. Those are things you got to continue to learn. I thought he played much better this week than last week, in the first half for sure. I think we just got sloppy in the second half. You have to execute every single snap of the game there’s so few opportunities.” Is Emory still the starter? “Yeah … wh … yes. Like I said, we have two really good quarterbacks. You’ll see both of them play every single game. You know what you never ask? Why don’t you ask who the starting running back is? Who started today?” When fans start asking me all the time at running back I’ll ask. “Who started at running back today? Do you know?” Malik. “Oh, I didn’t know that. OK, Cool. Cause we have really good running backs. We roll those guys through. We’re pretty fortunate at quarterback, too.” Avery Helm, Jason Marshall, other CBs? “I mean, good and bad. But you know what, they’re young guys getting thrown out there, getting thrown into that situation. Obviously the injury that we had did not help us, with where we’re at there. But those two guys are gaining valuable experience and are getting a little bit better from one week to the next. I thought their performance was much better today than it was last week, which is a real positive and hopefully we take another big step next week.” Overall assessment, what can improve on? “Everything, we can improve on everything. We played pretty solid defense in the first half. We had the one drive that I wasn’t real pleased with in the first half. Second half we came out in some situations, made some stops, made some mistakes defensively at the end of the game. Offensively, we came out and we made a bunch of explosive plays and kind of really did well in the first half even though we were not as clean and efficient as I wanted to be. In the second half, we came out we weren’t as efficient as we wanted to be, made some mistakes as the game wore on and we got to be better that way. Kicking game, made some mistakes, obviously gave up a huge return, made a poor judgment in fielding a kick and trying to run it out. Our kickoffs need to get better. I mean, overall, do I like our attitude, our energy, our effort of what we played with? Yes. Did our guys take care of what they needed to to win the game? Yes. Do we need to get a lot better? Yes.” (On Kaiir Elam not being on the field for 2nd half, and if there was injury concern) "Nope. We were giving our guys a lot of opportunities today to see what they can go do, it's a long season. So, I think you probably saw that with a lot of players, and so we put a lot of guys in the game so they could learn. We had a lead, and we were very fortunate to have that lead and fortunate to be able to give guys a lot of opportunities to go on the field and see what they can do, and go learn and grow and develop. And, you know, that's a huge deal for our program, is the player development. And we were fortunate, we had a lead, I want to see other guys get in the game and I want to see them grow and develop and we were able to get a lot of guys reps that they can learn from moving forward." (On tight end position group fitting into the offense) "Yeah, doing a great job, they're doing a great job. I don't know that we threw to them today, did we?" (Didn't see any grabs) "I think we threw one on the fourth-down play on the goal line. Yeah, that was kind of the game plan. So, they're doing a great job, production is excellent, their production is excellent with the tight ends. Really pleased how they're playing."
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