We put up a damn good fight

ThreatMatrix · Dec 20, 2020

If Grantham gets fired It will be worth it.

Gatorbreath · Dec 20, 2020

oxrageous said:
Yikes. The jury is not still out. Mullen has been a head coach for well over a decade now. He is who he is. How the hell could you be excited for the future with our best players leaving and no one to replace them?

Because of terrible recruiting since he's been here, things have plateaued (with Butters players) and now will be heading back down. Next year is a 6-6, 7-5 type season, and we are going to be screaming for his firing. The trajectory is not promising, there is no momentum in a positive direction.

FFS. Lighten up, "Law Donkey Jr." There was a time when I'd consider your posts insightful and pragmatic. Entertaining, even. When the hell did you fall off the ledge? Or are you trolling for pageviews?

There's young talent at the skill positions. I agree the offense will look a lot different next year assuming Trask leaves, which he most assuredly will. Some of the production where the passing game will regress will be replaced by a more athletic QB that can run much more of the offense. Certainly not all, but some. And yes, what remains of the passing game will be a lot less vertical. While I prefer chucking the ball downfield, if next year's offense can cobble together drives and score points, if differently than this year's team, then....

We're in much better shape than before CDM's arrival. I share questions about his will, his drive and his ability to recruit and answers remain to be seen. But, even if by accident, the program has moved forward, though I agree, at a maddeningly slow pace. We take two steps forward this year - whupping the Humpers and getting to ATL - and one galactic step back - the Corndog debacle.

The key is Grantham's exit. He's gone, and I will remain hopeful. If he's not, then I'm out.

LoyalGatorFan · Dec 20, 2020

Very impressed with how hard we fought....I honestly expected Bama to roll 2nd half so for us to battle back all the way to the last play was very impressive....with that said, we need a major defensive overhaul from scheme all the way down to more discipline and improved CB coverage....Elam is our best cover IMO and also the youngest....so MAYBE part of our issues are we still have some McElwain recruits to deal with but either way.....we score 46 against the #1 team and still lose...that's disheartening

Concrete Helmet · Dec 20, 2020

GatorJ said:
they pulled it together in the 2nd half and played a fantastic game. They laid it all out on the field.

Yeah for all the flak they have taken I was pleasantly surprised at the way the Dbacks closed down the distance and and tackled much better in the second half...wished they played that way more during the season.

LoyalGatorFan · Dec 20, 2020

The ironic thing with Trask having such an incredible season is that he is not even the prototypical dual threat Mullen type QB....next year with Emory taking over I expect a lot more designed QB runs, ala Dak, Tebow, Alex Smith plays....

no1g8r · Dec 20, 2020

Swamp Donkey said:
No one put up a great effort on defense but apparently we now just write that off.

Trey Dean wrestling the ball away from the Bama tight end was great effort, but unfortunately forgotten due to coughing the ball up on a vicious hit.

NVGator · Dec 20, 2020

oxrageous said:
The OP got 18 likes on his "moral victory" post to start this thread. The list of the 18 people who liked it are all the people you'd pretty much expect. Check out the list and shake your head.

I vote you send them all to Swampgas as a Christmas present.

soflagator · Dec 20, 2020

no1g8r said:
Terry Dean wrestling the ball away from the Bama tight end was great effort, but unfortunately forgotten due to coughing the ball up on a vicious hit.

I wish Terry Dean had focused more on wrestling the ball away from those Auburn defenders after his 6 Ints. May have been a different game.

Swamp Donkey · Dec 20, 2020

oxrageous said:
The OP got 18 likes on his "moral victory" post to start this thread. The list of the 18 people who liked it are all the people you'd pretty much expect. Check out the list and shake your head.

One of the likes is from "Champions of Life".

You should ****can this thread, preferably hidden entirely so it'll never be seen again, merge it into the moral victory thread, or at least change the thread so we realize this is a collection of losers celebrating in here.

Sec14Gator · Dec 20, 2020

This is the most Voltasticly embarrassing thread the Chatter may have ever seen.

Yes we are better than we were under the sharkfucher but damn are we still far from championship level and not getting much closer.

This line though, wow -

heversle said:
the defense played very hard

lagator · Dec 21, 2020

Avenger48c said:
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.

