Tag: Steve Spurrier

How the last 10 first-year Florida football head coaches performed

Take a look at the history Billy Napier is up against next season.

The departure of Dan Mullen from Florida football in 2021 marked the end of the tenth head coaching tenure in Gainesville since 1960. Now, former Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns skipper Billy Napier has taken the helm of the Gators facing an uphill battle in his debut campaign as the team looks to move on from the debacle of this past season.

Over the years, the turnover on the sideline has happened for a myriad of reasons, from simple retirement to embarrassing scandals that rocked the entire athletic program. Each time the head coach was replaced, the newcomer faced a slew of various challenges with some benefitting from the previous regime’s roster more than others.

Below is a breakdown of how the last 10 first-year head coaches fared after taking the reins of the team dating back over 60 years. Some of the names included ring immortal in the hallowed halls of the Swamp while others are ones the Gator Nation would prefer to forget. Here is a look at the history Napier and his staff are up against in 2022.

Note: All rankings are via AP Poll and records courtesy of Sports Reference.

Josh Heupel, Shane Beamer share 2021 Steve Spurrier Award

Josh Heupel and Shane Beamer share the 2021 Steve Spurrier Award.

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel and South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer have been named co-winners of the Steve Spurrier First-Year Coach of the Year Award presented by the Football Writers Association of America and Chris Doering Mortgage.

FWAA press release:

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer and Tennessee coach Josh Heupel are the co-winners of the Steve Spurrier First-Year Coach of the Year Award presented by the Football Writers Association of America and Chris Doering Mortgage.

Spurrier was known for his innovation as a College Football Hall of Fame quarterback and coach, so it seems only fitting Spurrier would get creative in his first year as the namesake for the award.

“Well, there are two coaches this year because they are both very deserving,” Spurrier said. “Preseason, their teams were picked at the bottom of the league, 12 and 13, but instead of gloom and doom they took their players and improved every game and both finished 7-6.”

It’s the second time the 43-year-old Heupel has won the award, which began in 2001 but is in its first year being sponsored by Doering and named after Spurrier.

Heupel, like Spurrier a former All-America quarterback in his day, was the FWAA First-year Coach of the Year at UCF in 2018.

Tennessee achieved a winning record coming off a 3-7 campaign that ended with the previous coach fired and the program under the cloud of an NCAA investigation.

The Vols lost 38 players off the previous team, including seven former starters to the transfer portal, and Heupel went to work in a rapid reload circumstance. One of the ways Heupel rebuilt Tennessee into a winning program was with a lightning-fast offense, that at times averaged more snaps per minute than any other Power 5 program.

Former Virginia Tech quarterback Hendon Hooker helped lead the way with 2,945 yards passing, 31 touchdowns and just three interceptions as Tennessee improved its scoring from 21.5 points per game in 2020 to 39.3 this season. The Vols’ 6,174 total offensive yards in 2021 are the most in program history, eclipsing the previous mark of 5,794 set by the 1997 team led by Peyton Manning.

Beamer, son of celebrated Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer, is the second South Carolina coach to win the award. Spurrier actually won the award in 2005 in his first season leading the Gamecocks.

Beamer, 44, took over a downtrodden South Carolina team coming off a 2-8 campaign. The Gamecocks scratched and clawed for each victory, from the time projected starting quarterback Luke Doty suffered a foot injury in August. That led Beamer to get creative, perhaps in the spirit of Spurrier, and use graduate assistant coach Zeb Noland at the quarterback position. When Noland went down with an injury, former St. Francis (Pa.) QB Jason Brown took over and led South Carolina to landmark wins over Florida and Auburn in his four starts.

Beamer’s quarterback rotation wasn’t finished: Dakeron Joyner, a quarterback in high school who played receiver at South Carolina, lined up under center in the bowl game against North Carolina. Joyner won MVP honors as the Gamecocks beat the Tar Heels 38-21 in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte for the program’s first bowl win in four years.

South Carolina, notably, became only the second program in history to win games with four different quarterbacks in one season (Utah State, 2014).

Spurrier was impressed with Tennessee’s explosive offense all season and then was among the first to congratulate Beamer after the bowl win.

“It’s extremely important for coaches in their first year that they come in with no excuses,” Spurrier said. “They don’t say give me two or three years, they eliminate excuses, they take the team they got and add to it the best way they can, and they go and compete.”

That’s what Spurrier did at all three Power 5 programs he led in his career. Spurrier began his college head coaching career at Duke in 1987, where he had previously served as offensive coordinator from 1980-82.

The Blue Devils improved from 4-7 to 5-6 in his first season, and by the time Spurrier left Durham in 1989 he led his team to an ACC co-championship.

