With National Signing Day coming, Dan Mullen is building and betting on defense

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Wednesday (February 5) is National Signing Day.

This used to be a holiday for college football fans, but with the early signing day in December, a lot of the drama has been taken out of the February date. Much of that is because the players who make a big difference – both in terms of rankings points and on the field – are guys who are ranked in the top-100.

According to 247Sports, there are only four of those players left who are not currently verbally committed and only five others who are verbally committed but unsigned. Thus, if you’re going to improve your class ranking at this point, it will require either getting one of those four who haven’t committed yet or flipping one of the five who is unsigned.

Certainly there are still things to pay attention to and trends to examine, but for the most part, teams have their 2020 classes put together. That means we can start to take a look at where the teams stand and what it means for the big picture.

What to watch for Wednesday

Florida currently ranks eighth in the 247Sports composite rankings with 272.62 points and 24 commits.

That is substantially ahead of the teams ranked 9th and 10th (Oklahoma, 259.64 points and Michigan, 257.74 points). The Gators aren’t getting caught by either one of those teams unless something really weird happens.

But the Gators are just slightly behind Auburn (274.22 points, 25 commits) and Texas A&M (283.20 points, 24 commits). If things go right for the Gators, they could jump both teams to end up sixth nationally just behind Ohio State.

I mentioned in the opening that top-100 players are the guys who move the needle on the rankings, and Florida is in the running for more than most on Wednesday.

Dan Mullen’s first task is making sure that he takes care of business with the recruits he has already gotten verbal commitments from. Most important among those is wide receiver Xzavier Henderson, the 66th ranked player in the country. Because Henderson is the brother of former Gator C.J. Henderson, you would expect his commitment to be rock solid at this point.

Florida is also in the running for safety Avantae Williams, the 44th ranked player nationally. 247Sports has him listed as 100 percent committing to Florida so the Gators have a real opportunity to move up here. Adding just Williams would take the Gators to 279.84 points, pushing the Gators in front of Auburn.

But those aren’t the only players Florida fans should be watching. A pair of players committed to schools in Georgia may make things interesting as well.

The first is running back Jahmyr Gibbs, a Georgia Tech commit and the 75th ranked player nationally. Gibbs likely stays with Georgia Tech and took his last official visit there on January 31, but he did officially visit Florida the week before.

The second is center Sedrick Van Pran, a Georgia commit and the 59th player nationally. Again, Van Pran likely sticks with the Bulldogs, but he took his official visit to Florida this past weekend on the heels of his official to Georgia on January 24.

The addition of Gibbs or Van Pran would put the Gators up over 285 points, barely edging out Texas A&M. The addition of both wouldn’t catch Ohio State, but would move the Gators to the bottom end of a new recruiting tier.

Regardless, there’s no denying that recruiting is picking up in year three under Dan Mullen. The additions of Williams, Gibbs or Van Pran would just be icing on the cake.

Mullen Year Three Recruiting

There’s no doubt Dan Mullen’s recruiting has picked up in year three.

Not only did he get his first 5-star commit in defensive tackle Gervon Dexter, but he’s also tracking on some numbers that compare favorable to former Florida coaches Ron Zook and Urban Meyer on the recruiting trail.

You can see this when you look at blue chip recruits – players with 4 and 5-star rankings – compared to other Florida coaches.

Mullen’s blue-chip ratio (number of blue chip players divided by total commits) is at 71 percent. That is ahead of all Florida coaches’ third year except for Will Muschamp’s 2012 class, and with a little bit of luck on signing day, Mullen should be able to catch him.

One thing to note when making this comparison though is that the star rating system going back into the Meyer and Zook eras wasn’t quite as forgiving. Nowadays, it is common for a player ranked in the 350s to be considered a 4-star, whereas back in 2004 that player would have been a 3-star. Thus, it is probably more accurate to look at how players ranked nationally to compare.

