Transcript: Florida Gators Mullen on COVID Numbers, Missing Starters and the Georgia Bulldogs Monkey
Head Coach Dan Mullen met with local media on Tuesday to recap the No. 8 Gators win over the Missouri Tigers, preview the upcoming rivalry game with the Georgia Bulldogs and give an update on the starters that missed Saturday's win.
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*UPDATE: Mullen mentions the COVID-19 numbers below. The school released the updated numbers later Tuesday afternoon. There are no positives at all yet in the month of November. This means all of the positives from the outbreak have recovered and there have been no new positives in the times since. Test are administered on Sunday with results returned later Monday or early Tuesday.
COVID NUMBER THIS WEEK, HOW DOES THAT AFFECT TEAM? EXPECT SOME OF THOSE GUYS BACK FOR HUGE GAME?
"You know, well we certainly hope. I have no idea what we're going to have because we haven't gotten today's results. You have to get Thursday's results. But I hope we have better numbers this week than we had last week."
HOW BIG OF A GAME IS THIS, WITH EVERYONE ELSE HAVING THREE LOSSES. ESSENTIALLY EAST DIVISION TITLE GAME?
"Yeah, you know, it doesn't clinch it or seal anything, but I mean it's certainly whoever wins this game, certainly is putting themselves in the driver's seat to get to Atlanta. You're two games up on this team and you're really two games up on everybody else in the league at that point. So it makes it a big game. But you know, it's always been a big game for a long time."
NO VADER TODAY?
"It's not Halloween."
YOU WAKE UP WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD?
"No. You've got to have fun. Like I said, one of the things -- like I told everybody and one of the reasons to do it -- my son thought it was really cool and funny. But I think one of the things people miss out on in the coaching profession is you miss a lot of things with the family, unfortunately. I'm sure in every profession, I don't want to downplay other things. You know? You're sitting there, you're either practicing on Thanksgiving Day. You're spending Christmas and New Year's in hotels. Thanksgiving is always midseason and you're always practicing. So I've always been somebody that for our staff is let them be parents, let them be parents. We've, unfortunately, we had a night game on Halloween. So usually we'd take that night off to let the coaches be with their families so you can be a parent and as they grow up they don't resent the fact that their dad was a coach."
YOU'RE A FUN DAD
"I try."
IN SUMMER YOU SAID YOU WEREN'T QUITE SURE THIS TEAM HAD CHAMPIONSHIP MAKEUP, HADN'T SEEN THAT KIND OF EDGE IN THIS TEAM THAT YOU WANT. GIVEN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, NO CROWDS, UNCERTAINTY, HAVE YOU TAKEN ROLE IN SETTING AN EDGE FOR TEAM?
"You know, I don't know. It's such a different year. I'd love to be a championship team this year. I would love this year for us to go on and win the East, win the SEC Championship, win a national championship. I hope I never have anybody having to call me and saying, 'OK, when we have to shut down the world, how do we win a championship when that happens?' I hope this is just a one-time deal, because I think it's very unique, different situation from those. I thought coming into the season we had the potential to be a championship team. I thought there were certain things I wanted to see us grow on. I think we talked about it, then you never got to see it through spring. We never got to see if we could develop all those things. But to be honest with you, I think that to be a championship team this year it's going to take something a little different than it would in most other years. And if we're able to do that I hope I don't ever have to replicate it the exact same way because we don't have to deal with what we are all going through again.”
Recent antics a way to fire up team?
“I don’t know. Ask them to see if it does. You know, we’re working to try to get them to play at a high level, to be sound, play at a high level, to play up to the Gators standard we expect them to play. That’s something you’d have to ask the players to see what their thoughts are.”
Heightened sense of urgency to beat Georgia?
“No. I think every year it’s an independent deal. Two years ago we didn’t beat Missouri, I don’t think that changed this year’s deal, playing them. So I just think it’s usually a big game because it usually has some championships implications in it. Whether we won or lost last year has no effect on this year’s game.”
Edge Kyle Trask gives you?
