Culture Shock, Part I: inside the Florida Gators’ implosion under Dan Mullen

We had a 31 year winning streak against Kentucky the year Grantham became our DC... this will be the first year we leave that same 3-4 base defense that he brought to Gainesville.

Utah will try and run on us all game long with some choice trick plays and timely passes of course. Whittingham is a real good head football coach with great assistant coaches too. He will have a good game plan for us. But I like AA's description of the types of defenses he will employ against opposing teams this year. I am cautiously optimistic.

Can't wait!

Go Gators!

 

Yikes on Bikes

 

I don't necessarily agree with this. Stricklin worked with Mullen at Miss. State for a number of years, and probably didn't think he needed people at UF to tell him about Mullen. During Mullen's tenure at UF we won two Natty's, and he put together a dynamic offense. Meyer was NOT happy when Mullen left for good reason; our offense went to hell after he left.

Mullen had done quite well at MSU and was well liked and respected there. I suspect that Stricklin thought Mullen would do even better at UF given the greater resources and fertile recruiting grounds, which is reasonable. Recruiting at MSU is not easy.

Re: the article. It certainly confirms what all of us saw: Grantham, Hevesy and Knox were horrible, and Mullen should have canned them all two years earlier, or not have hired them in the first place. It also confirms that Mullen wasn't playing the best players--the quarterback situation being the most glaring- and was unwilling to overrule his assistants. It cost him big time.

 

Your not alone, Gator Nation wanted CDM to succeed. Patient to a fault.

Many on here wanted the thing canned when Mullen brought Grantham back and were none to happy about Hev coming back either.

 

Nice post Clay.

 

There’s a Part II?

 

Maybe that clouded his judgement on Mullen as they had a long-standing relationship. I feel like as the AD he should have been able to see what so many people on here saw and that was just from watching games.

Perhaps if he didn't have that bias from MSU then he would have been more critical of the position coaches and "hinted" they needed to be replaced way earlier than they were.

Just another way to look at the existing relationship dynamic. Can cut both ways.

 

Just as I suspected, but wow

 

Part 2 is supposed to focus on the positive changes Napier has and is making.

 

Hev too. Sounds like he was equal king as bad.

 

And when the defense fell apart, they got rid of the two good coaches and kept Grantham. My guess is they both wanted out.

 

Well, the middle ground between your take and mine is that Stricklin is a mid-major type of AD. If he implicitly does not know what makes THE top of the hill tick, then he isn't a good fit for a program such as UF. I don't see why Stricklin should be loyal to Mullen because he "worked well" at MSU. That to me is in Mullen (aka, "Dumbo") territory, because Mullen could have gotten him fired.

I am going to pull towards my way of thinking and say "Scottie, you screwed up. Don't do it again."

 

That’s on Mullen. I doubt a good head coach would or should allow an AD to mess with his staff. AD should stay in his lane. Hire the guy or don’t. Fire him or don’t, but stay in the AD lane and let a coach do his thing. If an AD needs to tell a coach who to fire, he needs to fire tge head coach.

 

Yeah, more checks and balances is not a bad thing in this case. He should have been forced to hire new DC and a couple of subpar position coaches before he took the job in Gainesville.

 

That’s on Mullen, the mistake was hiring him in the first place.I’d never accept a job that I’m suppose to head up and let someone else build my staff. If you wanna build my staff, you can coach the team too.

 

I don’t want to turn this to TH, but this shows he was completely out of tune with his players. The article was clear, too — nobody accused TG of being a racist. He was accused of being a class-A a$$hole, who completely disrespected the players he was charged with molding into responsible adults.

 

With regard to your initial post on this, it is only fair to point out that it has a major unfounded assumption: that Stricklin didn't consult with people at UF--whether within the UAA, historical, or boosters--before he hired Mullen. You have no idea whatsoever who Stricklin talked to. Are you suggesting that Stricklin made this hire solely on his own without consulting with anyone else? Please. That's just plain silly.

You also assume that had Stricklin consulted with certain "historical" figures-- whoever they are-- that he would have gotten negative feedback that prevented the hire. Why would you assume that?

You also conveniently ignore the available candidate pool at the time Mullen was hired. Mullen looked pretty good in comparison and UT was in hot pursuit of him; Chip Kelly was never coming here no matter how many pages posters went on about him.

We were quite happy with Mullen his first two years and Mullen got kudos from a lot of directions for his performance then. What happened thereafter was not on Stricklin; it was solely on Mullen for not dealing with the issues discussed in the article.

For some perspective, maybe you should be reminded that Foley hired Zook, Muschamp, and McElwain; maybe finding the exactly the right guy isn't all that easy, or everyone would do it.

But Monday morning quarterbacks do what they do, so flame away. And I am sure Stricklin will take note of your admonition.

 

Agreed. It was a substantial point in the story so it was worth mentioning once but everybody is doing a very good job of not running with that one point. Thanks!

Part 1 was very hard to read but I'm glad it came out.

Some of us have been trying to tell others that Coach Napier is in the middle of a complete rebuild from the foundation up.

 

Wasn’t SS resistant to hiring Mullen, but we missed on the top 3?

 

You have a point there in that the powers that be whoever they are, are responsible for putting Strickilin in as our AD and probably have more to say about hiring a coach than he does. He’s just the guy that gets fired if they pick the wrong coaches.