Again, Mullen doesn’t compare unfavorably here. In fact, he is pretty much right behind Zook and Meyer (two really good recruiters), tied with Muschamp significantly ahead of McElwain. I say this even though Mac ended up at 45 percent top-300 players for two reasons: first, McElwain only signed one top-100 player (the guys who are real difference makers) compared to Mullen’s four (as of yet) and second, Mullen still has a shot to boost that percentage with a strong finish.

Mullen did not compare favorably to Zook or Meyer in year two at all, even with his ninth place finish nationally. In fact, it was a stretch to compare him to Muschamp last season. The consolation was that he was better than McElwain, and significantly so.

This 2020 class is a continuation of that trend over McElwain, but he’s starting to catch up and surpass Muschamp on the trail as well.

Defensive Focus

A couple of seasons ago, I looked at what kind of recruiting made the biggest difference.

The conclusion was pretty striking. Elite recruiting seems to matter much more on defense than offense, and elite recruiting is even more important on the defensive line. This was exemplified by the majority of elite defenses belonging to teams that recruit at elite levels.

That trend has continued. If we look at the top-5 defenses in yards per play allowed in college football over the last five seasons, it’s a who’s who list of the elite recruiters in the sport with just a few outliers. Every single team is from a Power-5 conference and 72 percent (18 of 25) are what I would consider traditional powers (Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, etc.).

It didn’t used to be that way on offense though. In 2016, the top-5 offenses in terms of yards per play were Oklahoma, Western Kentucky, Louisiana Tech, South Florida and Toledo. During the 2017 season, the top-5 offenses were Oklahoma, UCF, Memphis, Oklahoma State and Louisville. Oklahoma is a high-level program, but those lists aren’t exactly the blue-bloods of college football recruiting.

But that trend has shifted the last two seasons. In 2018, the top-5 offenses were Oklahoma, Alabama, Clemson, Ohio and Georgia. In 2019 the top-5 offenses were Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma, Clemson and Washington State, with Ohio State taking sixth.

So why do I mention this? Well, Dan Mullen has clearly put an emphasis on defensive recruiting recently.

In the 2019 class, he signed eight blue chips on offense and nine on defense, which seems pretty balanced. But his top-4 recruits – and only top-100 recruits – were all on the defensive side of the ball, with two corners (Chris Steele and Kaiir Elam), a defensive end (Khris Bogle) and a linebacker (Tyron Hopper).

In the 2020 class, that trend has continued. Currently, Mullen has 17 blue chip recruits and 11 of them are on the defensive side of the ball. The class is again top-heavy towards the defensive side of the ball as three of the four top-100 players are on that side of the ball (Dexter, Wingo and Jahari Rogers).

Two years ago I would have said this was brilliant. Focus your energy on having a monster defense and trust that you can get the most out of lesser talent on offense. That still may be the right play for Mullen given his skill.

That’s going to have to be the case for Florida, because if we look at the 2017 Gators team, the average national recruiting ranking for its offense was 558, with a 247Sports ranking of 89.66. Making a few assumptions regarding who will be starting for the Gators in 2020, you get an average national recruiting ranking of 581 with a 247Sports ranking of 89.87.

We know what Mullen was able to do with that offense in 2017, but to pretend like this Gators offense doesn’t have some holes is unwise.

However, the defense has an opportunity to be a monster in 2020, especially when you compare them to the 2017 team. That year, the Gators defense had an average national recruiting ranking of 303 and an average 247Sports ranking of 91.16. In 2020 – again, making a few assumptions about who will be starting – the defense will have an average national ranking of 173 and a 247Sports ranking of 93.84.

That’s a significant talent upgrade.

The 2017 defense had six top-300 players, including two top-100 players on the unit. Mullen’s 2020 unit could have nine top-300 players with four of them top-100.

