Paul Finebaum: Dan Mullen firing Todd Grantham farce backfired
SEC college football analyst Paul Finebaum expressed his discontent with Dan Mullen, his decision to fire Todd Grantham and the Gators’ performance this weekend.
Mullen’s Gators let Samford break all sorts of records on Saturday, including the highest-ever point total for an FCS team against a Power Five opponent. The Bulldogs even held a 42-35 halftime lead, the most points Florida has ever allowed in a single half.
“(Tim Tebow) was telling me Saturday morning what a difficult decision it was for him to fire two close, personal friends, good, I buy that, but not for more than 10 seconds,” Paul Finebaum said on the ESPN college football podcast. “Matt, he fired Todd Grantham expecting his replacement to pitch a shutout against Samford. Instead, it was clueless.
“Jacksonville State beat Florida State earlier this season, Samford is not a good football team,” Finebaum continued. “There’s no getting around it. I just don’t know the answer right now. These next two weeks will tell the story. I don’t care whether Dan Mullen wins both games by 100 points, he’s coming in to next season with the hottest seat in America, if he’s alive to do that.”
The Gators travel to play Missouri next Saturday. The Tigers are also on the verge of bowl eligibility. After that, Florida plays Florida State in the annual rivalry game.
Dan Mullen evaluates Florida’s defense after coaching changes
On Saturday, Mullen’s Florida Gators ended up winning, improving their record to 5-5 after executing a come-from-behind, 70-52 victory over Samford, but the win only told half the story.
In recent weeks, while the firings transpired, Florida lost a couple commits and had recruits tweeting at one another not to consider Mullen’s program. And after all that, Mullen followed it up by losing the first half of the game to Samford, only to double down on the questionable coaching in both his postgame press conference and in his team’s celebration of a lousy victory.
All the while, Mullen’s defense may have looked worse than it did under Grantham.
“I think some of the simple things, you know? We’ve got to get away from some of these simple penalties,” Mullen said of his defense’s struggles. “I’m on, listening to the defense. We practice this stuff over and over. [Then,] jump offsides. That’s a discipline thing. That’s a simple discipline thing. You can’t jump offsides. The substitution, I’m on, I’m listening to us call the substitution … and those are things we have got to be better at.”
Not only did Dan Mullen and his defense allow 530 yards of total offense to a mediocre FCS team, but as he noted, Florida also committed a season-high 12 penalties. The penalties costed the Gators a total of 94 yards, and while they pulled off the win Saturday, the future in Gainesville looks bleak, at best.