Don't you dare say Dan Mullen was out-coached
A week ago, Florida coach Dan Mullen told reporters he didn’t know who Wan’Dale Robinson was. “I know numbers,” he said at the time. “You know what I’m saying?”
Last night, Mullen learned some new numbers: 20-13.
A lesser man might gain a little humility from something like that. But don’t worry — that lesser man is not Dan Mullen.
When asked if he was out-coached in last night’s loss, Mullen nobly jumped to his own defense, citing the Gators’ advantage in total yardage as tantamount to a winning performance:
“We had 382, they had 211,” said Mullen, in response to a reporter’s assertion that his offense sputtered down the stretch. “So I wouldn’t think that would be the case.”
He is, of course, correct. Florida out-gained Kentucky both on the ground and in the air on Saturday. Nevermind the fact that those 382 yards were a season low, 159 below their previous season average, and 58 less than they managed against #1 Alabama. But as long as the other offense doesn’t go off, that means yours is doing good, right?
To be fair, Mullen did go on to acknowledge one area of fault in his preparation: special teams. Referencing the critical blocked field goal that turned into a touchdown for the ‘Cats, he humbly accepted the blame (well, sort of).
“I gotta do a better job coaching up the PAT field goal group,” he said after the game. “You can’t have a blocked kick. That was seven points. That’s a 10-point swing right there. That’s a big deal, so we gotta get that fixed.”
Once again, the veteran coach makes an excellent point. One has to imagine that if he had only gone up to the kicking unit before the game and showed them how to make kicks, rather than get them blocked, the game would’ve unfolded very differently. What was he thinking, letting that slip?
Another area of improvement, according to Mullen, was on third downs. Not on third-down execution, mind you — the Gators went a season-worst 24% (4-13) in those situations, but as he pointed out again, that’s okay, because it was better than UK — but on the preceding plays.
“Third-down conversions I think would’ve been higher…” Mullen said, before trailing off. “We got ourselves in some third-and-long situations. We gotta be better right there… ball in the red zone, we have gotta score touchdowns when we get down there.”
Ah, yes. The old “if we’d gotten more yards and scored more points, we would’ve won,” stance. Hard to argue with that.
But hey, at least he knows Wan’Dale’s name now.
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