Tag: Chris Rainey

Five years later, The Athletic looks back on Dan Mullen’s hiring as Florida coach

The Athletic has released its retrospective for the coaches hired in the 2017-2018 hiring cycle, with Florida’s Dan Mullen looking favorable

The Florida Gators dismissed [autotag]Jim McElwain[/autotag] during the 2017 football season after amassing a 22-12 record that included two SEC East division titles.

Afterward, the Gators hired [autotag]Dan Mullen[/autotag] to become the 27th coach in Florida history. Mullen left his position as Mississippi State head coach after eight seasons to return to the place he won two national championships as the Gators’ offensive coordinator.

At the time, the hire was a no-brainer. Mullen was the architect behind the high-scoring offense that brought the best out of guys like [autotag]Tim Tebow[/autotag], [autotag]Percy Harvin[/autotag], and [autotag]Chris Rainey[/autotag]. He also rose the floor at Mississippi State, peaking in 2014 when Mullen led the Bulldogs to a No. 1 ranking in the inaugural College Football Playoff rankings.

His Florida tenure started off with a bang, going 10-3 in his first season including a Peach Bowl victory over Michigan. He followed it up by improving upon that record, going 11-2 in his second year and capping it off with an Orange Bowl victory over Virginia.

His third season fell short of expectations. After two 10-plus win seasons that ended with New Year’s Six bowl game victories, Mullen’s Gators went 8-4, losing multiple close games, and the team visibly gave up towards the end of the season. Mullen’s press conferences were filled with refusals to admit there were issues with the team, along with repeated deflections about the lackluster direction recruiting was going into.

Ultimately, Mullen was let go in the middle of his fourth season in charge. Lots of things were factored into the decision, with recruiting the topic fans latched on to in the aftermath. The Athletic’s regrade has the hire as a B. What was considered to be an A by multiple outlets at the time has to be brought down a bit given how the tenure played out.

Billy Napier is currently in his first season as Florida’s head coach. He started off strong with a summer that saw the Gators enter the top 10 in multiple recruiting rankings, and rode that momentum to a season-opening upset of Utah.

Napier’s next task is facing an LSU team that also has a first-year head coach in Brian Kelly. The game will take place at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, FL. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. EDT. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.

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Florida-Georgia memories: 2008 Urban Meyer timeout game

Florida Gators were out for revenge against the Georgia Bulldogs in 2008 and got it in remarkable style thanks to Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow.

Rivalries are bitter by nature. Everyone wants to defeat their biggest foe, after all.

But rivalries in sports rarely carry outright disdain, at least from coaches and players. Sure, drunk fans may duke it out in the stands, but the teams themselves usually demonstrate mutual respect for each other.

That wasn’t the case in the 2008 Florida-Georgia game, though. For the Gators, that game meant one thing and one thing only: revenge.

For context, we have to go back to the prior year. After scoring a touchdown in the first quarter to break a 0-0 tie, the Bulldogs’ bench cleared to celebrate the score in the end zone, drawing an excessive celebration penalty. UGA went on to win the game 42-30.

The following year, Florida hadn’t forgotten. And coach Urban Meyer and the Gators showed no mercy.

In a battle of top-10 teams, UF beat the breaks off the Bulldogs and asserted itself as the top team in the SEC East, which it went on to win in addition to conference and national championships.

The Gators ran up the score in a 49-10 win, and they took every opportunity to make it hurt for the Bulldogs.

With his team up big late in the game, Chris Rainey was back to return a punt. He caught it, slowly took a couple steps and began to lower his knee to the ground.

But he faked the kneel and popped back up, rushing down the sideline toward the end zone. Unfortunately for the Gators, the play was called back.

By the time the Bulldogs finally found the end zone late in the second half, the majority of their fans had left and the 50/50 split in the stadium was then leaning decidedly Orange and Blue.

Taking pity on the Georgia players, whose fans had abandoned them, some Florida fans in the crowd cheered after the UGA touchdown — just to be courteous, of course.

Even in the final minute, with the outcome already decided, Meyer called all of his remaining timeouts, just to prolong Georgia’s suffering a little while longer.

When the Gators take on the Bulldogs in Jacksonville this Saturday, it’s unlikely to see a repeat of that result. In the 12 years since, Georgia has found more success and has won the last three matchups in the series.

But UF coach Dan Mullen, who was the offensive coordinator during that 2008 game, will look to swing things back in Florida’s direction and earn his first win in the rivalry as head coach.

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In-state recruiting key for Florida’s growing momentum

That class formed the basis for much of the team’s dominance 2008-09, leading to a national championship and SEC title in the former season.

Despite earning double-digit wins in each of his first two seasons at the helm of the Florida football program, coach Dan Mullen has received criticism for his recruiting success (or lack thereof). The Gators have landed top-10 recruiting classes in 2019 and 2020, but those classes weren’t elite in terms of the rest of the SEC, falling fifth and sixth, respectively.

But in the last week, Mullen received pledges from a pair of Miami prospects and teammates at Palmetto High School — five-star cornerback Jason Marshall and four-star safety Corey Collier. Those two additions became the highest-rated prospects in the class on the 247Sports Composite, and they bumped UF’s class up to the No. 6 spot in the nation.

A major reason for Florida’s success in this recruiting cycle is its ability to keep top Floridian prospects in-state. Nineteen players in the 2021 class hail from the state, the most since Urban Meyer’s 2007 class.

That class featured Sunshine State prospects like the Pouncey twins, Major Wright, Ahmad Black and Chris Rainey. It formed the basis for much of the team’s dominance in 2008 and 2009, leading to a national championship and SEC title in the former season.

Recruiting the state is much harder than it was a decade ago, as top out-of-state programs like Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and LSU all have made in-roads at high schools throughout the state. If Mullen begins to retain state talent at similar rates to what Meyer did in the late 2000s, it would bode well for the future of the UF program, which is still searching for its first conference title since 2008.

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