Dan Mullen’s creativity should improve Gators offense significantly in 2018

Florida head coach Dan Mullen appears to have secured the man to run his offense in QB commit Emory Jones. But Jones isn’t going to be able to improve an offense that has been horrific for the past three years all by himself.

Going into 2017, there was hope that the offense – led by Antonio Callaway and Jordan Scarlett – would be much improved. But Scarlett and Callaway got suspended, Tyrie Cleveland and Kadarius Toney got hurt, and what was left behind were a bunch of question marks for 2018.

Mullen has a reputation as someone who can improve offenses, and rightly so. The offenses he led at Mississippi State improved immediately upon his arrival and averaged over 30 points per game his final four seasons in Starkville.

But one truth about his time at Mississippi State is that Mullen didn’t have elite recruits all over the field. In fact, the last time he had that kind of talent on the field was 2008, when he was the offensive coordinator of Urban Meyer’s second national championship team.

So perhaps there is nowhere better to look for clues to what Mullen’s offense next year could look like than to look back at 2008. And perhaps there is no better place to understand where Mullen can be a differentiator than looking at what happened after he left in 2009.

2008 vs. 2009 statistical comparison

The Gators were an elite offense by any measure, both in 2008 and 2009. With Tim Tebow at QB, both teams were led by perhaps the best college football player ever.

Percy Harvin was on the 2008 team, and his loss was certainly significant. But the 2009 team had burners Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps, along with Riley Cooper and Aaron Hernandez taking on an expanded role.

The Gators had recruited at an elite level, bringing in a staggering 69 blue chip (4 or 5-star according to Rivals) recruits from 2005-2009. The 2008 team was loaded, but so was the 2009 team.

This shows up in the statistics, as Florida was a remarkably similar offense in 2009 to the one that dominated in 2008 against FBS opponents.

Comparison of the 2008 and 2009 Florida Gators offenses. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Yards per play, yards per rush, yards per pass and 3rd down percentage are all virtually identical. Florida did struggle to maintain its prolific scoring from 2008, putting up almost eight less points per contest. This is surely related to success in the red zone, as Florida came in almost 16 percentage points lower in 2009.

This really showed up against the better opponents.

Splits for the 2008 and 2009 Florida Gators football teams – Total, vs. FPI Top-25 and vs. non-FPI Top-25 teams. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Florida dominated everyone in 2008, save for the one-point loss to Ole Miss. The offense performed at an elite level against everyone, averaging 43.6 points. But the split between when the Gators were playing excellent competition – defined as ranking in the Top-25 of the ESPN football power index (FPI) at the end of the season – and the rest of its opponents was 9.3 points.

Compare that to 2009, where the splits between how the Gators offense performed against excellent competition and the rest of its opponents was 14.9 points. The 2009 Gators offense made its living beating inferior opponents and struggled (relative to 2008) when facing better competition.

This was especially true away from The Swamp, where the 2008 Gators beat opponents in road or neutral site games by an average of 24.7 points. Compare that to 2009 where the Gators outscored opponents in road and neutral site games by 13.7 points. That number is skewed some by the loss in the SEC Championship Game to Alabama, but that one game doesn’t come close to closing the 11-point gap.

That’s a significant drop-off in play against quality opponents and play on the road, two hallmarks of elite units. It’s also evidence that the 2009 Gators were forced to mask the loss of key personnel by relying even more on Tebow. It almost worked until the Gators ran into the Saban buzz-saw in Atlanta.

What happened?

The obvious question then is why was there the drop off?

The first thing to look at is any exodus in talent to the NFL. The big loss for the Gators was wide receiver Percy Harvin. If Tebow was the engine that made the Gators offense go, then Harvin was the transmission that pushed the car into overdrive.

Beyond Harvin, the Gators also lost wide receiver Louis Murphy, left tackle Phil Trautwein and right tackle Jason Watkins.

These losses would be a reasonable excuse if not for the talent stepping in. While Harvin was the second-ranked player in his recruiting class – and no doubt a special player – he was replaced by fellow 5-star (ranked 24th nationally) receiver Deonte Thompson. Murphy was replaced by 4-star receiver David Nelson. Trautwein was replaced by 5-star tackle Carl Johnson. Watkins was replaced by 4-star Marcus Gilbert.

None of those players were true freshman. Thompson was a sophomore while Nelson, Johnson and Gilbert were all seniors (and all played in the NFL). The talent that stepped in was supposedly every bit as good as the talent that left.

And so that just leaves the offensive coordinator. Following the 2008 championship, Dan Mullen left to take over at Mississippi State. Steve Addazio took over, and received much of the ire from the Gators faithful in 2009 and especially in 2010 as the offense sputtered.

The interesting thing is that when you look at the tape, there is a definitive difference between the way the two coaches attacked opposing defenses. Some of that is due to the absence of Harvin, but I think some of it is something philosophical that Mullen believes and is something Gators fans should look for in 2018: get your speed outside.

Against LSU in 2008, Florida effectively and repeatedly targeted the Tigers on the outside. The attacks were relentless. There were some dive plays called, but it always seemed like they were being called to set up the Gators ability to get their playmakers to the outside.