“It helps. He’s playing at high level. He’s does a great job managing our offense. He’s doing a great job distributing the ball to playmakers, limiting mistakes and shows great leadership within the team. You need all those things from your quarterback if you’re going to have the opportunity to be a championship team. So I think he brings a lot of that stuff to the table. We’re really lucky we have him.”
In face of national criticism, any regrets about role in fight?
“You know what, we made our statement about that we’re onto Georgia, to be honest with you.”
Georgia defense impressions?
“The talent level they have front to back. And I don’t want to say it’s just players, I think Kirby, they have a great defensive scheme. They have answers to the questions. He knows it inside and out. They do a good job of putting their guys in great position to make plays, and they’re not afraid to tweak. They’re different this year than last year. But he knows his defense has a great system to put players into position to make plays. They play hard, and then they have talent at every level of the defense. They can put big guys in the game to stop the run; they can put pass rushers in the game to get pressure; they can cover and play man coverage; they can try to confuse you with looks and a lot of different zones; they mix it up a lot. They’re a very, very good defensive football team and it’s not one thing that makes them a great football team, it’s every layer of it that makes them a really good defensive football team.”
Travel changes due to COVID outbreak?
“Well, you know what, one of the things I think you have with this game, and we tweaked things last week with our travel routine even with Friday and Saturday. We’re going to try to continue those. We to spend special attention to who’s on what bus going up there. I think, you know, I can’t the map of the Sawgrass Marriott, but I know it very well. The space we have there, we’re able to space out for meals, for walk-throughs, for team meetings we’ll have a little more space. Also the locker room, you’re going to have a normal size locker room, not like a closet like you have on some of the road games. So I think all of those things kind of ease some of the pressure of dealing with our travel issues and our travel plans. I think this sets up to be a little easier being a road game.”
Bus up day off considered?
“You could but I don’t think it does much for you that way. The facility you’re going to stay in is not going to be a bad facility to stay in.”
How does this week change with no football activity on Tuesday?
“We had to do a lot more, you know, Sunday became a Monday. Monday was a Tuesday. Today (Tuesday) is a Sunday. Tomorrow is a Wednesday. I’ll let you figure that one out. I think the benefit is we had a bye, I guess when we were locked away, COVID lock away, we had the opportunity to get a jump start because we knew this was going to be upon us. After today it’s a regular week. We knew the Sunday-Monday was going to be tricky.”
Do you guys double up busses? Extra busses this year?
“Yeah. I think we’re five, usually, we’re three (busses). But that, John Clark does all of that. He’s got everybody, seats, whose where, we have assigned seating at every meal now. If we have a team meal it’s assigned seating. He’s working on all of that, who’s with who.”
Did you do that at A&M or is that new since then?
“No that’s something new that we did. We felt that we’re spaced out enough, spaced out tables, now we’ve gone to assigned seats. We’ve got assigned planes, assigned busses, but we thought if in a meal, we’re in a big room, that we’d be ok. I don’t know that that became a factor at all but that was, it was just another thing we could control. We decided to control it.”
These are the kinds of games that can help your program, propel it, right?
“Yeah, obviously our goal is to win a championship. The winner of this game is going to be in the driver’s seat to be that SEC East Champion. It certainly does that.”
Worry about keeping guys level knowing the energy and importance of this one?”
“I felt we’ve had two good practices so far on Sunday and Monday. They know. Our guys like playing in big games. I think they’re excited to go play in a big game.”
What does it take to be more consistent defensively?
