Transcript: Dan Mullen Wraps Florida Gators Early Signing Day and Evaluates Gators Class As Of Now

Florida Gators Head Coach Dan Mullen met with local media on Wednesday evening to recap the Early Signing Day for the 2021 recruiting class. He addressed the signing of Diwuan Black, Chief Border and a Tampa pipeline.

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Opener

"Alright, hey. Excited, you know, on signing day you get to welcome a whole bunch of new Gators to the family, and for us, probably an exciting day. Obviously an extremely fun day for all of these guys, a memory they'll have with them forever on signing day. The guys that joined the class, as far as the media goes, probably not a lot of crazy, hype, excitement right there. We kind of, the scholarships that we sent out, we got back in. So, pretty excited that way for our guys. Really good balance I think throughout this class and a real solid number, I mean this makes up the really, the solid part of our signing class for this year. Obviously, there's going to be the opportunity for us to add a couple more people into the program a little bit down the road, but the majority of the guys here now, we're good to go."

Starting with Diwun Black who was in the class two years ago and had to go the JuCo route. Tell me about that process?

"Yeah, well I, you know what, he's such a great kid. We signed him, we knew when he signed a couple of years ago there was an uphill battle for him to get qualified, cause it was something that, his foundation, his early part of his high school, he was behind, so it was going to be a real scramble for him. We kind of thought it would have been a miraculous thing for him to qualify a couple years ago, so we had a thought that he would end up going to junior college. But, we knew we wanted a part of his family. I give him a lot of credit, because I've been around it, you see a lot of these guys as it pertains to junior college, you know, that's not an easy route. He went there, he did junior college, took care of his business, took care of the things he needed to academically. Started fast, which, the opposite of what happened to him in high school, and able to get his work done. And we're excited, because I know he's a phenomenal athlete, a great leader, a great personality, a guy you want around the program and a guy you want around the team. So we're excited that he took care of his business, and obviously, it just shows the character he has. Just sticking with his commitment, and wanting to be a Gator and his excitement to be a Gator, to take care of his business and get back here."

Tyreak Sapp, what does it say about a guy in this day and age to stay committed to UF so long? Is there a sigh of relief to get his LOI in?

"I think, yeah, teams were recruiting a lot of our guys. We have really, some really good players in this class, so I think a lot of people are trying to recruit those guys. But, part of it shows the character these guys have, you know, when we're talking about making commitments and being committed, and what it shows in their character. And certainly with him, he's a guy that early on committed to us. That I know early on, talked about his dream, his love of being a Gator, always wanted to be a Gator and live out his dream. You know, I'm just pleased. I know guys enjoy the recruiting process, and it's a great deal, it's a great experience. Obviously, this year's one of the most unique, certainly for the players. Different, a little bit different for the coaches, but, you know I think, certainly very, very different for the prospects. But it says a lot about him, I mean, just, obviously playing at a great program. Playing at a big-time high school program, having all the success he's had, you know and now having the opportunity to go live his dream and come be a Florida Gator."

Do you like signing day to be drama free?

"I don't know if I like one more than the other. I don't know about the flipping and all that stuff all the time. The guys make decisions and what they do, there is some excitement on that. We kind of ask guys to let us know a couple days in advance. I've always kind of been that way. Say, 'Hey, are you coming or you not coming? If you're not coming, that's fine. We're going to go on to somebody else.' But most of these guys have been committed so long and they've stuck with it. You never know, though. There's always the surprises that come with signing day. I can tell you this year's signing day is just very different because you're in the middle of player meetings this morning and then you're into coaches meetings and then you're into recruiting back and forth and you're kind of running around all over the place. So a little bit different this year. Maybe it helped that it was less eventful. It was a very eventful day, but maybe not crazy."

Challenges of having two quarterbacks in the same class?

"Yeah, well. We got we think two guys that are excellent guys. I know they're competitors, love to come in and see how that ... in today's football, you never know how things shake out and what goes on with it. One guy can play early, one guy can play late. You never know. But we're really excited about both of those two quarterbacks. Going into next year, at this point we're only going to have two quarterbacks on scholarship when we show back up in January. You're a trip getting on the bus and spraining my ankle away from having one quarterback here. So these guys are pretty close to competing for the backup job Day 1 that they get on campus."

Nick Saban called Jason Marshall this week, do you tell Nick “nice try” on Saturday?

“No. I’m sure, I guarantee you I talked to one or two of his guys too. They were probably like, ‘Holy cow, I got a call from Dan Mullen, but I guess I’m going to stick with Alabama.’ I’m sure the guys were like, ‘that’s Dan Mullen calling me, that’s awesome but I’m going to stick with Alabama, Coach.’ He would probably say the same thing, nice try.”