Spurrier’s turnaround at Florida was immediate in 1990, as he took a Gators’ bunch that was 7-5 in 1989 to a 9-2 season and a finish atop the SEC in his first year. Spurrier led his alma mater for the next 11 years, winning six SEC championships and the 1996 national championship. He was also a five-time winner of SEC Coach of the Year during that time span.

After a brief stint in the NFL, Spurrier took over South Carolina in 2005 and led the Gamecocks to a 7-5 season that included wins over Florida and Tennessee in the same season for the first time in program history.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to sponsor the naming of the First-Year Coach Award for Coach Spurrier,” said Doering, former player for Spurrier in both college and the NFL and currently a football analyst for SEC Network. “He was successful as a first-year coach at three different programs and he took great pride in each, assuming the reigns, immediately creating a culture that staff and athletes want to be a part of and achieving success in those efforts, that’s the very definition of this award.”

A trophy presentation and reception will be held at Spurrier’s Gridiron Grille on Monday, Feb. 21.

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Two years in, how does Ron Rivera compare?

Ron Rivera just finished his second season as Washington’s head coach. We compare the first two years of every Washington head coach dating back to George Allen.

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Washington coach Ron Rivera completed his second season as the franchise’s head coach Sunday.

The thought occurred to me, since I have been following this team in my childhood, how have other Washington coaches produced in their first two seasons coaching this franchise?

1971: George Allen 9-4-1 regular season; wildcard 4th seed. In his 1972 season, Washington won NFC East Title at 11-3, the number one seed, a 26-3 NFC Championship win over defending Super Bowl Champion Dallas and a trip to Super Bowl VII where they lost 14-7 to the 17-0 Miami Dolphins.

1978: Jack Pardee started 6-0, but faded, finishing 8-8, and his 1979 team finished 10-6, but failed to make a top-four spot for the playoffs.

1981: Enter Joe Jackson Gibbs, who lost his first five games, before closing 8-3 to finish 8-8. His second season Washington was 8-1, plus 4-0 in the playoffs, winning Super Bowl XVII 27-17 over Miami.

1994: Norv Turner was in a total rebuild situation going 3-13 and 6-10 in his first two seasons.

2002: Steve Spurrier’s two seasons 2002-03, Washington was 7-9 and 5-11. You thought it was worse, didn’t you? You see, that proves our standards and expectations were higher then.

2004: Joe Gibbs agreed to return in 2004 going 6-10 and then 10-6 in 2005 with a playoff win at Tampa.

2008: Jim Zorn opened 6-2 in 2008, but then the team finished 8-8, followed by a 4-12 2009 and he was fired.

2010: Mike Shanahan’s first two teams were 6-10 and 5-11.

2014: Jay Gruden after a 4-12 first season won the NFC East at 9-7 in 2015.

2020: Ron Rivera followed a disastrous 2019 when Washington was 3-13, fired Jay Gruden and finished the season with interim coach Bill Callahan. Rivera battled his own cancer, endured the gruesome treatments, yet Washington won the weak NFC East in 2020 at 7-9. In 2021, Washington started 2-6, won four straight then lost four straight to division rivals Dallas and Philadelphia, finishing 7-10.

 

The series history between Washington and the Falcons

#WashingtonFootball is 15-10-1 all-time against the Atlanta Falcons.

The Washington Football Team and the Atlanta Falcons first met all the way back in 1966, which happened to be Atlanta’s inaugural season in the NFL.

Washington’s coach that season was NFL legend, Otto Graham. Washington won the first meeting, 33-20. The early years of Atlanta’s franchise were tough, as the Falcons dropped their first five meetings to Washington — the second-ever meeting in 1967 ended in a tie.

The tide started to turn for the Falcons in 1978 when they made their first playoff appearance. That’s also the first year Atlanta beat Washington on the gridiron.

Washington won 14 of the first 17 meetings between the two NFC franchises, excluding the tie. Among those victories was a 24-7 win in Jan. 1992 in an NFC Divisional Playoff game. That would also happen to be the year Washington won its last Super Bowl. In the regular season, Washington destroyed the Falcons, 56-17.

The Falcons won a 1994 game against a terrible Washington team quarterbacked by John Friesz and Heath Shuler. The two teams didn’t meet again until 2003 when Washington defeated the Falcons without quarterback Michael Vick.

That would be the last time Washington defeated Atlanta. Since that last win, the Falcons are 6-0 against Washington, with Matt Ryan around for five of those wins.

Atlanta has won three of those meetings by double digits, while one score separated the other three games. The last time these franchises met was in 2018 when the Falcons gave Washington its most lopsided loss of the series, 38-14. Ryan passed for 350 yards and four touchdowns on that day, beating Alex Smith and Washington.

Despite Atlanta’s recent success, Washington holds the edge in the all-time series, 15-10-1.

