Dan Mullen fired by Florida
After Saturday’s overtime loss to Missouri, the University of Florida had no choice: Fire Dan Mullen.
Two weeks before it had been his defensive coordinator, Todd Grantham, who was booted. Grantham was seen by some as a sacrificial lamb, so that his friend Mullen could keep himself around for another year.
But it didn’t happen. Saturday’s awful 24-23 loss in Columbia, in which the Gators had one regular-time touchdown in 360 yards of offense, wad utterly dreadful to watch (Note: Missouri weren’t much better!).
But Mullen’s firing is still a weird one. Overall, he was 34-15 – the third-best in The Swamp behind Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer.
After all, he was one horror-loss against LSU last season from getting into the College Football Play-Off. He had taken Alabama to the hilt both in the SEC Championship Game and this game. He was 1-1 against Georgia.
Not only that, but anyone with half a brain would have known that the Gators would fall off. Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney had gone in the first round, and Kyle Trask graduated – a product of a system where Mullen trusted his instincts instead of bringing along a perceived ‘better’ QB in Feleipe Franks (Franks transferred to Arkansas, where he was successful, too!).
But they didn’t think they would fall off as much as they did.
The problem for Mullen wasn’t losing to Georgia and Alabama in 2021. In the Alabama game, the Gators played their best game of the year, giving the Crimson Tide everything they could handle. The problem was looking bad against Kentucky and LSU, and comically dreadful against South Carolina, Missouri and giving up over 50 points to, er, Samford. , his experiment with Emory Jones has been medicore (18 TDs and 10 INTS) at best, and the much-touted transfer former five-star RB DeMarkcus Bowman is a dreadful failure. Despite not having a great WR group, Mullen – who is renowned for being a good quarterbacks coach (we would call the Jones experiment an exception to the rule) – felt that he should throw the ball instead of giving it to his most talented runners in Dameon Pierce, Malik Davis and, yes, Bowman. He also had frosh QB Anthony Richardson, who hasn’t tasted much offensively either, yet for a lot of people – especially with his legs looked like a more exciting prospect than Jones.
MULLEN’S FUTURE?
The current joke running around college football is that Mullen will be an offensive analyst with Alabama in 2022, but it won’t be surprising if Mullen resurfaces as an OC/QB coach somewhere else in the very near future. He’s still not a bad coach.
He’s just not what Florida expects year-on-year.