No drama the last three years on signing days?

“I think our whole staff, recruiting department, personnel department, our coaches, everybody that’s involved in recruiting, there’s so many people that are involved in recruiting, do such a great job. It says a lot about the character of the guys we recruit. Character is a big part fo what we do and it says a lot about the university as a whole, too. The opportunity to come to the premier academic and athletic school in the country. I mean, when you’re looking at the guys that are looking for the total package here at Florida. You’re a top-10 public university. One of the premier academic schools not just in the south, but one of the premier academic schools in the entire country and an opportunity to go compete for championships on the football field. Those are hard combinations to find. I don’t think there’s any other schools that are like that. A lot of the guys that are coming to Florida, they have the vision of what they want. They are guys that ‘Coach, I want the opportunity to go compete at the highest level and go compete for championships in football. I want to go to a program that develops and puts a lot of guys in the NFL, so I can be a pro football player, but I’m more than an athlete. I want to go get a premier education, get a premier degree, and go to a. University that’s not just going to help me for the next three, four, or five years, but a university that’s going to be a part of my life for the next 30, 40, 50 years, helping me, that quality of the school. I’m really proud of all the staff and everybody involved in recruiting and all the hard work they do. I’m excited about all the guys that we bring into the program and the type of guys we’re bringing in. I’m pretty fortunate to be at an unbelievable university that has the best of everything when it comes to college football.”

Chief Borders turning down Stanford to come to UF

“I think it just shows about him. Chief’s a guy that we’ve recruited for a long time, known for a long time, exceptional athlete, absolutely great student as well. Really excited to have him part of the program. If you look at him, he’s a guy that wanted that. Academics were a huge part of his recruiting but he also wanted the opportunity to go play big-time football. I think that’s the thing that attracted him. When he was trying to decide, where he was looking at schools, what was going to be best for his future, that’s what Florida brings to the table. When academically you’re recruiting on the same level of Stanford and the same football level as, I mean, a playoff team. It just we’re kind of the only university that’s in that combination.”

Defensive flavor to this class, who can come in and help?

I think...obviously that’s always.. that's the question I get, ‘Who do you think is going to make an immediate impact?’ And you know… I usually come up with different ones that everybody maybe thinks but, you know, obviously the guys that come in early have that opportunity to go through spring practice and learn the program and accelerate their speed of adjustment to the college game, not just learn our system but the speed of the game and how it gets played. But I do think they will be ready. I do think with this class, front to back, I mean we’re really signed a complete defense. I mean if you look at it it’s kind of a starting 11 on defense that go out there on to the field at each position, so that's something I was really excited about. The defensive guys up front are guys to me that might have the opportunity, especially because we have some older guys, some seniors on the defensive line, so Dez Watson and Chris Thomas, some of those bigger guys might have that opportunity to get in right away and make an immediate impact. But it’s hard to say at this point. If anything when you look at it.. and you kind of want to sign a complete team. If anything.. O-line is one that we probably want to finish the class off with moving forward - it’s where you look…that's probably the biggest one moving forward… but defensively I am pretty excited about kind of having a complete unit come in.

Three guys from Tampa, was that a concerted effort?

“Yeah, obviously it’ a great area, great for high school football in the Tampa area. Lotta Gators, lotta guys there that you know dream of being Gators. You know and come up in their mindset, hey, that’s what it is. It’s always been a key area for us in recruiting for a long time. A lot of great Gator players have come out of the Tampa area in the past and we hope that they will for a long time in the future.”

Odd recruiting season for what reasons, and any kind of long term concerns because of it?

“Obviously I think… you probably have less information within your evaluation of them than you normally would. Usually most guys come to camp, they come here and you coach them at a camp. A lot of times you go and sit in their house and sit with them in person. I think we learned a lot of different things and a lot of different ways of to do things. Coming out of this year, you know I think in the world in general, we’re going to come out in a little bit of a different world and maybe that will affect recruiting. You know, does it affect? Maybe coaches are going out recruiting less, because you know we can get a lot done here. You have to say one big thing I think, I’d be honest, I would cut down the amount of time coaches go out recruiting and I would increase the amount of visits that we can have kids come to our campus. Because you know, I think we were still able to get a lot of our job done in going out and doing evaluations of these kids and seeing a lot of things. But I think the one thing that was hard for a lot of these kids was that they didn’t get to come see us. They didn’t get to come see the university and get to experience it. Most of our guys, just about everybody that signed got here before the shutdown, so they had the background and they knew a bunch about the University of Florida. It will be interesting to see, obviously you said, are there concerns? You’d probably have a little bit less information that you’d normally have, but I feel real confident and comfortable with all the guys that we’ve signed? You know and maybe, like I said, as I said, do you come out of it, you realize that there are better ways to utilize resources, there’s better things to do. You know, I mean, heck, is it better for us to be spending all of this money travelling non-stop for 3-4 months a year around the country or do they reallocate that money and have it more to pay in to have more kids to see us here on campus and let their whole families experience and what the university has? I don’t know. Those are going to be interesting discussions for the future.”

