What Will It Take For Dan Mullen To Right The Florida Ship
Updated: Nov 13, 2021
Depending on your point of view, either blood is in the water and Dan Mullen is treading water in a lagoon surrounded by a rather large school of circling sharks or he somehow swam safely to shore and is gasping for air on the beach, wondering how he managed to stay one step ahead of joining the extinct species list.
Losing three games in a row including two – LSU and South Carolina – in which you were double digit favorites is the equivalent of blood in the water. Going 2-8 in your last 10 games against Power Five conference teams brings out record numbers of sharks.
Perhaps it is too early to assume anything regarding Dan Mullen’s future at the University of Florida. Back on Sunday, Mullen did take the steps of firing defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and offensive line coach John Hevesy, whom he had worked with for the past 21 years. Those were necessary steps but was it enough to satisfy athletic director Scott Stricklin, boosters who are growing increasingly impatient and a fan base that seems to have gone off the rails?
At his Monday press conference, less than 24 hours after it was announced that Grantham and Hevesy had been dismissed, Mullen’s entire demeanor was an upgrade from the previous Monday when he was on edge from the opening question. He indicated that all is well with Stricklin.
Mullen actually seemed at ease when peppered with questions regarding change that involved coaches with whom he has close, longstanding relationships. When discussing what led to the decision to let Grantham and Hevesy go, he said, “But one of the ways you look and say is it a successful season? Are you a better team at the end of the year than you were at the beginning of the year. For me, one thing looking at where we are right now. We’re not better than we were earlier in the year. In fact, we’re worse than we were earlier in the year. At that point I looked and I said we’ve got to make some changes with what we’re doing and where we’re at.”
He emphasized that the decision was completely his and there was no external pressure from athletic director Scott Stricklin or boosters to dismiss the two coaches, but it is quite obvious that Mullen knows and understands that the Florida football program is heading in the wrong direction. He also knows that if he intends to be the head coach for anything more than the end of this season or beyond next season that he is the one responsible for getting things back on track.
He took complete responsibility for the current state of the program.
“Me, I’m the head coach so I bear all of it,” Mullen said. “It’s on my shoulders. I’m the one that’s responsible for this program. I’m the one that’s responsible for this team and how we’ve got to perform. That’s your job here as the head coach is to take on that responsibility and my job is to make sure we go perform, that this team plays to the Gator Standard, which we’re not doing right now. It’s my responsibility to find a way to fix that.”
How to fix it? That’s the $64,000 question. If there is a second question it is can Dan Mullen do it? He was 29-6 through his first 35 games as Florida’s head coach. He’s 4-8 since then as the Gators prep for a Saturday game with D1AA Samford from the Southern Conference. This cannot be Mullen’s Georgia Southern (See Will Muschamp, 2013). He desperately needs this win and to beat Missouri on the road and FSU at home to finish the regular season at 7-5. That will offer a bit of momentum heading into the early December signing day, but signing day is just the beginning. To make it work and for Florida to get back to being a regular contender for Southeastern Conference championships, Mullen has three issues he has to deal with: (1) Recruiting for 2022 and beyond; (2) the transfer portal; and (3) coaching staff.
RECRUITING
So much emphasis is placed on the December signing period since it’s when 75 percent or more of the top 500-700 high school kids will sign. Florida’s recruiting class, once top 12, has been decimated by defections recently and only a surge in the first two weeks of December will get the Gators back into the top 20. Fans are quick to point out that Mullen’s coaching staff isn’t blessed with the kind of lights out recruiters that you see at Alabama, Georgia and LSU, but there is more than meets the eye when it comes to problems landing top classes.
Mullen desperately needs someone like Mark Pantoni to head up the recruiting effort. Pantoni is the associate athletic director for player personnel at Ohio State. He began working in Urban Meyer’s recruiting office at Florida in 2005 and advanced to recruiting coordinator. He is one of the reasons Meyer’s Friday Night Lights one night camp became such a success. When Meyer retired at UF after the 2010 season, new coach Will Muschamp made him the director of football administration.
When Meyer took the Ohio State job in 2012, he quickly offered Pantoni the director of player personnel position, which he has held for the last nine years, during which time the Buckeyes’ recruiting classes have finished outside the top five nationally only twice.
Pantoni has an excellent staff that begins identifying top talent early. They stay in regular contact with kids from the time they are freshmen and sophomores in high school. They go the extra mile on game day to make visiting recruits and families feel as if they would be crazy to consider any place but Ohio State. It is the constant contact, the attention to detail and the summer camp plus the Buckeye equivalent of Friday Night Lights that that make Ohio State a streamlined, systematic recruiting effort.
