TRANSCRIPT: Dan Mullen Recaps Florida Gators Win Over FAU
Florida Gators head coach Dan Mullen met with local media following the No. 13 Gators win over FAU. From the quarterback rotation to the defensive front seven, Mullen touched on a little bit of everything.
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WHY SHOULDN'T WE BE WORRYING ABOUT QB AFTER TONIGHT'S GAME? "Well I think the plan was we were going to play both of them, got Anthony that series in the first half then wanted to get him another couple series in the second half. I thought he did a good job. Missed some reads, missed a couple of reads out there. But I thought it was good for him to get some experience. Was great for Emory to get that experience as the starter right now, for his first game out there. He missed some reads too, but I think you see both of them have the ability to make explosive plays. The nice thing is I'm pretty confident with both the quarterbacks. Obviously Emory is our starter and we say, but as you get the experience you roll the guys through. We did that tonight and it was great to see them both make some really explosive plays. I mean I think, what you said, I guess, what is it, you're concerned with them? I think our concern, we missed a couple little reads, and we missed some reads that we shouldn't miss. A couple of checks, you know? That type of deal is stuff that we've got to get cleaned up and stuff that you haven't seen a ton in practice but all the sudden it's different, you know what I mean? The difference between practice and a game, in practice, quarterbacks start scrambling we blow the play dead. Well we saw tonight those are big, explosive-hit plays. In practice, though, you don't hit the quarterback and you see them and they get used to certain kind of looks and making certain reads, well now you get into a game you're playing a different defense. You've got to be able to adjust and take what the defense gives you. I think we missed some of those throws tonight." NOT EVEN SO MUCH THE CONCERN, JUST ANTHONY RICHARDSON WAS UNBELIEVABLE AT TIMES TONIGHT? "He did some good things. Yeah, he's exciting with the ball in his hand, isn't he? Running around making some plays." GOING AGAINST TIRED DEFENSE AND EVERYTHING, I GET THAT "No, we know. I think I told that, I think he's going to be a great player for us, and I think you saw that tonight, his athleticism. He's a special guy with the ball in his hand." CAN YOU GO FROM BEST PASSING TEAM IN COUNTRY TO BEST RUSHING TEAM? "I mean I've done it before. We're going to do what our guys do well. It's just kind of, that's what it is. Honestly, I'd love to continue to be balanced. Let me just see here... yeah, we ran it a little bit more than we threw it today; 46 runs, 35 passes, but some of those were scrambles, too, you know what I mean? So I think you're able to stay balanced, but our explosive plays came on the ground tonight. So we've got to look at that a little bit. Are we taking the shots we need down the field to be explosive in the pass game as well? Like I said, we're going to do what we're going to do. If we've got to lead the nation in rushing, we'll do that. Last year we lead it in passing. Do what our guys do well." 4th-and-goal, Emory make the wrong call?
“He got the wrong signal from the sideline, thought we called something we didn’t and missed communication. Great things there to learn from, I mean, if he’s not sure with the communication I didn’t know he wasn’t sure when we’re running a play because it looks like we’re in the right formation and all that stuff he wasn’t sure with the play call. That’s an experience deal in a first start right there. He’s sitting out there and saying I got to make plays. You called this and I got to make a play and he got the wrong signal from the sidelines. In that situation it doesn’t seem right, he’s got to take a timeout for us and say, this doesn’t seem right, just let me just make sure and have the, you know, fix errors that come from the sideline fix it on the field.”
When ask if QB controversy?
“I would never ask myself that because I coach the quarterbacks a bunch. Umm, they’re not very controversial guys. They’re both really nice guys.”
Fans are going to look at how AR played and say why isn’t he the starter? Why so confident in Emory?
“His decision-making and getting us through every part of the game. Obviously, when you look at what happened and with Anthony coming in, did some nice things. I mean, you know, you got to run the whole offense. And so I think and Anthony’s really growing with that and growing with situations. So I think he’ll continue to grow with situations as we move forward and Emory’s going to continue to grow, so …”
Emory pitch to Pierce, did he call that?
“Yeah. That was like you said, you have the leeway, that was a check play. He saw them in a certain defense and he got the check right. That’s part of it. There’s things that, you know, if you look at Emory there’s things that he did really well. And then there's some things he missed. And when you look at some of the misses, I'm fine wine with. Some of the misses are tough things and then a couple simple misses, and I know he's frustrated with it. The good thing is coming off the field, you're like, ‘Hey, what’d you see?’ And he knows what the issue was, you know what I mean? ‘Hey, I missed this. Hey, I missed that,’ and that's what you want from the quarterback. It’s not like he was kind of looking like he had a confused look on his face. What he missed, that’s what you want so we can get it cleaned up.”