With NCAA free transfer eligibility rules in place this year, is that something you guys have planned spots around?

“I think this, I do. I think there’s so much uncertainty when it comes to the transfer aspect with the NCAA, what’s it going to be moving forward. In every area. I think we have a couple of spots for transfers still on our team. I think if you ask almost every coach around the country, they have a lot of concerns about the direction that’s heading. Let me explain it this way: not concerns of, ‘ok, hey, we can’t let guys transfer.’ I mean, obviously that’s coming. I think coaches understand there’s going to be a lot of little things that go along with that that people don’t understand yet or don’t know yet, and all of a sudden, you’re going to look – and it might be a month from now, might be six months from now, might be two years from now – all of a sudden, ‘hey, we didn’t realize all this would come with it and we better change a lot of different rules to get caught up. Because I do think a lot of the different rules that are in place don’t match the rules that they’re trying … the transfer rules that are coming, the current recruiting rules don’t match, they don’t meld. There’s a lot of concerns from coaches around the country about how that’s all going to work out.”

Three players got in early for bowl practices last season, plan to do that again?

“Yeah, it’s something obviously, it’s such a different year too. It’s something we would love to do. We’re looking at it. There’s a lot that goes onto it, for it. Number one being, we’re still in kind of the regular season playing the championship game this weekend and then there’s going to be this quick turnaround to a bowl game. But it is something we’re looking at doing. I don’t know how many guys are going to have the opportunity to do it, because the guys, we’ll get them accepted into school and they have to graduate to do that, both of those done and then are accepted into and cleared by the NCAA. And then they can come practice. I will say the fact that whatever bowl game we do go to, we’re going to be doing a lot more on campus. Normally, you go to the bowl site and those guys can’t travel with you, but they can practice while on campus, so there’s going to be a little bit more opportunity for them to come practice with us if we can get all the paperwork signed and everything.”

Big Dez?

I love big Dez, he is an athlete. He is a 385-pound athlete and that might be generous. I haven’t seen him because of COVID. He has talking about that he lost weight. He slimmed down to 385.

White was 400 pounds?

Yeah he was about four bills.

I am going to tell you what..I don’t want to get big Dez upset but if you had to pick, you put that 400 in the over/under, I know which one I’m taking in the over/under when he shows up here.

Nick Saban tougher on the field or trail?

I think obviously you look.. they do a great job on both. He has done a great job of establishing the program - been there a long time. He is the most..I guess he is the veteran guy of the league. I don’t get the credit, I guess, because I’m splitting the schools, even though I’m second. I’m second but it’s split. I think when you look at what he has been able to build, the program he has been able to establish, through the years the stability of it, the combination of a very well coached team on the field and they do an unbelievable job of getting great players in as well. I think he has kind of built a program that people want to model themselves after. I don’t know that you copy because everyone’s got to be your own person. You’d never copy anybody else’s program because it wouldn’t fit my personality as to who I am as a person and a coach and all of that stuff. You’ve got to build the program kind off around your own personalities of how you do things. But I do think they’re tough on both ends.”

Two receivers, Burke and Reynolds?

“One of the things and you’re talking about guys being committed. Both those guys committed early to us, never waved, stuck with us. Daejon, unfortunately, had an injury that he wasn’t able to play. But he was a guy … you go back almost a year ago and you’re putting the board together. You’re advance even beyond that. You’re really kind of sitting there and say, ‘OK, after they’re junior year, let’s go through and re-evaluate evaluate.’ They’re two guys that we had right at the top of the receiver board and to have those two guys come in, we’re really excited. They got great skillsets. They have size. They have speed, ability to make plays after the catch and I think are going to continue the great tradition off wide receivers here at Florida.”

Jeremiah Williams? What position? LB?

“I view him honestly as a linebacker. That’s kind of our picture, he’s going to be an inside linebacker. But I hate to paint guys into things before we get them here and they work out and we see what they’re going to do. I’ve made plenty of mistakes about that before of guys, like, ‘Hey, we’re going to sign this kid to be a.’ I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve said and said, ‘Hey, this guy, we’re going to sign him to be a corner.’ And he can’t cover anybody, but he’s a big-time wide receiver, you know what I mean? Or, ‘Hey, this guy’s going to be a great receiver,’ and he can’t catch and he ends up being a great safety. We’ve made a lot of those things before. You look at guys kind of as, ‘Hey, I know he’s a great football player. I’ve watched him come off the edge. I’ve watched play inside backer. I think he’s really an inside backer.’ That’s a big, physical guy with a great skillset that can lead our defense.”