“I think the one thing, they did a great job holding them to 10 points last week, seven of them were given up by the offense. The touchdown, I think, came late in the game. I think we did a really good job, I thought. I think 11 guys running to the ball as hard as they can, I think if you look at that game, the thing I saw different was the defensive staff did a good job of making some tweaks in the scheme to put guys in position. Some of it was to put guys in position. Some of it was our limit of numbers of players that we had, being so short-handed defensively. Some of that was almost forced upon us for the personnel that we had available in that game. I think when you watch the difference between that and the first three games you see a distinct drop in missed tackles. You see a massive improvement of 11 guys running extremely hard to the football. Those are things that we can control. Those are things that I think I was worried about when you say coming into the season because you missed so much football time. Then in training camp, I’ll say this a little bit too, I think this year has been different. When you started training camp there were guys going out to practice every day wondering if we were playing. We weren’t even sure who we were playing, what we’re doing, how’s it going to work, are we going to make it to the season? You didn’t have spring practice. Your training camp is a completely unorthodox training camp. I think there were a lot of guys that weren’t to the level that they needed to be to be ready to play. I think we looked more like a Florida defense Saturday night. That’s just taken this extended period of time for us to get to that at this point of the season to look that way. You say what about the offense? What about this? Well, we’ve got a fifth-year senior quarterback with some talented wide receivers. You know? They’re throwing and catching and doing skill work all the time. The big difference between our ability to throw and catch at a high level and 11 guys running to the football with a nasty disposition when they get there. There are a little different personalities in those things. I think it’s just taken a little bit to get there and hopefully now you see us play at that level the rest of the season.”
Can you put into context what it means to have players in better position on D against Mizzou?
“One of the things you’re looking at is you’ve got young new faces out there. You don’t have scrimmages. You have a limited training camp, limited scrimmages, you’re still trying to learn what guys do well. You know? And so what we’re trying to do defensively is say, ‘OK, we think this guy can do this really well. We think we can play this coverage. We think we can rush this guy out of this position.’ And then you’re into games, and they don’t do it as well as you think, but they do other things really well. And so it’s just kind of learning the team and tweaking to that. Offensively, I know every year, ‘Hey, do we want to be more invested in the run game or the pass game?’ Ideally we go into the season wanting to be 5-050. Usually it sways one way or the other as the season goes, and we’re not afraid to do that, of being able to do that. Same thing defensively, is we think this is what our guys are going to do really well, and you get into games, you realize this guy struggles doing this in a game situation, but he’s better than we thought he would be in other ways. We’ve got to put those guys in that position to do the right thing.”
Complete game the other night against Mizzou? How build on that?
“I think it was closer to a complete game. I don’t know that it was. I don’t know what a complete game to me would be. Like score on every play, and they get minus-five yards every play. Maybe that would be perfect of everything. I thought it was. You look, 1, defensively we played at a much, much higher level. I thought, special teams, one of the things that you deal with, when you get into the special teams part of the game, if you look, we had a lot of guys in place. You’re looking at the special teams. Ok, Evan didn’t play, so Howard had to come in and he did a good job. But if you go top to bottom on special teams, there were a lot of new faces out there playing. A lot of different faces covering kicks, covering punts, on the punt return team, kickoff return team. I think what gets caught up on special teams —everyone uses special teams as the snapper, the punter, the kicker and the returner. OK? That’s 1/11th of each deal. There’s a lot of other guys out there on the field. So I was really happy to see a lot of – we had a lot of guys that got the opportunity to go make plays and be on special teams and get their first action even on special teams. Those guys did pretty good. It was – that’s a hard one. We need to get much better there, though. We need to get a lot better. Hopefully we get some guys back with special teams that help a lot and increase that depth where you are looking at special teams. You go into training camps sometimes, there sometimes this year we’ve had…You start training camp, there’s a fourth stringer playing special teams from where our training camp depth chart was at certain positions.
“Then offensively, we started slow. One thing, we’ve got to be cautious of offensively is, you know, I mean, we punted three times in that game. We’ve punted three times the whole season. I’d love to say hey, ‘We’re going to score on 80 percent of our possessions this year. That’s probably a little unrealistic. It’d be a heck of deal. I wouldn’t be sad. But we set a very high standard, right? I think someone said Kyle Trask set an SEC touchdown record. We’ve done that all in conference only games. A lot of times some of those records can get a little skewed in who your opponent is Week 1 or Week 2. Those are all conference games. We’ve been very efficient offensively. But we can’t get caught up into maybe that’s normal. When you say we struggled a little bit on Saturday, maybe we played a little bit more normally on Saturday and not to an extremely high level that we’ve been in. Obviously it’ll be a big challenge this week playing such a great defense.”
Kadarius Toney?
