Does Mullen call plays? If not, why not?

cheewgumm

Redshirt
Sep 15, 2012
792
0
0
It seems his "talent" is calling plays.

If I were him, after last year, I'd just take it over. Maybe he already does, but I don't think so.
 

johnson86-1

All-Conference
Aug 22, 2012
14,288
4,803
113
Doesn't matter who calls plays, as long as it's a different person from last year.
 

DerHntr

All-Conference
Sep 18, 2007
15,811
2,726
113
It seems his "talent" is calling plays.

If I were him, after last year, I'd just take it over. Maybe he already does, but I don't think so.

Why is it his talent? I have heard this for a while and most point back to his days at Florida with Tebow. A couple of guys I know were having this same discussion last week.

My question: was his play calling great because he had a Heisman winning QB or was it because he had a great system and plays called that were tailored to take advantage of the other team's D?

There were numerous answers for both sides. What say ye?
 

Rezpup

Redshirt
May 4, 2009
591
0
0
It was because he had an offensive line that could run block (plus the heisman feet behind it).

I don't think anyone is a good play caller w/o an OL that can run block and we were bad at it last year. Also, the five wide set drives me crazy.
We have to knock conference DL's off the line if we want to compete.
 
Last edited:

coach66

Junior
Mar 5, 2009
12,691
310
83
I don't think Mullen is the primary play

Caller but he interjects a lot. He does all one hundred percent of our
trick plays*
 

SallyStansbury

Redshirt
Mar 3, 2008
365
4
18
yes

Why is it his talent? I have heard this for a while and most point back to his days at Florida with Tebow. A couple of guys I know were having this same discussion last week.

My question: was his play calling great because he had a Heisman winning QB or was it because he had a great system and plays called that were tailored to take advantage of the other team's D?

There were numerous answers for both sides. What say ye?

Mullen is a conservative play caller. If you have great o-line + Tebow, you can chip away at the D with misdirection, QB draws, then when the D sells out to stop that you burn them with the great WR's Fla had. We don't have that, in fact we are pretty far from that.
But Mullen sticks with the same...."We are going to be a spread, running team, etc....." but Russel isn't a runner and if we tried to incorporate a longer passing game RT LT got us killed, so we got a lot of Perkins up the middle with a crowded DLine, "setting up the big pass play........like Fl did" but even then we had weak receivers who couldn't break away for long routes, and we are all scratching our heads wondering what went wrong. I think some of those angry 1000 yrd stares from Mullen is him wondering what he wasn't doing right. Maybe Hud as O coordinator spread in enough screen passes, misdirections, etc to keep D's guessing. D's weren't guessing with us last year. Maybe it was Relf as a true running threat, but I think it goes deeper than that.

I hope we see some changes in recruiting....strategy....and some shakeup in the offensive play calling, however I am not holding my breath.

I think of this from a financial advisor perspective. At FLA Mullen was given a huge pile of money and he invested in conservative bonds then he said here, look at this big pile of money I made for you. At MSU we give him a little pile of money, he invests it again in bonds @ 2% return and he shows up with a little pile of money and we say...WTF, go make us some real money. We/Mullen has to expose himself to risk, take some chances if he wants to hit it big, especially against LSU, A&M and Bama. I don't think his personality type highly stubborn/controlling will allow him to do that. When Hud was our passing game coordinator or whatever it was you saw more risk & reward in our offensive strategy but you also saw Mullen screaming at him, cussing him in practice, all that jive...when he left, as he should have, our offense became more sluggish and conservative and D's are eating that **** alive. I hope it improves, but I don't really see that happening without some significant changes.
 

Machiavelli

Redshirt
Mar 16, 2013
109
0
0
Mullen is a conservative play caller. If you have great o-line + Tebow, you can chip away at the D with misdirection, QB draws, then when the D sells out to stop that you burn them with the great WR's Fla had. We don't have that, in fact we are pretty far from that.
But Mullen sticks with the same...."We are going to be a spread, running team, etc....." but Russel isn't a runner and if we tried to incorporate a longer passing game RT LT got us killed, so we got a lot of Perkins up the middle with a crowded DLine, "setting up the big pass play........like Fl did" but even then we had weak receivers who couldn't break away for long routes, and we are all scratching our heads wondering what went wrong. I think some of those angry 1000 yrd stares from Mullen is him wondering what he wasn't doing right. Maybe Hud as O coordinator spread in enough screen passes, misdirections, etc to keep D's guessing. D's weren't guessing with us last year. Maybe it was Relf as a true running threat, but I think it goes deeper than that.

I hope we see some changes in recruiting....strategy....and some shakeup in the offensive play calling, however I am not holding my breath.

I think of this from a financial advisor perspective. At FLA Mullen was given a huge pile of money and he invested in conservative bonds then he said here, look at this big pile of money I made for you. At MSU we give him a little pile of money, he invests it again in bonds @ 2% return and he shows up with a little pile of money and we say...WTF, go make us some real money. We/Mullen has to expose himself to risk, take some chances if he wants to hit it big, especially against LSU, A&M and Bama. I don't think his personality type highly stubborn/controlling will allow him to do that. When Hud was our passing game coordinator or whatever it was you saw more risk & reward in our offensive strategy but you also saw Mullen screaming at him, cussing him in practice, all that jive...when he left, as he should have, our offense became more sluggish and conservative and D's are eating that **** alive. I hope it improves, but I don't really see that happening without some significant changes.

Great job. This should be pinned. In a few sentences, you have perfectly described the problem with our offense. But even more telling, you have pointed out why it hasn't (and will not) gotten better, with the Hud statement. I believe that great head coaches must embrace being the HEAD COACH, and not be coach. You hire guys that know what the hell they are doing and let them do it... you still get the credit. But until Mullen let others coach and stop demanding that they be "installers" of his genius we will not improve significantly. I hope he matures out of this mindset quickly. If not, we will continue to see coaching turnover and it will become even more difficult for him to hire and maintain quality assistances (see Brewster).
 

57stratdawg

Heisman
Dec 1, 2004
148,390
24,168
113
I disagree. I think the offense will be as productive (yards and points) as it's going to get under Mullen. Last year 'struggles' to me were because of 1) our WRs can't beat man coverage against an SEC team and 2) our OTs aren't great. It takes our WR longer to get open and our OL didn't always give us that much time.