100%. A lot of leaders don’t receive critical feedback very well. It’s actually a positive sign that the team has the care and the courage to approach him and for him to not take offense and listen.
He's not that fast. 4.7 40. He's not a Tebow battering ram. However he is very quick and elusive. One of those guys who is just not there when you go to tackle him.
Probably weren't sure which one to go to. Been saying for 2 years he needs a senior chief executive master defensive coordination consulting expert position created on staff.
If the players had expressed this sentiment with Mullen, they’d be kicked out of the office. As a coach, there are times when players will bring to your attention things that you may not have picked up on while watching. In film study, the players may have been able to answer what they did wrong and therefore it was written off as realtime issues when in fact they looked at the playbook after the game to see what went wrong. Either way, it’s fixed, players are all in, and the defense is playing significantly better. Without knowing all of the facts, I’m calling it a good thing that it is resolved and that we have a coach that wouldn’t tell the players to F off and do their jobs.
There's so much off the field stuff to like about our team and Billy... If we could just get the on-the-field stuff fixed...
Well said! Of all the coaches since CM, CBN is by far the most amiable and hardest working guy. I root for the man way more than the others, too.
Well you might have made him fix it, since it says 18.67 now. I guess Matt Hayes is lurking here somewhere.
Crazy to me that the answer always seems to be to simplify the defense. Wonder why that is? Are the DCs getting too NFL-complex just to try to look professional? Are the players we hire (yeah, I said it) not smart enough to learn that complex of a defense? Or, are the coaches just bad at teaching it?
Great questions... If I can take a stab at the answer... Put yourself in a DC's shoes... What is the nature of his job... High pay, but also an uncertain future. So he's always auditioning for his next job. The incentive is to make the defense as complicated as possible so other coaches will notice and hire him for either a raise or if he gets fired. Also things always seem easier in practice, so a defense being too complex isn't a problem until the games begin. I remember Grantham had the same issue- the players talking about how it was way too complicated. But also as you say, the DCs are not great teachers... Teaching takes empathy and sensitivity- something football coaches are not known for.
……and if we will just give him the time to get it all fixed. There’s been a lot for a guy in his first power 5 gig to fix. We can argue all day whether or not hiring a “Div 2” coach was a bad idea — but we did it and now the only thing that matters is what’s best for our program right now. All the firing in the world won’t undo the mistake of hiring him — the only thing that matters is this: are we better off giving him more time to keep slowly turning this program around, or are we better off firing him after 3 seasons and starting all over again with another guy? I don’t have the answer to that question, and neither does anybody else in this forum.
I know It’s been pointed out that this is a Matt Hayes, and not Matt Baker article. It’s shocking to me how negative an alleged neutral sports writer can be to the Gators. And while FSU is in the midst of an historically bad season, Matt Baker rarely has anything too negative to say about them. Pisses me off.