“I think, one, the playmakers were out there. It was a big deal when you look at game management, it’s 7-6 and we haven’t given up a point on defense and we’re losing 7-6. We got the ball and we’re driving down in the first half. You’re looking to score on that drive. Kadarius makes a great play, makes two guys miss and probably breaks two or three tackles, goes and scores. Your immediate thought is to look at the clock. We have timeouts, we’re kicking off, I’m immediately on with Todd and say we want to get two for one because we get the ball to start the second half. What you don’t want to do is let them go down and score and then it’s an equal possession. Our discussion immediately got onto what we’re doing and how we’re going to try to get into position and how we’re going to use the timeouts to try to get and steal one more possession at the end of the first half. We had just taken a 13-7 lead. Defense comes out on third down and makes a huge play to get the turnover and now we have the ball in the red zone and we take a shot on the first play. Kadarius runs a great route, Kyle throws a great pass, does a great job reading the coverage. They doubled Kyle Pitts and Tre Grimes on the play, both got double teamed and left Kadarius one on one, and Kyle was able to find him. And we get a quick score. Immediately, I’m back on Todd again. I said we might have scored too quick again, but let’s not give up a score here and let’s try to get the ball back one more time and maybe we can get in theory a three for one. You want to get that last possession of the half when you know you’re starting with the ball in the second half. We did get the ball back. Unfortunately, we had great field position. A young guy gets a penalty on the punt return, which knocks us back. We gained some yards. They get a penalty and we the opportunity to throw the ball in the end zone at the end of the first half and try to get that one more score. Obviously, then you want to come out in the second half and get that quick score. It’s very disheartening for a team to score to score twice in a row without you running an offensive play. It kind of really sways the course of games.”
Toney has upped his game?
“Oh, yeah, he’s done a great job. He’s done a great job. We know he’s a playmaker, but he’s really worked on become an every-down player. To me, the thing I get most pleased with is I think I always seen it: you put the ball in his hand and watching him make people miss or breaking tackles is one thing. The thing I’ve been most pleased with is is his route-running and his ability to take that talent and his quickness and his escape-ability and put that into route-running context and be a great route runner.”
New talents in the secondary?
“I think it was really good. You look at this game: one, we’re able to get a little bit more pressure on the quarterback. Two, you look at Missouri and the success they’ve had is when they’re on schedule. The strength of their team has been up front, their offensive line, and being able to knock people back and run the ball and playing in front of the chains instead of behind the chains, if you will. And we got them behind the chains and that’s not the strength of what they were as a team, and we were able to take advantage of it.”
Anticipation for the return of four starters who missed Mizzou game?
“I’m not going to get into every detail of when everybody’s coming back or who’s what. I don’t do it to be evasive, you know what I mean? With the COVID, if you guys know me, usually I give you the injury report every week and this and that. But when you’re dealing with just injuries, that’s one thing. The COVID, you’re talking about medical records for kids and this stuff. It’s kind of become a weird deal of how everybody does it. I kind of let them. If they announce it, they announce it. If they don’t, they don’t. More than me announcing it all. That way. So, I’m not elusive that way. I’m not trying to be, or evasive with that. We certainly hope to have a lot more guys available this week than last week if you will. You guys seem to find that out on your own anyway. Maybe our guys tell you. I don’t mind that. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I just don’t want to be the one reporting medical records on kids when it comes to the viruses and the illness more than the high-ankle sprain type of deal. The second part of the question, is anytime – one of the things that’s great, if you ever watch us, I love to play a lot of guys. We love to roll guys through. Keeps them fresh, not just during a game but during the course of a season. And then it also builds depth and talent. I think, so one of the things by having guys out, forcing other guys to play more plays, it creates depth within your team. Now you feel more comfortable with more guys playing. I think everybody looked and everyone freaked out like, what’s wrong with Kyle Pitts? He didn’t play in the last series of that first half against Texas A&M. I said, well because he wasn’t supposed to play that series. We only got the ball, I think, three times in the first half or four times. Then, you look at this game. Kemore Gamble came in and had a great catch. Keon Zipperer’s come in and done a nice job and had a nice catch. We’re getting those guys in. One, it keeps Kyle fresh and healthy, and two, it gets those guys experience and creates depth. The same thing is going on secondary-wise. We had a bunch of guys out in the secondary, so we had to play a bunch of young guys. Well now as more guys come back, what it’s done is create depth and allow us to rotate guys more, which then keeps you healthier and fresher during the course of a game and the season.”