Can Washington take down the Falcons on Sunday? Ryan will once again be under for Atlanta looking for his sixth win over Washington.

Spurrier says Gamecocks had ‘mental edge’ on Swinney, Tigers from ’09-13

Former South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier sat down for an interview this week with Mike Griffith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s DawgNation and spoke about a variety of different topics. Reflecting on South Carolina’s five-game winning …

Former South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier sat down for an interview this week with Mike Griffith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s DawgNation and spoke about a variety of different topics.

Reflecting on South Carolina’s five-game winning streak over Clemson from 2009-13, Spurrier seemed to imply he thinks the Gamecocks got inside the head of Dabo Swinney’s teams during those years and that it contributed to the Tigers’ poor performance in those rivalry games.

“We had really good teams between 2010 and ’13, and then the 2009 game, we played extremely well and they did not play very well,” Spurrier said. “But yeah, we sort of got a little mental edge on them there for a while, and again, they would have a lot of turnovers, and we had very few. We just played better, and a lot of our guys had some of their best games. So, it was a good run there, but I think Dabo’s won six in a row since 2014 I believe it is. So, I think he’s either even or ahead of the Gamecocks right now.”

Spurrier lost to Clemson in his final full season as South Carolina’s head coach in 2014, and of course, the Tigers have won six straight in the rivalry series from 2014-19.

Swinney and Clemson went 2-5 in his head-to-head matchups with Spurrier and the Gamecocks from 2008-14. Overall, Swinney is 7-5 against South Carolina since 2008, when he became Clemson’s interim head coach.

“I think you can talk too much about your opponent sometimes, and then all the sudden, the game gets here and well let’s see, we’ve been talking about these guys for a month or two or all year, and then maybe you don’t play your best,” Spurrier said. “I really think that may have happened to Clemson a bit when we were able to beat them those five years in a row at South Carolina. Because Dabo had some good teams during those years, but they did not play well against us. They’d drop punts, have all kind of fumbles and stuff, and we were pretty error-free during those five years in a row that we were able to beat them.”

Spurrier also talked about the back-and-forth barbs that he and Swinney traded when they were both coaching the respective Palmetto State squads, saying he has a good relationship with Swinney but it was just a byproduct of the intense rivalry.

“I think Dabo’s a good friend. I consider him a good friend,” Spurrier said. “We had a little sort of chirping at each other when we were both coaching in the state of South Carolina because that’s a huge rivalry, Clemson and South Carolina. Those fans do not like to lose to the other team, I can tell you that right now. When I see some Gamecocks and they say Coach, I was there between ’10 and ’14 and ‘9 and ’13, they’ve got a smile on their face because they know we beat Clemson those years. And every now and then, I see a Clemson person that said, ‘I was at Clemson when we never beat you guys, and it was no fun.’

“So, it is a big rivalry in the state of South Carolina, and of course Clemson owns it right now. But I guess the Gamecocks, we had our day there between 2009 and 2013.”

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Spurrier gives his take on Clemson-UGA game

It’s safe to say Steve Spurrier knows a little something about facing Clemson and Georgia, having opposed them both plenty of times in the past as the former head coach of their respective rivals, South Carolina and Florida. During an interview with …

It’s safe to say Steve Spurrier knows a little something about facing Clemson and Georgia, having opposed them both plenty of times in the past as the former head coach of their respective rivals, South Carolina and Florida.

During an interview with Mike Griffith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s DawgNation, Spurrier gave his take on Saturday’s game between the third-ranked Tigers and No. 5 Bulldogs and talked about what he believes will decide the marquee matchup.

“Simply who plays the best, who plays without bad plays and careless plays, things of that nature,” Spurrier said. “Crucial turnovers can really hurt. If you throw a 50-yard pass and they intercept it falling down, that doesn’t hurt you. There’s no harm in that. But the crucial turnovers and mistakes can cost you the game. But I think it will come down to who plays the best, who makes the most plays. Maybe a long touchdown pass, great catch here and there, or maybe a defensive play.

“Who knows, but that should be the game of the week in the nation, I think, Clemson and Georgia. So, I’ll certainly be looking forward to watching that one.”

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Swinney’s memories of last UGA matchup include voicemail from former coaching rival

Dabo Swinney has a lot of memories of the last time Clemson and Georgia met, and not many of them are pleasant. “We just didn’t have a good day,” the Tigers’ coach recalled. The teams’ season-opening clash on Sept. 4 at Bank of America Stadium in …

Dabo Swinney has a lot of memories of the last time Clemson and Georgia met, and not many of them are pleasant.

“We just didn’t have a good day,” the Tigers’ coach recalled.

The teams’ season-opening clash on Sept. 4 at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte will come seven years after their most recent matchup in 2014. That’s when the Tigers wore down late on a muggy Saturday night en route to a 45-21 loss inside Georgia’s Sanford Stadium.

