Did Todd Grantham actually save the Gators?

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Todd Grantham is a curse word around many parts of Gainesville.

The former Florida defensive coordinator has been a lightning rod for more than year. He managed to take the third-and-Grantham moniker that he earned at Georgia and expand on it at Florida to include fourth down as well. He also managed to convert a team with a championship-level offense into an 8-4 squad that laid down in the Cotton Bowl against Oklahoma.

After he was let go in the middle of the 2021 season, reports came out about the toxic environment that he, offensive line coach John Hevesy and head coach Dan Mullen had presided over. Again, not a shock for a coach that Florida fans reviled after he taunted Florida kicker Chas Henry with a choking gesture way back in 2010.

But since I’m an eternal optimist, I wanted to take a look at the bright side of the Todd Grantham era. That’s especially true in the wake of Michigan announcing an extension for Jim Harbaugh this week. The Wolverines are now stuck in a no man’s land that Florida was about to be in with Mullen.

It is yet to be determined whether Billy Napier is a championship coach. Maybe he won’t be able to reach those heights at any point in his tenure. But if you were on the fence about Mullen sticking around, just pay attention to what happens at Michigan the next couple of years.

And if Napier does turn the ship around and starts winning SEC Championships, we need to place the credit where it is due, and that starts with Florida’s former defensive coordinator.

Games Grantham Cost Florida

Editor’s Note: Full season numbers for 2021 were used for this article, as these were units built by Mullen/Grantham even if they weren’t there to coach in every game.

To understand how bad Grantham was as Florida’s DC, we have to define what an “average” and “elite” defense would look like for a program like Florida.

To be fair, the Gators’ defensive performance under Grantham falls on Mullen as well, given that he is also responsible for the players they recruited and how they developed. But at the end of the day, it is Grantham’s responsibility to get them to play at a level Florida fans are accustomed to.

To set a baseline, we can look at previous Gators defenses. From 2010-2017, Florida’s defenses have allowed an average of 20.1 points per game. This year, that would have ranked 15th in the country and it would have ranked 19th two years ago. I think that makes sense for a program like Florida. An average defense is one that with a similarly competent offense will put you in the top 15-20 schools in the country.

But what about an elite defense? Well, in 2012, Will Muschamp’s defense surrendered 14.5 points per game. That would rank second this year, just in front of Clemson (15.8) and behind Georgia (10.4). Again, I think this makes sense for a program like Florida, where a top-3 defense is clearly possible.

So an average Florida defense should give up around 20.1 points per game while an elite squad should surrender 14.5. Todd Grantham’s defenses at Florida have surrendered an average of 23.1 points per game, meaning that Grantham was three full points below average. He didn’t just keep the Gators treading water. He actively cost Florida games.

We can use the Pythagorean expectation to calculate how much. Had Florida surrendered 20.1 points per game every year instead of the points Grantham has allowed, Florida is predicted to have won 38 games instead of the 35 the Gators actually won. Basically, the difference between an average defensive coordinator and Todd Grantham was three losses over Mullen’s entire tenure.

That difference becomes even more significant if we compare Grantham’s performance to an elite Gators defenses. Had Florida surrendered only 14.7 points per game every year instead of the points Grantham has allowed, Florida’s expected winning percentage increases to 84.4 percent (43.1 wins).

That means the Gators would have won 43 out of 51 total games, or an 8-game difference from what actually happened (35 wins).

This is what that looks like broken down year-by-year.

Florida’s projections from 2018-2021 with an elite defense. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Even with the poorer offensive performance in 2021, the Gators would still have been either 10-2 or 11-1 heading into the bowl game, a far cry from the 6-7 debacle we just witnessed. That actually tracks pretty well considering they had four one-score losses and the no-show against South Carolina.

Interestingly, the 2019 season was Grantham’s best, when his defense gave up 15.5 points per contest and the Gators won 11 games. That performance was close to what we’ve defined as “elite” up above, and perhaps not coincidently, that 11 win result is mirrored by the calculations.

The one that is really going to stick though is the 2020 chart above. This has the Gators winning somewhere between 10 and 11 times in 2020 had the defense played well. In a 10-game season plus the SEC Championship Game, that likely would have meant a playoff.

When fans expressed their ire that Grantham cost the Gators a National Championship because of the way his defense played in 2020, they weren’t completely wrong. He at least cost them a chance, which is why Mullen’s decision to retain him for 2021 was so perplexing.

Harbaugh vs. Mullen

So why am I going through the Grantham history? After all, with the Napier era underway, this is all ancient history, right? Well, I just think it is helpful to illustrate to Gators fans what might have been in an alternate universe.

Michigan had a very good season in 2021. But the Wolverines also looked completely non-competitive versus Georgia in the playoff, losing 34-11 in a game where that score doesn’t really even come close to reflecting the domination of the Bulldogs. This after Michigan went 2-4 the year prior and Harbaugh had to take a pay cut to stsy, as well as fire defensive coordinator Don Brown and hire Mike Macdonald.

This mirrors the Florida situation in a bunch of ways. Dan Mullen (supposedly) flirted with the NFL last offseason, likely caused by consternation in the fan base at his lack of recruiting prowess. Unlike Harbaugh however, Mullen decided to stick with Grantham instead of making a change at defensive coordinator. After two straight years of that decision being a disaster, both Grantham and Mullen were asked to leave.

On the Michigan side, Harbaugh just signed a 5-year, $36 million contract extension this week. The folks in Ann Arbor decided the extension was necessary after Harbaugh flirted with the NFL (he interviewed with the Vikings) after leading Michigan to the College Football Playoff. Mullen never led Florida to the playoff, but his tenure and Harbaugh’s tenure are remarkably similar.