Backers as a group: Chief, Diwun and Williams?

“Yeah, if you look at it, they have size, length and speed. And that’s stuff that we really want at that linebacker position. I do think there’s possible flexibility. Chief’s got that size to go be an outside backer for us. With his size and length, he could go and be an outside backer for us. I’m kind of excited about that. Diwun’s just an athlete. We’ve got to see where he’s best going to fit. He’s a little bit older as a junior college guy and I haven’t gotten to see him in a little while. He’s told me he’s gotten bigger. But I haven’t gotten to see him in a little while. So we’ll see when he gets here how that goes.”

Rocco Underwood, used a scholarship on long snapper?

"Yeah, I think, one, we did an evaluation: he's a great long snapper. We've had him in camp, a great long snapper. He's got size, athleticism. He actually is an athlete, can play tight end, was a really good tight end on his high school team. Could probably could other things for us while he's here because of his athleticism. When he gets here, we'll see how it goes. But it's a position that you look at a guy that can come in and lock up that spot for a couple of years. We're able to do that with Evan McPherson a couple of years ago at the specialist. I think the specialist positions are one of the hardest ones, cause you sign a guy and they're there for four years. It's hard to sign multiple guys. We try to reward a lot of guys to come. They come as preferred walk-ons and get a scholarship. That's probably when you look at the long snapper, punter, kickers, all the specialists are the guys who get the most scholarships as preferred walk-ons. But I think he was a guy that filled a spot that we were really excited about that, that could come in hold that down for a couple of years."

New TEs, Gage, Nick, success of Kyle Pitts has everyone wondering about NexGen?

"Yeah these guys they really fit that. The tight end we want, we want guys that are mismatches and have great athletic ability. For us, Nick is a guy, he's got that length, he's got that size, can really run. You flex him out as a receiver. You see that in high school of him making catches and being able to beat people on the perimeter. Plus that size to be able to go block on the inside. So, he's a guy when you just see him the impressiveness of his size you're really excited about that. Gage, the same deal. He's a guy we had in camp when he was young. I loved his athleticism and change of direction, and then you could kind of see it, I remember looking at it, he's one of those guy you know I always kind of look at guys and say, I know what this guy is going to become. You watch his senior film and watch his dynamic ability on the field. He kinda kept growing into this body. And you know what? He's a powerful blocker at the point of attack, he has great quickness in and out of breaks, you can get the ball in his hands and he can make you miss in the open field. They're two guys who are going to allow us to come in and create mismatches, create plans, putting multiple tight ends on the field to create formation issues for defenses and create those matchup problems all over the field."

(Philosophy on being the tiebreaker with defensive players?)

“I listen to everybody on every player, to be honest with you. In the end, I’m the final say on who comes. But I take in everybody. We’ll watch a lot of film together as a staff, the entire staff — offense, defense, I’ll take in everybody’s opinion. When it gets down to some crunch times, I look at everybody’s write-up on them and what everybody thinks. I take offensive opinions on defensive guys. I want to hear if Billy Gonzales thinks about corners. I want to hear what our DBs coaches think about the receivers, or the O-line, D-line, what they think about the guy they’re seeing and things that they see on tape about why they think that could be a hard guy to block. I take all of that in, and then I’m the final say.”

(How many early enrollees?)

“A bunch. I haven’t gotten to that point yet. That’s the next step we’re working on. We’ll have a bunch more.”

(How do you survive right now? Coffee guy?)

“I’m not. I’m not a coffee drinker at all, for whatever reason. You just go. I don’t know. I drink this Ketone energy drink. So that gets you going a little bit. And then I’ll do like a Monster Energy before practice. And then probably I’m more of a Diet Mountain Dew guy at night. By then it’s morning, and you start again.

“This has been – yeah. This has been a unique couple of weeks right here, of everything kind of going on. I’d love to tell you this is the most exhausted I’ve been. But it’s up there. It certainly is up there. But I think that it’s up there with trying to do all of this together, go back to what was that, 2008 going into 2009 right there, when I was the head coach at Mississippi State and the offensive coordinator at Florida at the same time for a couple-week period. That was pretty exhausting.”

(Get some rest)

“I don’t think it’s coming anytime soon. But we’ll see. Hopefully I can get some rest on Jan. 12.”

(But then you have to recruit for February…)

“Yeah.” (laughs) “Back to work for me. Have a good night.”