Transcript: Dan Mullen on Clinching the East, Defensive Progress and Kyle Trask's Heisman Promotion
Florida Gators Head Coach Dan Mullen met with local media on Monday to discuss the No. 6 Gators win over the Kentucky Wildcats, how the defense has regressed/progressed, what UF can do to promote Kyle Trask's Heisman chances and what it'd mean to clinch the East this weekend versus Tennessee.
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INTRO
"Hope everybody's doing good today. I'll give you your injury scoop. Everyone, we got out of that last game pretty healthy, fortunately. And we're hoping Trent Whittemore can make it back this week if he progresses, so hopefully we get him back and everything else is kind of status quo."
CHANCE TO CLINCH EAST, THAT A BIG EMPHASIS THIS WEEK?
"Yeah, I mean it's a great opportunity for us that way. You know, I mean the biggest emphasis on us is finding ways that we've got to improve as a team. That's the biggest emphasis. It's a long season, it's a tough season to make sure we have the mental toughness and the physical toughness to continue to play at a high level, to continue to do the things you need to win. And part of that is the preparation all during the week, because the game you get to go perform. All our preparation leads up to how you're going to perform. That's the most important thing. That's what we touched on this morning in the meeting, is finding ways to be mentally tough to get better."
YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN AMAZINGLY EFFICIENT ON OFFENSE, ESPECIALLY BEFORE HALF. HOW CRITICAL IS THAT FOR WHAT YOU'VE ACCOMPLISHED?
"Well I think that gets into situational football. We spend a lot of time on situational football during the year. What is situational football, offensively? The opening drive of the first half is a situation. How you're doing in end-of-half, the last two to three minutes of the first half, really the last four minutes of the first half. First four minutes of the second half, huge situation time. Two-minute situations at the end of the game or four-minute situations at the end of the game. Then obviously you have red zone, third down. All the different situational things in the game we spend a lot of time on. I think our guys understand that and it goes in, it's a lot of team focus. You go into last week's game, last time we touched it it was a special teams play. But was a special teams play that didn't end the; it was a defensive stop forcing a punt to give us the ball back one more time to try to get that two-for-one possession at the end of the half, and we were really able to do that. That's been a big emphasis all year, of making sure our guys understand the situational importance of every aspect."
The second half, you guys defer and get the ball quite a bit. And I think six times, you have four TDs, one field goal. Again, to that point I mean how can that deliver a knockout blow to a team because it's done it a few times.
"Well I think it is, I think, you know, you look at all the games, you get into close tight games and how important that is. You know, and you go back even, you know, I mean, to me, the one time I don't think we get it, and having the ball at the end and stealing that extra possession, playing Texas A&M and they get the extra possession. You know, they have one more possession for us, then we did the entire game, that one possession, at the end of the game they score...It's such a big part, it's such a big part of the game that kind of gets overlooked.”
You touched on it Saturday. The weather is gonna be an issue, could be an issue. You take advantage of it tomorrow, two a day's tomorrow since it's gonna be like 30 degrees and high of 50 something?
"Yeah, you know I think, I think it'll be a little chilly here in Gainesville this week. Um, you know, I mean I don't know. Our players I'm sure'll be fine. For me I'm, I'm like you know anything below 60, you know, I probably gonna, you might be looking at me, people be laughing, I don't know. Last weather report I saw, it's supposed to be like, you know, mid to high 40s, you know, but I'll probably be bundled up with like hat, gloves and a big puffy winter jacket on. I've gotten used to the warm weather, that Florida weather. So, uh, but I think for our guys, you know I mean I don't think it'll be that big of a factor to be perfectly honest with you, I think, you know, it just kind of it is what it is. You know and I know we have a lot of guys that have a desire to go and play football beyond college. And turn those games on, on Sunday and most of them are in cold locations so we got to learn how to do that. And so, so, it’ll be a fun experience for us."
Aren't you from New York?
"Definitely not. New Hampshire.”
They're all the same up there.
“(Laughs) Wow. Wow.”
It’s cold is the point.
“Yeah, don't tell, don't tell, don't tell people in New Hampshire they’re from New York; Boston fans."
How do you keep the guys focused with so many games falling apart and cancelled or postponed around you?
“Well I think we’ve gone through it, you know? I’ve had some coaches call and say ‘hey, how did we handle this, how did we handle that?’ Because we’re one of the first teams I think – I mean other teams have it, but none in-season where they were dealing with kind of an outbreak and some shutdown and we went through it. So I think our guys went through it and we understood it and we were able to get through it and move forward and so I think that has allowed our guys really to get back their focus on football. You know, I mean we’ve worked down players. I want to think, I’m guessing we’re going in with 72 scholarships of the 85 players right now in the games. You see teams that are down. So, everybody’s down and then you have the COVID numbers on top of that. You know what I mean? Everybody’s numbers are kind of down. They know our situation and you’re going to have to try and figure out a way to battle through it and other teams out there, you hope they can, but it’s going to be a unique finish to the college football season.”
What are you most pleased with your team right now?