But a phone call from a rival coach lightened Swinney’s mood.

Once Swinney got around to checking his phone after the loss, he saw he had a voicemail from Steve Spurrier, then the head coach at South Carolina. Swinney said he figures Spurrier called to console him, especially considering what had happened to his team a couple of nights earlier.

Texas A&M handed South Carolina a season-opening 52-28 beatdown that Thursday.

“He said, ‘I don’t know why we schedule these games, you know? We play East Carolina and y’all go play Furman or somebody, and everybody is happy. You get a win. And then we go play these games,’” Swinney recalled. “And he was like, ‘We were pretty much terrible. Got our butts kicked for four quarters. Looks like y’all just got yours kicked for one quarter, but hey, you know, we’ll bounce back and go get ‘em next week.’ And I just laughed. It made me feel better.”

That one quarter was in reference to a fourth quarter in which Clemson was outscored 21-0. The game was tied at 21 at halftime before Georgia, behind its three-headed running back monster of Todd Gurley, Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, outscored the Tigers 24-0 over the final two quarters.

Gurley, Chubb and Michel — all of whom were eventually drafted into the NFL within the first two rounds — combined for 301 of Georgia’s 328 rushing yards that night. Gurley had 198 yards and three scores by himself against a Clemson defense that finished that season allowing the fewest yards in the country.

Clemson also didn’t have Deshaun Watson for most of that game after the then-freshman quarterback was injured early.

“All of them guys were pretty good,” Swinney said of Georgia’s backfield that season. “You look back a few years later, and you go, well, you know I guess they were all right. You don’t put your head down too bad, but we got better and better that year as it went on.”

As for that voicemail from Spurrier, Swinney said he’s held on to that one as well as others from the College Football Hall of Famer over the years.

“I just put it in my Spurrier voicemail file,” Swinney said. “If Stever Spurrier calls, you usually want to keep those.”

Football season has finally arrived. Time to represent your Tigers and show your stripes!

Steve Spurrier visits Jags practice on Tuesday

The Jaguars had two national championship-winning coaches at practice on Tuesday.

Jacksonville  Jaguars players are used to one national championship-winning coach at their practices in head coach Urban Meyer, but at this point, they’re probably starting to become accustomed to several.

Former Florida coach Steve Spurrier was in attendance at practice on Tuesday, the latest legendary figure to attend a Jags practice session. Meyer has also had coaches Jimmy Johnson, Lou Holtz, and Dabo Swinney present this offseason.

Spurrier is the coach who built much of the infrastructure at Florida that allowed Meyer to achieve what he did. As the Gators coach from 1990-2001, Spurrier inherited a program that was riddled with sanctions during the 1980s. He captured the first SEC Championship in school history (that counted) in 1991, and in 1996, he won the first national title at UF.

Meyer followed suit with two more in 2006 and 2008, and now he’s hoping to replicate some of that success as a first-time NFL coach. Both Spurrier and Meyer have garnered renown for their ability to coach the quarterbacks. The former struggled to find one during his short stint in the NFL, but the latter begins with a talented one right out of the gate in Trevor Lawrence.

The track record for first-time NFL coaches isn’t great (as Spurrier’s 12-20 record with Washington can attest), but Meyer will hope to be an exception to that rule with the Jaguars.

These three Florida head coaches made ESPN’s top 100 list

Which three Florida head coaches landed on this list? Who cracked the top five?

Florida Gators head coach Dan Mullen joined former Gators coaches Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer on ESPN’s top 100 college football head coaches of the last 50 years.

Mullen cracked the top 100 with a 98-54 head coaching record and a 7-2 bowl record with Mississippi State and Florida. If Mullen can sustain the successful program he’s built in Gainesville, he can easily move up from the No. 91 spot.

Urban Meyer earned the highest placement of the three coaches with the fifth spot on the list. The current Jacksonville Jaguars coach helped schools reach new heights starting with Bowling Green, but his two national championships at Florida with Tim Tebow made him know nationally as an elite coach. The Gators went 65-15 with a 5-1 bowl record over Meyer’s six years.

After Meyer left Florida, he led the Ohio State Buckeyes to an 83-9 record over seven years, including a national championship.

Mullen and Meyer perhaps owe much of their success to the No. 13 entry on the list, former Gators coach Steve Spurrier. Coach Spurrier helped turn Florida into one of the country’s top football schools with six SEC titles and a decade worth of top-10 finishes.

Spurrier followed his 12 seasons at Florida with 11 at South Carolina and finished his career with 228 wins—good for fourteenth best all time. He briefly coached the Orlando Apollos of the Alliance of American Football before the league folded. The Apollos led the standings with a 7-1 record and Spurrier claimed an unofficial championship with the team.

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