After 21 wins in Dan Mullen’s first two years, UF’s next goal: a national championship
Dan Mullen launched oranges from the podium at the center of Hard Rock Stadium with his players standing behind him.
There was reason to celebrate.
Minutes earlier, the Florida Gators had just defeated the Virginia Cavaliers 36-28 in the Orange Bowl, capping another successful season.
An 11-2 record. Twenty-one wins in Mullen’s first two seasons.
A second consecutive New Year’s Six bowl victory.
A chance for a top-five finish in the polls depending on how the final bowl games play out.
If all works out, the Gators plan to be back in Miami Gardens to close out the 2020 season.
But not for a repeat appearance in the Orange Bowl.
Hard Rock Stadium is the site of the next season’s College Football Playoff national championship game, hosting the game Jan. 11, 2021. It’s also where Florida last won a national championship, doing so after the 2008 season. Mullen was the Gators’ offensive coordinator.
Mullen’s decree is simple: After two years of improvement, 2020 is Florida’s year.
He turned a 4-7 team he inherited into a 10-3 squad with a Peach Bowl victory in 2018. That group went a step further, a win further, in 2019, winning 11 games for the first since 2012.
“We’ve got to work harder next year than we did this year and try to get from 11 to 12,” Mullen said. “Once you get to 12, you might get a couple extra ones in there.”
Improving on that won’t be easy.
Even after quickly getting his team back to relevance, Mullen’s Gators are still hovering just outside of the sport’s top tier — lagging slightly behind the LSUs, the Clemsons, the Ohio States, the Georgias and, even with a down 2019, the Alabamas of the college football world.
“Yeah, we haven’t got to where we need to be yet to compete, to go win an SEC and a National Championship,” Mullen said, “but they’re certainly living up to that Gator standard of being one of the best teams and best programs in the country.”
That mind set started in earnest with the first team meeting after Mullen was hired in late November 2017 after the Jim McElwain era fizzled in three years.
Mullen’s message: I’m going to earn your trust, you’re going to earn mine and we’re going to build this program back to a respectable level together.
The team came first.
Wins came as a result.
“If you’re going to get to games like this and you’re going to get on big stages and have successful seasons,” Mullen said, “you have a selfless team.”
Look at this year’s team. The Gators had a top-10 defense without a single player posting double-digit sacks, five interceptions or 100 tackles.
They had a quarterback in Kyle Trask who hadn’t started a game since his freshman year of high school lead a fourth-quarter rally against Kentucky after Feleipe Franks suffered a season-ending injury and go 8-2 down the stretch. Trask, a redshirt junior, finished the season with 2,941 passing yards, 25 touchdowns and seven interceptions while completing 66.95 percent of his passes.
Trask had success despite the Gators not having a single player have more than 54 catches or 657 receiving yards. They did, however, have eight with at least 20 catches and more than 250 yards.
“Just knowing how much the program has been through the last two, three years, and just with coaching changes, adversity, being 4-7, to now we’ve got a lot of guys that understand the program coming in, just knowing what coach Mullen expects,” Perine said. “Having two 10-win seasons back to back, that’s a big statement. More to come.”
There will be turnover. UF is losing its top running back from the last three years, its four senior receivers, its top two linebackers, at least one (possibly both) of its starting cornerbacks and its punter.
But the team has established what it takes to win. That culture will carry on.
“January 6th we have a team meeting ,” Mullen said, “and that 2020 team will be born.”
The quest for a national championship will begin.
This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 12:55 PM.
.JPG)