Week 7: #20 Florida Gators 42, LSU Tigers 49, 10/16/21

[Escambia94]

Too soon on asking who should start against Georgia?

If Mullen trots out EJ5 as the starter, the Gator Nation might revolt. I get it, this was his first recruit and the kid has done everything the right way waiting for his time. Mullen in his stubbornness is missing the forest for the trees: AR15 gives the Gators the most opportunities to win. Nothing against EJ5. This is on the coaches for not building better game plans that allow EJ5 to win games within his skill set. Maybe convert him to WR or RB, which worked out for Kadarius Toney, Hines Ward, and Antwaan Randle El.

 

[DRU2012]

If Mullen trots out EJ5 as the starter, the Gator Nation might revolt. I get it, this was his first recruit and the kid has done everything the right way waiting for his time. Mullen in his stubbornness is missing the forest for the trees: AR15 gives the Gators the most opportunities to win. Nothing against EJ5. This is on the coaches for not building better game plans that allow EJ5 to win games within his skill set. Maybe convert him to WR or RB, which worked out for Kadarius Toney, Hines Ward, and Antwaan Randle El.

This is the kind of “outside the box” thinking we definitely NEED from our Coach now—but so far it has hardly been his forte.
I THINK it may be the key to whether we MAKE the BIG ADJUSTMENTS, or continue to instead merely fade back to frustrated mediocrity—and who KNOWS how many years and seasons of ignominy before someone, somehow comes along and personally, by force of talent and personality manages to stamp his identity on our program and basically raises us up to new and once only imagined heights again.
If Mullen fails now, and we continue to sink back into the mass of “also-rans”, it will likely be a long time, a LONG WAY BACK to where we thought we were already on our way to reaching NOW.
Frustrating and disappointing as this season is, consider THAT: Maybe a FULL GENERATION before we’re “There” again!
No shit. That’s what we are in truth FACING now.

 

[DRU2012]

One more thing: This is ALSO the kind of thing a Coach must do—it ISN’t always “clean and clear-cut”, “unqualified, unquestioned HONOR to the end”; There are “gray areas”, moments when you must do things “for the team and program” that you never saw coming, that may even go against a promise you made.
I can see where that would be a problem for a man like Dan Mullen—and for all the “right reasons”, too
But if he hasn’t learned that by now, well, I’m sorry but it is TIME—and it was INEVITABLE that sooner or later it WOULD BE.

 

[DRU2012]

Finally:
Overall, I have a “sinking feeling” the “necessary moves” will NOT be made—and our team and program will PAY...and pay, and pay some MORE, for seasons, YEARS TO COME.
I HATE it, but I have a strong sense that it will be like this game, like the season itself has felt:
A helpless, sinking feeling, as we fail, slowly, in both the immediate and “big picture” sense.

 

[DRU2012]

(I don’t know that I can, or even HAVE the time and/or resigned strength left to wait it all out, see it all through from here. I hate saying that, but it is my honest suspicion and appraisal.)

 

[DRU2012]

...what I’m SAYING, of course, is that if Mullen DOESN’T somehow come through now after all, doesn’t make huge, timely and needed changes NOW, he will fail here—and it will be AT LEAST another TEN YEARS finding a suitable alternative “Promising New Coach” who MIGHT get us “there”...and that’s the “BEST case scenario”.

 

[Escambia94]

We have all watched a lot of Gator football. We all know that football coaches are stubborn, and they pay the price for stubbornness by getting fired and changing jobs a lot. The only things that Mullen is missing given the template he is following is a co-OC like Brian Johnson, a co-DC situation like we had with Charlie Strong and Greg Mattison, and another rock star recruiter.

 

[DRU2012]

We have all watched a lot of Gator football. We all know that football coaches are stubborn, and they pay the price for stubbornness by getting fired and changing jobs a lot. The only things that Mullen is missing given the template he is following is a co-OC like Brian Johnson, a co-DC situation like we had with Charlie Strong and Greg Mattison, and another rock star recruiter.

All THREE of us (only slightly sardonic chuckle inserted here) agree, are in LOCKSTEP in that summation of “what Mullen needs NOW” in order to retrieve the situation, in all likelihood then be able to get us back on track pretty well along the same place and path he had us on before, able to pursue “similar lofty goals” using that “same template”!
Leakfan12 even includes the exact same individuals’ names in outlining pretty well the same prescription in a post he added here last night!
The more I have looked into and considered it (only spurred onward MORE intently (and INTENSELY) by BOTH your subsequent comments), the more I have come to thoroughly accept and agree.
It gives me hope, arms us with positive hopes and actual plans that can be made and implemented NOW—“NOW” being a period that has already begun and only requires the immediate and determined actions of our Coach to implement these very moves, the hiring of certain men (these seem the BEST of those available, but if there are better, or at least equal alternatives, FINE—as long as the same standards and intentions are applied) and the subsequent logically intended plans and aims pursued. The main caveat, in the face of the dominant obvious obstacle, is that damned “stubbornness”!
Will our Coach be able to put these evident and obvious advantages embodied in the above “suggestions” AHEAD of that “natural hard-headedness”??! All depends upon it. Is there ANYTHING ANYONE can do to encourage, ENSURE its implementation and eventual success?
Stranger things have happened. Less likely, MUCH more “LONG SHOT odds-shaped” possibilities fulfilled at more precariously poised points in The PAST, so I remain hopeful NOW, despite everything.

