McGarity hired Smart in late 2015 and retired after the 2020 season. While UGA's national championships didn't happen until right after he retired, they were playing for it back in 2017 and had their first monster recruiting class in 2018. The seeds were planted under McGarity.
Sorry one of the best offenses Uf has ever seen was not a mirage. You also forget UF came within one score of Bama who won the natty it was the second year in a row that UF played the eventual NC better than anyone else. That’s not mirage
I think that team was a legit good team. I don't think bowl games are representative of anything in this era of college football.
That's an indictment of the coaching staff and program right there. If all was good and healthy, it wouldn't have happened. So no, we weren't rolling along. We lost 4 games out of 12 that year, including the final 3 in a row.
Seriously. Lots of top players opt out now. OSU was in the playoff and they had top guys opt out. If that’s true what does it say about the program who opted out this year ?
I think the downfall of the Mullen regime really started to show late in the 2020 season. The lack of discipline (shoe throwing) and lack of commitment (opt outs) mirrored Mullen's lackadaisical attitude about losses. This only continued to get worse into 2021 and ultimately led to Mullen's firing. There was no accountability in the program. I know some here think Mullen should have been kept. I think that is more of a hindsight view for them, because things haven't gone great with the new guy. What they refuse to understand is that the program was being driven into a ditch by the last guy and there is a big mess to clean up and rebuild. And the fact that this is not a quick and easy rebuild is angering them to death.
Since the clip is of a defensive player I’ll stand by my assertion that Mullen had one of the best offenses UF had ever seen in 2020. The stats back it up.
That was the point of the discussion. Point was the offense was a mirage. I disagree. We all know the issue with 2020 was the defense.
I don’t think at the time it was appreciated what a sneaky good recruiter McElwain was. I think too many people assumed if you recruit average level classes you’ll always end up with a bunch of diamonds in the rough. Mullen just got a bunch of average.
Mac was doing well and trying to improve the talent, no doubt. He was just a bad fit. The meltdown was weird.
Even though a few guys outperformed rankings you're getting caught up and that wasn't sustainable long term. Mcelwain definitely walked into an awful situation with barely enough OL to hold practice but he could've survived a lot longer by simply displaying humbleness/fixing the bad areas. Mcelwain wasn't playing some 4D chess that Pitts/Toney would become stars. He needed an elite recruiting staff in 2015 and we didn't start to clear out useless coaches until after 2016.
true. And you can chalk up a lot of - transfers, losses, recruiting whiffs offensive or defensive woes to an varied number of reasons- many of whom may not be the fault of Cbn or admin. But just for a second, if you go Birds Eye view- it’s ugly. Really ugly. In 2022- Florida- lost to each of its rivals, lost to 1st year coaches in Brian Kelly and 2nd year guys Beamer and Heupel, lost to UK at home and VANDY, got blown out by Oregon state in the bowl game, had a losing record, missed on 6 of top 7 targets to Miami, the 1 we got- just got away because of NIL, record setting awful defense, made headlines with Kitna, made more with Rashada, had its #1 CB target embarrass them during signing only to not even sign at all, had returning starters opt out and transfer rather than buy in and play, lost a couple starting oline to power 5 schools, had its star QB and DT leave early for the draft, kicked it’s top DE off the team mid-season and doesn’t seem to have a clear direction with the portal or NIL Now- each one of those can be debated or gussied up by either side.. many will say “Mullen problems or it’ll take time.” But when you mash all that together/ it paints a really ugly picture. I can’t remember a more difficult or embarrassing time to be a Gator with less hope for the best future.