What will keep you up tonight? “I mean everything right now. We had a lot of penalties in the game, missed assignments, making sure … We played a lot of guys, had a bunch of guys out. You had four interior D-lineman out with injuries. Hopefully we get some of those guys back this week just to increase the depth on that side of the ball. Everything. I don't know if it keeps me up at night. I mean everything. I’m up all the time anyway thinking of how we're going to get better. How we're gonna practice better, how we improve our scout-team looks, how we're more detailed and exact, how we make sure we cut down on mistakes, and we have better attention to detail, eliminate all the penalties. You know I'm kind of a perfectionist and so what I want to see, I think, is we got to get a lot better and we got to in every aspect of it, you know. Not just better Saturday night. We have to get better right now. We got to get better starting Monday. We come back in, every part of our preparation can be more detailed and more exact so we play much cleaner.” what's the thing that impressed you tonight that coming into the game you didn't think would? “I don't know. Not much. I don't know. I’d have to watch the film. Not much surprises me out there. I think you know me. I'm always … as the game (goes), I'm very critical, so I'm not like, ‘Wow, this was fantastic.’ What probably surprised me is our number of penalties.”
So, what did you expect out of offense, specifically Emory? Did he meet that or were you not surprised that he had these miscommunications?
"Well the miscommunication one, obviously that's disappointing, that's, that's a big miscommunication, that's everybody.That's not him, that's everybody. No I, you know I thought, you know this, you know in you're first start, you're going to miss a read or two here or there. You know, so I'm not real worried about that, we'll get that cleaned up, that didn't surprise me. You know, the best part of the night was the crowd, you know, that was the absolute best part of the night was seeing all the Gator fans and the energy and the electricity in the stadium again and you know you realize how much you miss that, you know. And, you know, just that feeling of that energy of having all the Gator fans in there cheering and that noise in the stadium. That was awesome, that was definitely the best part of the night, was the whole all the Gator fans cheering us on."
What impressed you the most about Malik Davis's performance tonight?
"Well you know I thought he really ran the ball hard, breaking tackles, yards after contact, his vision, I thought he did a really good job with that. But that's what we've been seeing and that's the Malik I know and expect to see throughout the season and he's really worked hard at that. So, you know, I thought, I thought all our backs as a whole played pretty well to be honest with you."
I wanted to ask you about the front seven. I know you guys thought that can kind of be a strength for you. How did you feel like they played tonight?
"On defense, I thought solid at times. I thought we got after the quarterback. I thought they [FAU] did a good job getting the ball out pretty quick early, and, you know, a lot of times when they got the drop back pass we got a bunch of pressure, got some sacks. Let's see. How many did we end up with here? (looks at stat sheet)
Thomas: Four sacks, got on a couple fumbles
"Yeah created two, you know and that was those were all done up front, you know, a little, a little bit, a little bit soft in the run game at times so you know that I want us to be a little bit stouter on that part of it. Even though I, you know at times were stout, it was kind of like, you know either, like zero or 10 yards kind of seemed like to me at times, so we gotta be a little bit cleaner that way up front. But overall, you know, and I think those guys, especially older guys, they have a pretty high expectation for themselves so I think they want to get better, you know, and this transition into playing games and how different it is, you know from all the practice stuff so you know I think we'll see a big jump this week." In that first couple of drives, really high tempo, more than we saw last season on the first couple of drives. Is that something we can expect to see more and what do you think of kind of like just faster pace? "Yeah, we really want to play with tempo, you know obviously what goes on in the situations, you know, determine that and the yardage and where the ball is but we'd like to do a lot more tempo this season." It's been obviously your second game without Toney, Pitts and Grimes and then it's the second game where Rick Wells led you guys in receiving. Got his first career touchdown tonight just, what do you think of his performance and just being back for his six year. What does he mean to that receiving corps? "Yeah, I think you know, I mean Rick just shows, you know, the perseverance. I mean he's a guy, he's worked his tail off. You know when I got here, early on I had questions whether he would make it and then I said 'hey, eventually you got to buy into the program.' And he bought all into the program, and I saw a change in him, and then all of a sudden he got stuck kind of behind some guys even though he bought in. But it never deterred him, and he just, you know, I mean he kept battling and kept working, kept his head down, kept grinding and now he's reaping the reward of, you know, of all that hard work."
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