What have you seen of Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett and do you prepare for possibility of two quarterbacks?
“We always have to prepare for multiple quarterbacks, you know, I mean of what’s going on. Not that you prepare for it, you know what’s going on and what the other guy might bring to the table and their strengths. I’m sure people, as they prepare for us, look and say, ‘OK, Kyle Trask brings this to the table. Emory Jones brings this to the table.’ How do we deal with that situation of who’s in the game? But I think with him, I think one thing, and you know, he’s been playing. I don’t know their situation. I haven’t watched all their other quarterbacks to know what they’re doing. I think he does a nice job of managing the game. You look at what they do, they’re a running back-based offense. If you’re going to judge, look at our team, you’re going to say, ‘hey, we’re a quarterback-, skill-position-based offense.’ They’re a running back-based offense, so they want to get the ball to their running back. I mean, their third-leading receiver is a running back. They have two receivers with 10 or more catches and a running back with 10 or more catches is all they have with where the ball goes. So, the majority of touches are going to their backs. I think he does probably a really good job of getting them in the right place, checking them into the right place, managing the game through that, distributing the ball, getting the ball to the running backs the way they want to. And, I think people get on him, they played some really good defenses. I think Kentucky’s got a very good defense, Alabama’s got a good defense. But he’s still able, had led them and put up a whole lot of points. He was down – his top receiver didn’t play last week. And the playmaker, the [George] Pickens kid, I don’t think he played last week. So, you know, you take kind of that deal, you take one of your playmaking wideouts out of the game, that can affect the quarterback play as well. But, you know, I think he does a good job. He’s accurate with the ball. He can make the different throws and get the ball where it needs to be. If you look at his numbers and his efficiency rating this year, they’re not bad for the type of offense they run.”
Rely on last year's game as a reference point?
"Well you do some. We have a lot of new faces out there. We have four of those wide receivers for us playing in the NFL right now. We have a tailback playing in the NFL right now. So, some of the matchups are a little bit different this year for us. But it is, I'll be honest with you. You watch, we've done this. We're going to run our offense and they're going to run their defense. We're not coming up and throwing everything out and running a whole new offense that we haven't run. We're going to run our offense this week. And I can't imagine them coming up there and saying, 'Hey, we have this defense that has been one of the top defenses in the country right now and we're going to scrap all of that and start new to try to create it.' So the matchups are the matchups and you're going to try to get some beneficial ones. The guys that played in that game last year that are back are a year older and hopefully a little bit better for us. I'm sure they feel the same about their guys as well. And then there's different guys. Unfortunately I think they've had to deal with some injuries. We've had to deal with kind of a depleted roster because of varying circumstances. But I think that's the hard part when you get to the matchups. Their guys are going to do what they do and we're going to do what we do."
What do you relish about coaching against Kirby?
"It's fun. You relish ... this is a competitive game. You're here, we want to be a championship football team and whoever wins this game is going to have the inside track towards being there. And that's what you're competing for in this game, is that opportunity to put yourself in the driver's seat to go out and win a championship. Those are the opportunities you want to be in, is competing for championships as the season goes on."
Toney's route-running unconventional?
"I don't know unconventional. I think it's just the discipline of him being able to do that. He's such a quick change-of-direction guy. So his ability to change direction on a route, set you up one way and then go a different way, I think that's what you want. You look at routes and you try to coach routes, you talk about the top end of routes and releases of routes, your ability to get in and out of breaks. And he's so quick that he's able to do that at a high level, and he's really worked to do that at a much higher level. So that's one of the things that's made him I think even such a better player this year."
Campbell missing the first three games?
"It's tough. You're a guy, especially a guy that's a senior and you're not out there on the field playing, I mean, it's hard. Like I said, we've had a lot of guys miss games for various reasons and it's never easy on any of them because any competitor wants to be out there on the field competing, playing and helping the team win. So I think that's really hard, but I knew he was really excited to be out there and get back on the field and start making plays again."
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