Four things Florida needs to evaluate after blowout loss to South Carolina

When Florida coach Dan Mullen canceled all player and coordinator media availabilities this week, he claimed it was to make sure the players were focused heading into a road game against South Carolina.

If this is what the team looks like when it’s focused, the unfocused version would require an NSFW warning. The Gators were completely ineffective in a blowout loss at the hands of the South Carolina Gamecocks, falling 40-17 on the road in what is one of the worst losses for this program in recent memory.

Though the first quarter and change were a mostly back-and-forth affair, South Carolina looked like it was going to take a 13-point lead to the locker room before recovering a fumble and returning it for a score with less than a minute to play. The Gamecocks took a 30-10 lead to the locker room, and much like last week’s game against Georgia, the game was effectively out of hand just like that.

UF is now 4-5 on the year and sits at 1-5 in SEC play. A season that began with CFP aspirations is now completely on life support, and reaching a bowl game is far from a given for this team.

To take an adage from Florida coach Dan Mullen, it’s certainly time to evaluate some things. Here’s a few of them, starting with the head man himself.

The head coach position

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Firing a head coach is always a bit of a gamble. Things can almost always get worse, and doing so sets the team back a couple of years. But it may be time to start having those conversations when it comes to Mullen.

Whatever magic he may have once had in Gainesville is all but gone. The team is 2-8 in its last 10 Power Five games, and it looked like Mullen had lost the team on Saturday night. It didn’t execute at all, and it had no answer once South Carolina took control of the game. It simply folded.

That’s not what you want to see from a team coached by a self-proclaimed “competitor,” and it’s hard to see how Mullen brings this team back from the brink.

I didn’t think there was a very real possibility Mullen would be fired this year regardless of what happened just a few weeks ago. But I also didn’t see a game like this coming.

Mullen’s buyout is just $12 million (a lot of money for you and me, not so much for a wealthy athletic department with a strong base of boosters), and his six highest-paid assistants are coaching on expiring contracts. If Florida wants a clean break, now is the time to do so. Only time will tell if currently M.I.A. athletic director Scott Stricklin feels the same way, though.

How the defense could possibly get this bad

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Mullen has frequently pointed to the stat sheet after losses this season. And it makes sense why: Heading into this game, the Gators had outgained every opponent in 2021. But the coach’s favorite talking point isn’t applicable this time around.

South Carolina’s offense, one of the worst in the Power Five, was dominant. It outgained UF 459-340, and the Gamecocks ran for 284 yards with Kevin Harris and ZaQuandre White each going over 100 yards on the ground.

Facing an FCS transfer quarterback making his first start at USC in Jason Brown, UF allowed a very efficient day as the senior went 14 of 24 for 175 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. Receiver Josh Vann went over 100 yards on seven catches.

I’ve been watching Florida football fairly religiously since about 2006. In that span, I’ve never seen a Gators defense as helpless as this one is. Missed tackles are a fact of life, players are constantly out of position and it’s getting gashed by mediocre offense after mediocre offense.

The responsibility for that falls on defensive coordinator Todd Grantham, who is likely on his way out after the season, but it also falls on Mullen, whose decision to retain Grantham this year was controversial, to say the least. That gamble has not paid off, and it could cost Mullen dearly.

The play-calling

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Much of the credit Mullen has received as a coach is on the basis of his play-calling, and while he certainly knows a lot more about offense than I do, I think it’s fair to question if his acumen in that regard has been overstated.

Anthony Richardson was out with a concussion on Saturday, and Emory Jones returned to the starting spot. Aside from an interception at the sideline, Jones was fine. He was 17 of 30 with 258 yards and two touchdowns, but the Gators were atrociously conservative after hitting a few early big plays in the passing game, especially on third-down play calls (they were 3 of 10 in that regard).

The biggest head-scratcher, though, was the running back usage. The Gators had one of their worst rushing performances of the season, going for just 82 yards on 26 carries. Dameon Pierce, who has been Florida’s most reliable player in the ground game, led the team with 39 yards, but he saw just six carries.

Giving arguably your best offensive player six touches (seven if you count his one catch) is just inexcusable. It raises a lot of questions about this team’s offensive philosophy, and about Mullen’s decision-making as an offensive mind.

Florida has found offensive success this season, but the unit has sputtered at the worst possible times. Given that his reputation as an offensive mind is his main selling point as a coach, it seems reasonable to question the product on the field in Year 4 after the unit set records in Year 3.

This program's standards

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Anyone who tells you competing for a national title is a cut and dry process is either naive or lying. But there are certainly some indicators of progress to look for, and Florida ticks off none of those boxes right now.

When the Gators beat Georgia last year to all but clinch an SEC East title, they were on top of the world. Since that moment, this team is just 8-8. Last year’s team lost four games despite having the most productive quarterback in school history and two first-round pass-catchers, one of which is considered the greatest tight-end prospect of all time.

UF may not be recruiting at the level of Georgia and Alabama, and while that shouldn’t necessarily be acceptable, it’s workable. But not when the Gators lose games like this.

The calendar has turned all the way to November, and Florida has a losing record. That should never happen, especially in a year where it was considered Georgia’s only real competition in the division.

The Gators just lost by 23 points to a team whose only SEC win entering the game was a one-point victory over one of the worst teams in the entire Power Five in the Vanderbilt Commodores. There’s losing a road game to a scrappy Kentucky team, and then there’s whatever happened on Saturday night.

Ultimately, Florida needs to decide what its expectations are for the football program, because there seems to be a disconnect between what satisfies the fans and what satisfies the athletic department. I’m not sure how many more losses this team needs to take as heavy favorites before some pressure begins to be felt in Gainesville, but Stricklin should take this opportunity to see the writing on the wall.

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