Additionally, if the defensive line consists of Brenton Cox, Tedarrell Slaton, Zachary Carter and Mohamoud Diabate, Florida’s front-four will have an average national recruiting ranking of 82.8.

Go back and look at the article I cited earlier. Florida’s defensive line slipped from an average national ranking of 130 in 2015 to 348 in 2016 to 450 in 2017. The Gators were able to weather the losses up-front because their defensive backs (Teez Tabor and Quincy Wilson) were so good in 2016. But when those guys left, Marco Wilson and C.J. Henderson had to play a major role, and the defense slipped considerably in 2017.

Mullen now has the Gators talent level up-front back up to where it was in 2015 while he’s still far from having elite talent all over the place on offense. It remains to be seen whether he’s good enough at developing his offensive talent to take advantage.

Takeaway

I’ve been critical of Dan Mullen’s recruiting.

The second, or bump, class in the SEC is critical to building a program and Mullen’s fell short of what is historically necessary to win the conference. But what I couldn’t have predicted was that he was going to fill his roster with 5-star talent through transfers to supplement that class.

Time will tell whether he’s able to take advantage of those transfers, but he’s starting to make significant progress on the recruiting trail here in year three.

Let me be clear. While the Gators rank eighth overall nationally, they only rank sixth in the SEC. Yes, Florida might jump Auburn and Texas A&M with a strong finish, but even with that it would still mean Florida has an average conference recruiting ranking of 4.3.

This stuff matters, as the SEC team with the fourth best recruiting in conference won 65 percent of its games from 2015-2018. Getting that to third ups the winning percentage to 71 percent and second to 80 percent. Likely LSU’s fantastic 2019 season has flattened the top a little bit (they have been third in the SEC recently), but that required a transcendent performance from QB Joe Burrow.

But Florida has also won 81 percent of its games with Mullen in charge despite being in that 4-6 range in overall conference talent, a testament to Mullen’s coaching acumen.

I recently compared Mullen’s first two seasons to McElwain’s, and I think there’s way more reason for optimism now than there was then just based on the numbers. But one thing did jump out at me that should concern Gators fans.

A big part of McElwain’s successful first two seasons was that he went 7-1 in one-score games. When that success regressed to the mean (2-2 under McElwain in 2017), the bottom fell out.

Mullen has gone 6-1 in close games during his tenure. A lot of that is due to his abilities as a coach, but those things tend to level out over time. Were he 4-3 or 3-4 in those games – as we would expect – would we feel as rosy going into 2020?

But it’s difficult to ignore that the talent level in Gainesville is improving significantly. The point totals for McElwain’s recruiting classes were 227.5, 261.0 and 251.2. Mullen’s three classes have point totals of 259.6, 276.9 and 272.6 (thus far).

And that doesn’t include the effect of all of the transfers, which we just don’t have much data to help us understand how impactful those players can be. We’ve seen the effect of Van Jefferson, Trevon Grimes, Adam Shuler and Jonathan Greenard but I suspect that Florida has been somewhat fortunate to identify players who could fill holes, stay healthy and play at a high level.

But now the Gators have guys who were rated out of high school as first round NFL Draft picks in Brenton Cox, Lorenzo Lingard and Justin Shorter. If those guys play like first round picks, Florida is going to be even better than its recruiting rankings indicate.

Is the gap closing with Georgia? Absolutely, especially with the departure of Jake Fromm and nearly all of the Bulldog offense.

But if he’s able to do it, this is an unconventional way to build an SEC Championship or National Championship contender. That’s because it’s not how Nick Saban or Urban Meyer built their champions.

The biggest black mark on Saban’s resume is that when he went to the Dolphins and no longer had better players than everyone else, he wasn’t able to be successful. Mullen gets an opportunity to show he can be successful with less talent directly against Saban and Saban’s disciple, Kirby Smart.

If Mullen can pull it off, he will have proven who the best coach in the SEC really is.

Featured image used under Creative Commons license courtesy Photo-Gator