 

[DRU2012]

But the more ALL OF US, here at GE and elsewhere (if you bother just skimming over the “latest takes” by the better Gator beat writers like Nick de is Torre, Dave Waters et al) consider and comment on it, the clearer a consensus begins to emerge:
We are no longer “on the rise”.
By all the signs, and For a variety of REASONS, we are sooner and sooner coming to our “limit” each season now, our “potential” more and more clearly circumscribed, and a larger and larger remaining portion of our season left to flounder hopelessly.
How did it come to all this so quickly? So THOROUGHLY?
“Hope” has turned “frustration and disappointment” in a seeming sudden slide!
What are we to DO about it??!
Sorry. Y’all must be as sick of reading and ROLLING in all this whining self-pity as I am of having little else to OFFER.
OK ok...The only “solution” is for me to STOP, I guess.
SO: For now, I will only “speak when spoken to...”
That’s right; I will hereby stop, unless/until someone ELSE writes something for me to ANSWER, respond to.
Deal?

 

[Leakfan12]

Coach O is gone after the season

 

[DRU2012]

Coach O is gone after the season

Yeah, read/heard about that.
The thing that struck me UPON hearing it was, “I thought that might be forthcoming the week after we BEAT them (“probably badly”?)—NOT after we LOSE to them after making their running game look like the 2nd coming of Notre Dame & Knute Rockny’s “Four Horsemen”!”
I mean, as I commented DURING THE GAME: “Orgeron is out-coaching MULLEN!”
And he did: With all those injuries, and with all the static he and his team had to endure in the lead up, he had them READY, armed with a viable game plan, and they came to PLAY (in front of a half-empty house that was at best “limp in support” in the early going).
He and they, Coach and team managed to get ALL OF THAT turned around.
I saw an LSU team that hunkered down and EXECUTED, facing a Florida squad that more and more showed confusion and potential division.
In the aftermath, signs are that (on the defensive side of the ball for us at LEAST) it is OUR team where the coach(es) has lost the players.
No matter what, I don’t know, and frankly don’t much CARE what LSU will do, who or HOW they will move on sans Orgeron.
I DO wonder what, when and/or HOW FLORIDA and Coach MULLEN move forward from HERE.

 

[Escambia94]

@DRU2012 @Leakfan12 I will paste my response from another thread here:
Make no mistake: Ed Orgeron was not dismissed over football issues--he was dismissed over both NCAA Title IX and FBI investigations. All that talk about "a new direction" is just a cover-up. LSU's Title IX issues and inappropriate recruiting practices did not end with Les Miles, and it was not confined to the football program. The LSU baseball coach resigned at the end of last season, as did the women's basketball coach (arguably for different reasons, but possibly with issues that prevent her from coaching in college for some period). LSU already fired a couple lesser known coaches, including their OL coach. Other coaches were asked to resign, including a couple head coaches for the swim team (HC and AHC). I would be surprised if the gymnastics coach does not resign, but that coach might actually be the only clean coach they have.

Break, break: Do not take it for granted that Florida has a clean program with only few behavioral problems. Knock on wood, the Gators have seen arrests, suspensions, and expulsions decrease by about 90% under Mullen. Sure, that is not the same as winning national championships with thugs and would-be murderers, but I happy for now not having to see the Gators in jail and coaches under NCAA or FBI investigations.

 

[DRU2012]

@DRU2012 @Leakfan12 I will paste my response from another thread here:
Make no mistake: Ed Orgeron was not dismissed over football issues--he was dismissed over both NCAA Title IX and FBI investigations. All that talk about "a new direction" is just a cover-up. LSU's Title IX issues and inappropriate recruiting practices did not end with Les Miles, and it was not confined to the football program. The LSU baseball coach resigned at the end of last season, as did the women's basketball coach (arguably for different reasons, but possibly with issues that prevent her from coaching in college for some period). LSU already fired a couple lesser known coaches, including their OL coach. Other coaches were asked to resign, including a couple head coaches for the swim team (HC and AHC). I would be surprised if the gymnastics coach does not resign, but that coach might actually be the only clean coach they have.

Break, break: Do not take it for granted that Florida has a clean program with only few behavioral problems. Knock on wood, the Gators have seen arrests, suspensions, and expulsions decrease by about 90% under Mullen. Sure, that is not the same as winning national championships with thugs and would-be murderers, but I happy for now not having to see the Gators in jail and coaches under NCAA or FBI investigations.

I REPEAT: As I have previously commented at length on the thread “One Month of Football”,
WE MUST NOT LOSE AR15!!!
That is the one last disaster MULLEN MUST NOT PRESIDE OVER here this season.
The rest of this one should otherwise be concerned with doing whatever helps to turn this thing around and begin preparing team and PROGRAM for NEXT year: It’s no great insight that “the future is NOW”, so to speak.
Our only hope now is that, no matter WHAT, win or lose the actual games remaining on our schedule, we can now focus on and prepare for, begin building TOWARDS the 2022 Season!
The one, the only remaining DISASTER THAT MUST BE AVOIDED would be if we were to LOSE AR15!
Period.
But Mullen KNOWS that.
DOESN’T HE?!!
And will avoid that.
WON’T HE?!!
After everything else that has happened so far, so fast to start (and in effect so early END) this season, it is scarifyingly difficult to dismiss ANYTHING in the way of the “UNEXPECTED” ahead.
The weirder, the more avoidable, the more it worries me at this point.
Come to think of it, it has been “ONE BUMMER YEAR”—ever since the kid threw that shoe in LAST season’s LSU game it has seemed mainly ONE LONG SLIDE THROUGH DARKNESS.
About time we picked ourselves up, shook it all off and pulled ourselves together:
Again, we must now begin the long uphill climb towards NEXT Season’s Goals.
Nothing is really that simple or clear, but you get the idea...
We have work to do, changes to make and a new plan and determined team attitude to forge. This is where it is the COACH’S job and responsibility to organize and MANAGE that change. We THOUGHT we had just the man for that job.
Well, now more than ever, we’re about to find out if that is indeed the case.