“You know what, the attitude that they’ve had and the approach that they’ve had through this entire season, with it being a very unique year. I’ve seen us continue to not get too high and not get too low, to show up every day, and put in the effort to try to get better, and come with a great attitude every day. One of the things it is, it’s a long season but to try and maintain and continue to have that great effort and that great attitude, and that desire and drive to continue to improve. That’s probably the thing I’m most pleased with, with our guys.”
What would you credit that to?
“Yeah, I think we have some good leadership on this team. I think if you go back to before we shut down, we felt pretty good about the season and felt pretty good about the roster. If you go back to February and March before we shut down and we’re getting ready to start spring ball, with all the offseason work we’d done to that point we really liked where we were at mentally as a team. We liked the leadership on the team. We thought we had a very favorable schedule going into the year. We thought if we could stay healthy and could continue to grow and develop we could have a very good season. Then everything kind of blew up on us, you know the whole year. But our guys have kind of continued that mental preparation, that mental toughness and continued to keep us on track to where we are today.”
Chance to get back to Atlanta and win SEC?
“We’ve got to qualify to get there first. That’ll be much more important than even thinking about that. For us, we’ve got to focus on beating Tennessee this week. They’re going to be a really, really talented team, really talented offensive line, great running backs, threats at receivers, and the quarterbacks who, if they need to, throw really good deep balls, very, very veteran units on defense. We’ll see. If that becomes a reality, we’ll think about that then. The only reality I know we’re faced with is having to go to Knoxville, Tennessee.”
Your first division title as a head coach?
“That’d be great if it happens. That’s’ always the goal, to worry about what you can control. We’ve put our self in a position to play Saturday and we can control the game on Saturday. We put ourselves in that position at this point. We’ll work our tail off to go try to control the game as best we can Saturday. If we come out on top, I’ll let you know afterwards how it feels.”
Evaluate Grantham’s defense?
“I think he’s done a great job. Look at what we’ve done in different games and adjustments we make in the course of the game. Early in the season, we were shorthanded defensively every week. We’re kind of looking as the season goes. Early in the year, the first several games, we’re very shorthanded defensively. We kind of everybody offensively and were shorthanded defensively. As the season has moved on, it’s kind of flipped. We’ve kind of gotten more people back defensively and gone shorthanded a bunch on offense. But I think he’s done a really good job of being able to make adjustments within the personnel we have out there on the field of getting guys in position to make plays and making adjustments as we saw in the course of the game in the last two weeks. In the last couple weeks, right, their one touchdown we gave up on Saturday was after an offensive turnover on the plus-30-yard line going in and it’s the only time they went down and scored a touchdown in the entire game. The week before, we give up 10 points and shut them down the rest of the game. We have one play where we missed a couple off tackles. So I think the adjustments that we’re able to make defensively I’m really pleased with. And then, statistically, I think early on we had some games that we kind of growing, learning, and played some pretty good offenses. But you look, we’ve had some pretty darn good defensive games here as well in the middle of the second half of the season.”
What are some areas that you can get better on both sides of ball?
“I don’t think we were very efficient offensively last week. We didn’t hit any of our goals offensively going into the game, so I don’t think we played very well there. But that gets into, you know, I mean it’s hard to say, ‘hey, OK, we’ve got to scrap everything and start over.’ I just don’t think we played at a very high level and weren’t very efficient. They were a good defense. You knew that coming in, that they were one of the top pass defenses in the country, big, stout guys up front. And then you look – because you look at the drives – you end up with two punts, a missed field goal, two turnovers, that’s not very good offensively. We want to get back to just having a consistent, efficient offensively [sic]. Defensively, I think we missed some fits in the run game last week, with guys getting out of a gap at times, and so I think that was something that you gotta get to, to continue – and now we’ve done that – to me is putting it all together. We’ve done that well other times. But different schemes present different problems from one week to the next. And then different personnel matchups present different problems. I think those are some things we’ve got to look at and hopefully we can continue – we didn’t give up, really, any big plays on Saturday – that was a big factor the week before and we kind of slammed the door on that. You are always kind of give and take, give and take, trying to get better and peak at the end of the season.”
How do you manage fatigue and the attitude of the team during a long season?
“It gets to mental toughness. It gets to mental toughness. If you want to be successful, the path to success is not a short one, it is a long, long journey, and most people all of a sudden, as you said, get exhausted on their journey to success. It’s very easy. The easiest thing to do is to quit or give up or stop trying. The hardest thing to do is to continue to push on. As I said, the path to success is a long one and it takes great mental toughness to do it. We talked this morning, you can’t get bored with repetition. We’ve gotta come in and have a great Monday practice. I know we’ve had a lot of Monday practices. We’ve had a lot of practices. If you go back to when we could start doing walkthrough was mid-July. Now we’re heading into December. It takes great mental toughness to continue to show up, to continue to work, to continue to grind, to continue to mentally prepare and go out and give the physical effort that you need to be successful to improve and get better on the field. That’s stuff that we stress all the time.”
Heisman hype for Trask, how can you get him more noticed for it?