Georgia and Alabama easily outspend Florida when it comes to recruiting, but not all of the money is spent on travel. Georgia and Alabama both have recruiting staffs similar to the one Pantoni runs at Ohio State.
For Mullen to turn the corner on recruiting, he’s got to have a better budget that includes more money for staff and he needs to bring in a talent like Pantoni who has a system that identifies and prioritizes high school talent. The Gators particularly need to amp up recruiting in the state of Florida. Both Alabama and Georgia regularly poach the best talent in the state and Ohio State always seems to land two or three top players in the state.
TRANSFERS
Mel Tucker may have provided a blueprint for Mullen salvaging the Florida football program and his long term status as the head coach through effective use of the NCAA transfer portal. Now that NCAA rules allow a one-time transfer without having to sit a year, there is virtual free agency. It is expected that the transfer portal will have more than 2,000 players seeking greener pastures between December and June.
A year ago with Michigan State floundering on the field in the Big Ten (2-5 record), on the recruiting trail (10thin the league) and with 27 players entering the transfer portal, leaving serious holes in the roster, Tucker turned to the transfer portal. Having just completed his first year as head coach, Tucker used his own NFL experience to rebuild the Spartans’ roster. Tucker was an NFL defensive coordinator with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Cleveland Browns and Chicago Bears so he was familiar with finding plug and play guys who could step in and contribute immediately.
“Going through 10 drafts and 10 free-agency periods, you get the experience of how to build a team, not just collect players,” Tucker told ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg recently.
Tucker looked into the transfer portal, studied film and did interviews to find players he thought would fit in. The result was 20 players with experience to complement a recruiting class of 19. The results have been spectacular. Running back Kenneth Walker III is the most visible of the new faces. The Wake Forest transfer leads the nation with 1,330 rushing yards (6.75 per carry) for 15 touchdowns. Walker has injected himself into the Heisman Trophy discussion and he’s come from nowhere to the No. 2 running back on Mel Kiper’s NFL Draft board.
Former All-Sun Belt left tackle Jarrett Horst has become the most consistent player on an offensive line that opens big holes for Walker and has allowed only 14 sacks in nine games. Over on the defensive side, Tucker picked up a pair of starting corners in Chester Kimbrough (Florida) and Ronald Williams (Alabama), a middle linebacker in Quavaris Crouch (Tennessee), and key backups in defensive end Drew Jordan (Duke), linebacker Ben Van Summeren (Michigan) and corner Kendell Brooks (North Greenville College). The backup quarterback is Anthony Russo (Temple). Other transfers have contributed to the Spartans’ 8-1 start and No. 7 ranking in the most recent College Football Playoff poll.
Florida’s recruiting class has been decimated with defections, the most recent wide receiver Raymond Cottrell, who flipped his commitment to Georgia. Florida is already one of the youngest teams in the country (121st in roster experience out of 130 Division I teams) and with so many young players getting experience this year, it’s hard to imagine that many freshmen will contribute this year. So, it’s an ideal situation for Mullen to use the transfer portal to supplement his recruiting efforts.
A recent NCAA ruling will allow schools to replace as many as seven who transfer out with seven from the transfer portal without that counting against the limit of 25 signees. It’s entirely possible that Mullen could sign 12-14 transfers as part of his rebuild of the roster. Some with inside information have stated there is a stack of inquiries on Mullen’s desk from players already in the portal and those using their old high school coach or other methods to let it be known they will be searching for greener pastures.
Mullen has effectively used transfers since he’s been at Florida. Wide receivers Van Jefferson (Ole Miss) and TreVon Grimes (Ohio State), linebacker/edge rusher Jonathan Greenard (Louisville), edge rusher Brenton Cox Jr. (Georgia), guard Stewart Reese (Mississippi State), wide receiver Justin Shorter (Penn State), running backs Demarkcus Bowman (Clemson) and Lorenzo Lingard (Miami) and defensive tackles Antonio Valentino (Penn State), Daquan Newkirk (Auburn) and Tyrone Truesdell (Auburn) have filled holes in the UF roster since Mullen arrived in 2018.
Mullen’s transfer wish list should include a couple of wide receivers with speed, one or two experienced offensive linemen, bigger linebackers who can play the inside positions, defensive tackles and at least one safety.
OVERHAULING THE COACHING STAFF
A new defensive coordinator will have to be given the option of bringing in an entire new staff. Christian Robinson, who will serve as the interim coordinator the last three games and probably for the bowl game if the Gators get to the minimum six wins, is a bright young coach who could be in the mix for the permanent coordinator job if the defense responds with three great efforts against Samford, Missouri and Florida State. He’s not considered the favorite to land the permanent job although he’s considered an excellent recruiter and may very well be on the next coordinator’s staff.
