Where did Dan Mullen go wrong?

Dan Mullen was not surprisingly relieved from his duties as head coach of the Florida Gators last month. This came on the heels of another crushing loss to another inferior opponent on Saturday. The Gators lost in overtime at Missouri 24-23, their record falling to 5-6 on the year.

Let’s take a little dive into where Dan went wrong. I’ll keep it short, only four points.

Missouri & LSU 2020:
You can start to identify some of the problems dating back to last season. Two games in particular stand out. A game mid-season against Missouri and the last regular season game of the season against LSU. These two games you can really begin to see the lack of discipline this football team has had the last few years. It starts from the top down, the team gets into a bit of a brawl at midfield with Missouri, and even Dan Mullen himself gets involved. No big deal though, right? The Gators would go onto blow Missouri out and keep themselves rolling towards Atlanta. I didn’t think much of it at the time either.

Let’s fast-forward a few weeks now to the LSU game. Yes, the infamous Marco Wilson shoe game. Obviously, we all know how it played out, Wilson chucks a shoe for no reason essentially costing the Gators the game, and possibly a trip to Atlanta. Followed by virtually no punishment for Marco from Dan Mullen. I can remember thinking at the time that the Nick Saban’s of the world would never allow this to happen. This team over the last two seasons had a knack of taking unnecessary, untimely, unwarranted, COSTLY penalties. This was part of the culture of the team, and it hurt them immensely.

 2021 Offseason:
I’ll try to keep this point short. Remember all the rumors about Dan Mullen wanting to be the next head coach of the New York Jets this past offseason? What did Dan do to squash those rumors? NADA. I’ve been thinking back to that over the last few weeks. Did he ever want to be back here? Did he know what was in store for him in Florida in 2021? The more I look back on some of the moments and press conferences from this year, the more I believe his heart was not in it.

Recruiting:
If the writing wasn’t on the wall based on the play on the field, the 2022 Gator recruiting class wasn’t helping Dan’s case either. Mullen went on the record saying “We’re in the season right now, we’ll do recruiting after the season, when it gets to be recruiting time, we can talk about recruiting,”. This is not something that went over well with the Gator nation. Dans recruiting classes have been taking slight hits every year, but nothing to get majorly bent of shape about until 2021. The Gators have had a few 4-star recruits jump ship in the last few months, as well as seeing their 2022 recruiting class plummet to no. 23 in the nation. Florida is used to a top-10 recruiting class, 23 is unheard of for this team. And Mullen trying to brush it off as if it was no big deal was infuriating.

Coaching:
I don’t think you could come up with too much to gripe about in-terms of coaching with Dan and his staff with the first 3 seasons. Well, aside from Todd Grantham’s defenses. The Gators were winning the games they should win, won a few games where it was a bit of a pleasant surprise, and overall were not losing to inferior opponents. Now, Alabama and Georgia are better football teams than the 2021 Florida Gators, no question there so I won’t fault Dan on those. However, South Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky, and LSU are all less talented football teams. Losing to all four of them Is completely unacceptable. The Gators were gashed by both LSU, and South Carolina. They made no adjustments, and some players flat out quit.

Dan had chances to save himself for another season at least. He didn’t seem to think much of that opportunity as his team turned in 3 abysmal November performances. Here’s hoping Billy Napier can learn from these mistakes.