“Win on Saturday. That’s about it. You go turn on the news everybody knows who he is. You go turn on SportsCenter on Saturday night they’re going to talk about him. Get on talk radio this morning, they’re going to talk about it. The only thing we can do is win. If we win they're going to keep talking about you. If we don’t they’re not. I don’t know. I’m sure there are some great players on teams out there. There are some great players on teams. There are guys that have huge years. I’ve been through it before. Mississippi State was the No. 1 team in the country back in 2014 and Dan Prescott was all this until we lost a game and no one spoke about it again. I’m hard-pressed to say that a guy that took Mississippi State to No. 1 wouldn’t have been deserving to even be considered a Heisman finalist. It was only teams that had played for a championship that got invited, pretty much. You know what we can do for him to win the award? First, we gotta win. If we win on Saturday then we’re doing, there’s no better promotion for us of a Kyle Trask than us winning the game on Saturday.”
Your knowledge of history in terms of this game, are you aware of the 1928 game and the 2001 game? You're going up in December, same time the 1928 team went, any symmetry there or water under the bridge?
"I wasn't around for any of those ones, so, those are way before my time. Nobody on that twenty, nineteen, oh-eight team or whatever [28], 1928 team is going to have an impact on this game. You know, I hope anybody that played in that game is still cheering for us, if they're around. But I don't see that, it's all about us playing Tennessee this year and their team against our team. There's, you know, stuff doesn't really to me carry over. Like last year's game has no effect on it, year before has no effect and next year it being, it won't have any effect on this year's game. So, it's about our preparation and our execution in this game."
Mohamoud Diabate's growth at linebacker?
"Yeah, I think, well, one of the things you look is he's been a great special teams player for us. And I think as a young player, you know, he's only a true sophomore, guys get really comfortable, the more they play, the more the comfort they get. They start having success on special teams, then all of a sudden they start having more success on defense, or offense, or other things. He's a guy that you watch, of what he's been able to do and his growth, his playmaking ability, he's a great special teams player for us. He starts getting a couple more reps defensively and then he's making more plays because he's used to the speed of the game, he's used to making plays out there on the field, you know? And I think he's becoming a player. The more experience you get through, the more times you see things, the more you react to it, the more plays you make. I mean he's an explosive player, he's got great speed out there on the field and I think you saw that running down some plays, tracking down some ball carriers out there on the field. But, you know, that doesn't surprise you. Go watch him on kickoff coverage, go watch him covering punts, go watch him do other things out there as well. And then you see why, 'Okay, now I understand why he's so good at chasing that guy down on a sweep on the outside,' because I watched him, he learned how to do that covering a kick. So I think that gets into player development."
Didn’t hit offensive goals against Kentucky?
“We hit the win goal. We won. That was one of them. So, we hit one of them.”
What were offensive goals?
“There are weekly goals within our program that we have each week what we want to do. Just we missed them, like third-down conversions is one of the goals. There’s a list of them. We hit the win one.”
Just as I was praising offensive efficiency—
“I will say this, but you tied it into our offensive efficiency at the end of the first half, which unfortunately in this game we weren’t again. We ended up with that penalty. We had the ball and an opportunity to stay efficient at the end of the first half. We ended up with a penalty and it ended up being second-and-25 or something - that’s hard to overcome. But we made up for it on a defensive stop and special teams. That was the last we touched the ball.”
Explosive runs lacking, Dameon’s 38-yarder something to build on? Want more I’m guessing?
“We do. We’ve ended up with a lot more explosive passes this year. Maybe it’s just how people are playing us, how they’re defending us and the matchups we take and what people are doing. I also think a lot of people maybe are sitting back, giving up … you talk about the efficiency. People are maybe allowing us to more efficient and not give up the explosive plays, not just in the run but the pass. They’re playing that deep, soft coverage and saying, hey, we’re going to let you go. We’re going to see if you make a mistake. We’ve made some mistakes. But they did some of that on Saturday. They said, hey we’re going to let you make a mistake, before the half we end up with a 15-yard facemask penalty. So now we’re second-and-25. Now even if we 10 on second down, 10 on third down, you’re still fourth-and-five. You’re still punting. We fumbled the ball twice. I think a lot of it is how people are playing us. They’re saying, hey, we’re going to let you go be efficient in each play but we’re not going to give up the big explosive. So I think that’s probably what you’re seeing more than anything else.”
Vanderbilt job one of the hardest in the league? “I think every job in the Southeastern Conference is a really tough deal. You have expectations and fans in this conference where everybody expects to win a championship.
“I only know really know the two of them, being the head coach at Florida. I know the Gator Nation expects championships. Spent nine years at Mississippi State. I know we built that program up, and their fans expect to win a championship. So I think you’re in a league where fans expect success, expect championships. I think the thing that makes this challenging and makes it challenging at every school is the quality of teams that you are playing from one week to the next, I think is such a big deal in this league. This year you’re playing a 10-game conference-only schedule. You know. There’s not a whole lot of time to catch your breath this year when you’re having to do that. I think that makes it challenging. You look at Vanderbilt, like Florida. They’re the two top academic schools, so that adds some recruiting challenges that really – Vanderbilt and Florida are the only two schools that have that such high-end, the highest end of academics mixing in with football, as well.”
More about weather in Tennessee being cold this weekend—
“I’ll get some warm clothes going on.”
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