Dan Mullen fires back, clears the air amid Florida media blackout

After Florida canceled its media availability for the remainder of the week following Monday’s awkward press conference with Dan Mullen, the highly scrutinized head coach on Tuesday shared his thoughts with The Orlando Sentinel to try and make sense of what’s going on in Gainesville.

“Our guys are completely focused,” Mullen told The Sentinel. “Our guys are playing hard, practicing their butt off; our guys want to compete and want to win and to be honest with you we need to win. Winning fixes a lot of problems. It doesn’t solve all of your problems, but it fixes some of them.”

The spotlight on Mullen brightened this week after the Gators – who were ranked No. 13 in the preseason AP Top 25 poll – suffered a 34-7 loss to top-ranked Georgia on Saturday. The loss was a second straight for Mullen’s squad and a third in the last four games. The Gators haven’t won back-to-back games since the first two weeks of the season.

While Mullen is just 2-7 in his past nine games against Power Five opponents, the coach told The Sentinel he doesn’t feel that he’s on the hot seat because he has the support of Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin, who also served as Mississippi State’s athletic director while Mullen was there from 2010-17.

“There’s tremendous support from him every day, ‘What can I do to help?'” Mullen said of Stricklin. “The administration is 100% on board with what we’re doing and looking to the future. I don’t feel any pressure from anyone in the building.”

Mullen, who is in his 13th season as a head coach in the SEC, signed a six-year, $36.6 million contract to become Florida’s head coach back in Nov. 2017. He in June received a three-year extension to that contract, which now pays him $7.6 million annually – making him the third-highest-paid coach in the nation.

Florida has four games left in the regular season: at South Carolina (Nov. 6), vs. Samford (Nov. 13), at Missouri (Nov. 20) and vs. Florida State (Nov. 27). You would expect the Gators to at least become bowl eligible and play somewhere this postseason, but it’s no secret that Mullen’s team will have to play much better.

Mullen makes odd comment on recruiting

In Dan Mullen’s weekly press conference Monday, the Florida head coach took it a step further, making a reference to recruiting that might not sit well with Gators fans.

“We’re in the season now,” Mullen said when asked about Florida’s recruiting process. “We’ll do recruiting after the season — when it gets to recruiting time we can talk about recruiting.”

According to Gators Territory beat writer Nick de la Torre, Mullen’s ill-advised comment, which suggests that Florida isn’t recruiting much mid-season, led to another strange moment on Monday: Florida ended its weekly press conference shortly thereafter.

“Dan Mullen’s press conference ends abruptly, no players made available. I was in line to ask a question, not called on,” de la Torre tweeted. “Not sure what’s going on at UF.”

On3’s Simon Gibbs contributed to this report.