Take recruiting, for example. If we use 247Sports roster rankings, Florida had an average roster ranking of 10.25 during Mullen’s four years. Since Harbaugh took over for Michigan in 2015, his average roster ranking has been 10.7.

Mullen participated in 15 one-score games (29.4%) and went 7-8. Harbaugh participated in 22 one-score games (25.9%) and went 11-11. Both of those numbers indicate that from a game management perspective, the coaches aren’t making a huge difference.

But if we look even deeper, what we see is that Mullen is a superior coach but that he struggles in similar situations to Harbaugh.

Records of Jim Harbaugh (2015-2021) and Dan Mullen (2018-2021) against top talent. (Will Miles/.Read and Reaction)

The first thing we see is that the SEC is undoubtedly a more talented conference, as Dan Mullen faced more teams in the top-10 and top-20 of the 247Sports talent rankings from 2018-2021 than Harbaugh did at Michigan from 2015-2021.

But the other thing we see is that even though Mullen and Harbaugh had virtually identical talent profiles, Mullen not only had more wins in each category, but he won a higher percentage of his games against those opponents.

But how can this be? I mean, Harbaugh just led Michigan to the playoff and got an extension and Mullen just got run out of town. Well, as these things so often do, it comes down to the conference that each team is playing in.

This chart shows the 247Sports average talent ranking for the Big Ten during Harbaugh’s tenure and the SEC during Mullen’s tenure plotted against winning percentage. To nobody’s surprise who follows this sort of stuff, the better recruiting teams perform the best, then there’s a second tier of teams that perform slightly worse, and then things get fairly random.

Note where Michigan’s place is in the Big Ten pecking order though. They are the second most talented team in the conference, whereas Florida is fourth (and will be fifth after A&M’s 2022 class gets factored in next year). That means the Gators have to take care of business against less talented teams and then beat two of LSU, Georgia and Alabama every year to make it into the playoff. Michigan only has to beat Ohio State and then take care of business.

That’s really the difference between the two programs. When Florida beat Georgia under Mullen, it was unable to beat LSU (thanks, Marco) and Alabama and so fell short. Michigan beat Ohio State this past season and Michigan made it into the playoffs, and Harbaugh got his extension.

Takeaway

It doesn’t take a genius to see where I’m headed with this. A better defense in 2020 and Florida probably makes the playoff. Any ability to stop an opponent at all – even once or twice a game – would have meant wins over Texas A&M and LSU, and even a loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game wouldn’t have prevented a ‘Bama/Florida rematch in the playoff.

But the underlying problem would have still remained.

Florida’s talent level is exactly the same as Michigan. And now with Harbaugh’s extension, we’re going to get a front row seat at what a continuation of the Dan Mullen era would have brought.

Ohio State spent last year reloading and Michigan caught them at the right time in Ann Arbor. Even still, the Wolverines lost a game to Michigan State they shouldn’t have and then were exposed by Georgia in the playoff. The idea that Harbaugh and his 7-14 record against teams with Top-20 talent is going to consistently get the job done against the Buckeyes is laughable.

That may be good enough at Michigan. After all, prior to Harbaugh’s arrival, the Wolverines had struggled through Brady Hoke (31-20) and Rich Rodriguez (15-22). Harbaugh (61-24) has brought some level of stability to the program.

But stability isn’t what Florida fans are looking for.

David Wunderlich wrote an article over at Gator Country detailing the timing of the Billy Napier hire and how after 2020 Napier might not have been ready to jump just yet and after 2022, Napier might not have been available because of the Virginia Tech opening. But there is one part of the timing that he left out.

Dan Mullen received a $12 million buyout when he was fired. But a large percentage of his assistants’ contracts were up at the end of the season. That meant that if Mullen had simply been above average and stayed, the school was going to have to commit to him and his staff long-term. Instead, when the bottom fell out in 2021, the only significant financial implication to the decision was Mullen’s buyout.

All of which brings me back to Grantham.

I have never thought he was a good defensive coordinator. When he was hired, I wrote the following:

“Anybody expecting to see a top-10 defense is going to be disappointed. Grantham’s never had one, and some of those defenses have had significantly more talent. Instead, most of the improvement of the Gators record in 2018 is going to have to come from the offensive side of the ball.”

That is exactly what Dan Mullen was able to achieve in 2018, 2019 (with some help from Grantham’s defense) and 2020. When the offense sputtered in 2021, he wasn’t able to keep things afloat.

But it does make me reflect a little bit. Harbaugh fired DC Don Brown after the Wolverines had a historically bad (34.5 ppg allowed, ranked 93rd) defense in the shortened 2020 season. That defense ranked 7th this season (17.4 ppg) under Macdonald. If Mullen had jettisoned Grantham after 2020, would he have seen the same improvement?

Had Mullen made that change – and had he gotten the selection right like Harbaugh did at Michigan – Florida would have been better in 2021. But Gators fans would also be staring at a bunch of 10-3 seasons with annual losses to Georgia and LSU on the horizon for the foreseeable future. We’re about to see exactly that play out in Ann Arbor.

Instead, Florida managed to get out of the trap of mediocrity because of Mullen’s stubborn refusal to jettison Grantham and the downward spiral it caused. Neither you nor I know whether Billy Napier is going to be able to get Florida to consistently compete with Alabama and Georgia. We have reasons to believe and hope he’ll be able to, but we can’t be sure.

But we absolutely knew that Dan Mullen wasn’t going to be able to do it consistently, and the Michigan narrative tells us exactly who we have to thank for having the hope we do today.

Jeffrey Todd Grantham.