Kirk Herbstreit: Florida is quitting on each other, Dan Mullen

Florida’s 2021 football season is one that many people want to soon forget about. In a year that’s included underachieving performances and plenty of off-the-field issues surrounding head coach Dan Mullen, the Gators haven’t been the program they’ve always been.

On Saturday morning’s College GameDay show, Kirk Herbstreit had plenty to say about Florida – breaking down what’s went wrong and what Mullen needs to do to get his Gators back on track.

“I think there needs to be a different approach,” Herbstreit said. “The reality of 2021 is when you have a team that is capable of winning a championship or maybe making a playoff — This team was 3-1 and ranked tenth in the nation and then things got sideways with the loss to Kentucky.”

Florida was in fact 3-1 with wins over Florida Atlantic, South Florida, Tennessee and a narrow 31-29 loss to Alabama, but everything fell apart from there. After starting off the season with that record, the Gators have since gone just 1-4 – with the lone win coming against Vanderbilt.

In Florida’s latest outing last Saturday, the Gators suffered an embarrassing 40-17 loss at South Carolina.

“You’re seeing a team that’s quitting on each other,” Herbstreit said. “They’re quitting on their coach. That’s not just a couple adjustments and we’re back. There’s a spirit that’s missing in that locker room. That’s a problem.”

With the Gators’ on-the-field struggles this season, that has led to Mullen making midseason coaching changes as he fired defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and offensive line coach John Hevesy following the South Carolina loss.

Then, when you look at the off-the-field issues, Mullen has struggled to stay out of the spotlight and has instead been right in it. After making a controversial comment on recruiting, the coach then enforced a media blackout amid all the chaos he had caused. It’s been one thing after another for Mullen.

“In my opinion, you can lose a team because they can become more individually focused on whatever their aspirations are,” Herbstreit said. “I think you’ve got to reevaluate who you recruit and who you bring on that roster and not just tweak a couple things.”

Florida is back in action Saturday as it hosts Samford.

Dan Mullen makes odd comment on recruiting

In one of Dan Mullen’s weekly press conferences this season, the Florida head coach took it a step further, making a reference to recruiting that did 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 suggested that Florida isn’t recruiting much midseason, led to another strange moment that day: 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.”

Mullen later cleared the air about his comment in an interview with The Orlando Sentinel.

“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.”