I've been pretty unhappy with this team over the last few weeks, but I went to bed last night feeling a lot better. Yeah, there's no such thing as moral victories and we lost the game, but take a step back and think about what's happened since Mullen got here...
In 2017, we were capping off a lost decade of futility. We'd taken advantage of bad SEC Easts to get to Atlanta twice in the previous two years and been completely blown out on the field. Each of those years, our team was a clear paper tiger and collapsed completely in the late season. This year, we'd gone 5-7. Our biggest rival in the conference was building an unstoppable juggernaut that looked like it might be Alabama 2, and took Alabama to the wire in the CFP NC game. There was a legitimate possibility that one more awful hire would put us down the path of becoming Tennessee. That's what Mullen took over.
In 2018, we started out looking rough and hit rock bottom in a loss to Kentucky, but the team fought back. We beat a good LSU team, but suffered a setback against UGA and dropped another game we shouldn't the week after. With that said, we finished strong in a way we hadn't in years, and exorcised our demons by scoring 40+ points in blowouts over FSU and Michigan. It felt great to be a Florida Gator again and we were on the right track.
Last year, we took another step forward. We didn't lose any games we were favored in, and Trask lit up the scoreboard for us. We beat a good Auburn team before dropping a shootout against the eventual national champions. There was another painful loss to UGA in Jax, but we finished strong again for an Orange Bowl berth.
This year's team is better still, despite the frustrating setbacks we've seen. We finally got UGA off of our back and had a fighting chance in all of our losses, ultimately falling short by a single score in each. The LSU loss was putrid, lackadaisical, and inexcusable, but that happens sometimes. If we had a halfway competent DC, we'd be undefeated and playing for it all in the coming weeks, and that stings, but it feels like we still have room to grow.
Overall, I've enjoyed the positive trajectory under Mullen. If our team this year played our team from last year, the 2020 team would win the game. The same with 2019 vs 2018, and any of those teams would wax any of Mac's teams to a similar tune that Bama did in his SECCG appearances.
Is Mullen our Richt? The jury's out, and it's gonna be decided by what happens with Grantham and how much we regress next year. If Mullen overhauls the defense, I think we can have another double digit win season with EJ and set ourselves up to fight for an SECC with AR. If he doesn't, we're looking at a rough year. Either way, at worst he's stabilizing a program that was on the verge of falling into perpetual irrelevance.
TL;DR: I think Mullen has made progress every year, is stabilizing and building the program, and could be here a long time if he jettisons Grantham. We lost last night, but the team looked better than it has in a decade, and I'm excited for the future again. The trajectory is promising, but we need to not regress too much next year to keep up the momentum.