The above play is just a handoff to Harvin that goes for a few yards. This seems insignificant, but in the 2009 version of the offense, this kind of action was used significantly less in favor of more straight ahead running plays. This is important because the threat of Harvin (or any playmaker) holds the defense for an extra beat.

Here is a variation of the simple action to Harvin shown above. Harvin comes in motion, Tebow fakes the ball to him and that allows both Tebow and running back Brandon James to get outside the defense. At that point, Tebow pitches the ball to James for a significant gain.

And yes, Harvin’s absence in 2009 made this significant more difficult. But remember that Harvin was gone for the SEC Championship game in 2008 against Alabama with an ankle injury. In that game, Florida was still able to get consistently outside an Alabama defense that was already elite (4.2 yards per play)

On this play Brandon James did get caught, but it required a horse collar tackle to stop, producing a 20-yard gain. This wasn’t an isolated incident in the game.

Down 20-17 in the fourth quarter – on perhaps the most important drive of the game – Mullen again focused on getting the ball outside to his playmakers. Demps has a wide open path to the end zone on this play because of the threat that Tebow is up the middle, but this play was designed for Demps from the start.

This only works because of all of the QB runs that are built into the offense in the first place. But the number of actions that Mullen has built into identical formations makes it really difficult for the defense to respond aggressively.

Compare that to Addazio’s offense in 2009. The Gators still did try to get the ball outside, but it was in a different way.

In 2008 under Mullen, the receiver typically faked across the formation. This left Tebow with the option of handing the ball off or running up the middle himself. But on this play the receiver who comes into the backfield doesn’t receive the fake. Instead the fake goes to the running back (Rainey) up the middle with Tebow going to the outside on the option. This works well here, but doesn’t quite have the same amount of deception as the alternative.

Additionally, anyone who watched Addazio’s offenses knew that he loved that dive play with the running back – and not Tebow – going up the middle. I can’t express how prevelant a part of the offense this became in 2009 with a GIF. It requires video of the entire first drive against LSU.

I count 7 dives in 12 plays, with Tebow keeping only 1. There are two issues with this. First, Tebow is your best player and by focusing on the dive play, you take the ball out of his hands. Second, it completely abandons the key tenant of the offense, which is getting your playmakers the ball in space.

This concept is also important for more than just the threat of the outside running game. Remember the significant drop in red zone efficiency that I showed above? As much as I remembered Florida being a power running team with Tebow in the backfield, that wasn’t the only trick that Mullen employed in the red zone.

This is a play from the 2008 SEC Championship Game, but I saw the exact same formation against LSU that year as well. Mullen splits out 5 wide receivers with Tebow in the shotgun.

The defense has an impossible choice. Give Florida a numbers advantage with Tebow running up the middle, or give Florida 1-on-1 coverage on the outside. Note how Alabama rushes five defenders and has a safety essentially spying Tebow. If that safety were to shade in pass coverage, Tebow runs the ball up the middle. Since he stays in the middle of the field, Tebow finds Riley Cooper for the touchdown.

This formation doesn’t require Harvin to be in the game at all. There’s 1-on-1 all over the field and the QB just has to pick the matchup he likes the best. Yet, I didn’t see (admittedly I wasn’t able to watch every snap) this formation utilized by Addazio in the red zone at all in 2009.

Takeaway

It’s going to be fun to see what Dan Mullen can do at Florida now that he has elite athletes again. His introductory press conference indicates that he still believes that his job – and the job of a spread offense – is to get the ball to playmakers in space.

In 2008, that meant getting the ball outside in the running game a lot. It meant using the threat of receivers running sweeps to get Tebow out wide on the other side with Jeff Demps or Chris Rainey. It meant going 5-wide in situations where most coaches decide to run smashmouth sets.

This doesn’t mean that Florida is going to be ultra effective in the red zone in 2018, or even that its numbers in the red zone are all that important. I’ve written previously about how explosive plays correlate to scoring much more than red zone efficiency.

But what it does indicate is that Mullen has a creativity that his successor in 2009 did not possess. The offense had similar skill level, still had a generational player at the helm yet scored 11 points per game less against excellent competition. That comes down to the coaching, and as much as many of the spread concepts come from Urban Meyer, Dan Mullen was the one calling the plays.

And creativity is something that has been sorely missing in Gainesville the past three seasons. There has been limited misdirection, limited utilization of the QB run and limited use of playmakers in space. Dre Massey scored on a jet sweep against Texas A&M and the play was never seen again. Every time Kadarius Toney was in the wildcat he ran the ball, even though he was a QB in high school.

2018 is likely going to see Toney or Massey playing the Harvin role, a stable of running backs (Lemons, Perine, Davis, Pierce) playing the role of Demps and Rainey and Jones playing the role of Tebow. It’s unlikely that any of them are going to be able to come close to approaching the level of play that those players exhibited in 2008 and it’s unfair to expect them to do so.

But man, I can’t wait for the spring game to see what kind of creativity Mullen has up his sleeve.

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