If you were to poll the fan and booster base, you would probably hear these four names mentioned prominently for defensive coordinator: Charlie Strong, Gene Chizik, Marquand Manuel and Doug Belk.
Charlie Strong, who was the defensive coordinator for Meyer when Mullen was Florida’s offensive coordinator, is the mature, seasoned veteran that fans and boosters alike would like to see. He’s a former head coach at Louisville, Texas and South Florida, and has worked at UF for Charley Pell, Galen Hall, Steve Spurrier, Ron Zook and Meyer. Strong is currently coaching linebackers for Meyer with the Jacksonville Jaguars and it is unclear if he would welcome a return to college football because he doesn’t have to go on the road to recruit in the NFL. When he was at Florida, Strong was a lockdown recruiter who turned the Tampa Bay area and Polk County into pipelines to Gainesville.
Former Gator All-American Chris Doering, who is a commentator on the SEC Network, is an advocate for Gene Chizik, an SEC Network analyst who walked on at Florida and played for Charley Pell. Chizik is best know for winning the national championship as Auburn’s head coach in 2010 but he also won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach in 2004 and was in charge of the defense at Texas in 2005 when the Longhorns won the national championship. Doering believes that the only thing that could lure Chizik out of coaching retirement would be if Florida called. He thinks it would be difficult for Chizik to say no.
There is plenty of sentiment for Marquand Manuel, who had 308 tackles and six interceptions in a Florida career in which he was Steve Spurrier’s team captain in 2001. He played nine years in the NFL and has won a Super Bowl as an assistant with the Seattle Seahawks. He’s a former defensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons who is now the secondary coach with the New York Jets. Manuel is 42 years old and while he hasn’t coached at the collegiate level, his background and well-known enthusiastic personality would seem to make him a natural recruiter, particularly in South Florida (he’s a Miami High grad).
Another name that has garnered plenty of interest is Houston defensive coordinator Doug Belk, who spent three years as a graduate assistant for Nick Saban at Alabama on his way up the coaching ladder. His defense is currently ranked ninth overall and is among the national leaders in rushing defense and sacks. Belk is a 32-year-old Valdosta native who is an excellent recruiter.
To replace Hevesy three names that have already been mentioned are Phil Trautwein, who was the starting left tackle on Florida’s 2008 national championship team, and former UF offensive line coach Joe Wickline. Trautwein is the O-line coach for James Franklin at Penn State, where he’s proving to be an outstanding recruiter. Wickline worked at Florida for Ron Zook but his best work was the nine years at Oklahoma State, which produced some of the highest scoring and most balanced offenses in the country. Another former Florida offensive line coach is Brad Davis, now at LSU. He might be open to a return to Florida should he along with the other assistant coaches be let go at the end of the year when Ed Orgeron coaches his final game. Davis worked in 2020 under Sam Pittman at Arkansas. He is probably the best recruiter of all the names mentioned prominently to replace Hevesy.
It has been suggested that if Mullen wants to make a home run hire on the O-line he should convince one or both of the Pouncey twins to come to Gainesville. Maurkice and Mike are recently retired from the NFL after Pro Bowl careers. Mullen couldn’t find bigger names who would have instant recognition on the recruiting trail. It’s hard to imagine that either or both of the Pounceys would lose a big time prospect out of Polk or the Tampa Bay area.
Asked Monday if he has a short list of coaches to call when he decides who stays and who goes among his assistants, Mullen responded, “Yeah, I mean I’m going to have some ideas. Right now we’re getting ready to play Samford as well. You’ve got this week’s game plan. Obviously, there’s a little bit more to deal with making sure our players, everybody’s on the same page and understands what we need to do moving forward. You’ve got all the recruiting stuff going on within our program, so when you combine all that stuff it hasn’t been the last 24 hours of me just going complete job search, looking for candidates that way. But the benefit of being here at Florida is there’s going to be a lot of people who want to come coach for the Florida Gators and be a part of this program.”
CONCLUSIONS
Mullen can turn this around at Florida, but it will not be easy and won’t be done unless he addresses recruiting, the transfer portal and assistant coach hires with a heretofore unseen enthusiasm. More than anything else, Dan Mullen needs to revert to the Dan Mullen that stepped off the plane in Gainesville with a wide grin and chomps in December of 2017. We haven’t seen the joy and enthusiasm Mullen had those first two years (2018-19) in quite some time. When he reinvents the Florida football program, he doesn’t necessarily need to reinvent himself as much as he needs to regain the joy of being a Gator. That, as much as anything, will re-energize the fan base, recruits, transfers and make potential assistant coaches want to come to Gainesville to work for him.
Turning Florida around from the current 2022 disaster can be done. The question is will Dan Mullen do all that is necessary to make it happen.
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