We've already lost 3 games this year with a good chance for a 4th. A moral victory somehow equals progress? Pitts Trask and Toney were the progress, not Mullen. With generational talent Mullen couldn't manage to lose less than 3 games. I see a coach who will never be more than he currently is, and the sooner we cut ties the better if championships are the goal, which obviously they should be.

Avenger48c · Dec 21, 2020

lagator said:
We've already lost 3 games this year with a good chance for a 4th. A moral victory somehow equals progress?

Losing three games isn't progress, but keeping up with Bama is. Our team last year couldn't have done what we saw two nights ago, and neither could the team the year before. For that matter, there's probably only one team in the country that might keep it closer with Bama this year, let alone beat them. That's rare air, even if we did drop two games we shouldn't have.

lagator said:
Pitts Trask and Toney were the progress, not Mullen. With generational talent Mullen couldn't manage to lose less than 3 games.

Maybe, but we'll see next year. Pitts is a generational talent, Trask is extremely good, Toney is dangerous, and losing all of them will hurt. Next year's team is going to look very different on offense and it won't put up anything like the numbers we did this year. With that said, we have Bowman coming in and we'll be moving back to the spread where Mullen knows how to run the ball, so I'd expect our rushing attack to be miles better than this year. If we can reboot the defense, we'll be a more complete team even if we can't throw for 400 yards a game.

lagator said:
I see a coach who will never be more than he currently is, and the sooner we cut ties the better if championships are the goal, which obviously they should be.

I want Meyer/Spurrier levels of success right now too, but there's a reason Meyer and Spurrier are Meyer and Spurrier. Both of them are top 10 coaches in the history of College Football. We're three years into a massive rebuild, our team has been progressing year over year, and I'm willing to give Mullen the benefit of the doubt that he can keep that momentum up until he doesn't. If he doesn't drop Grantham and fix the defense, he's going to start trending the other way. If he does what needs to be done, we'll have another shot at titles soon. If he doesn't get there, then we can him and pick up the kind of guy we couldn't get when we hired him originally.

In the meantime, let's not chase greatness into another uncertain candidate who could turn into a Mac or Chump. When The Guy, the next Spurrier or Meyer, is out there, we can lure him with a much better program than we had when we hired Mullen. For now, I don't see anyone like that available, and I don't think it's worth dropping Mullen for a Jamey Chadwell-type potential flash in the pan.

oxrageous · Dec 21, 2020

I think it may be time to let Avenger48c go.

t-gator · Dec 21, 2020

One of the saddest threads I believe I've seen on here

NOLAGATOR · Dec 21, 2020

NovaGator said:
Gators have nothing to hang their heads over. Great effort from a team that
was given little chance against Alabama's juggernaut. The game pivoted on
Dan's poor clock management. Giving them those extra 18 seconds after
Trask's late 2ed quarter TD made it possible for them to tack on their closing seconds TD.
I know it's tough to think of every nuance of play calling, but the TV announcers were
all over it. That's why the head coaches make the big bucks.
I will say this: If Danny Boy had managed to pull off the upset it would have been the
greatest prediction since Joe Namath's "I Guarantee It".

Except for this guy Toad Grantham. Did I say Grantham? And did I mention what we have to look forward to?....MORE GRANTHAM

Swamp Donkey · Dec 21, 2020

CHAMPION OF LIFE

deuce · Dec 21, 2020

LoyalGatorFan said:
The ironic thing with Trask having such an incredible season is that he is not even the prototypical dual threat Mullen type QB....next year with Emory taking over I expect a lot more designed QB runs, ala Dak, Tebow, Alex Smith plays....

So will our opponents.

deuce · Dec 21, 2020

This thread started out nice then :violin:

.....

Some of you neGators must be a blast at parties.

I suggest Ox change the name to "Glass half empty Chat"

:lmao:

78 · Dec 21, 2020

We’re all frustrated by a lost decade marked by a ridiculously slow answer to facility upgrades, we’re frustrated over the sense that it’s as good as it’s going to get under Mullen and that we knew that risk going in.

What really makes it frustrating is listening to Mullen deflect on why he can’t get over the hump. This is no dummy. He knows why. He’s a terminally dancing beta male who doesn’t have the answer, at least not before the year 2030. I know I don’t have that long to wait.

Swamp Donkey · Dec 21, 2020

deuce said:
I suggest Ox change the name to "Glass half empty Chat

What about 8-4 chat?

We put up a damn good fight

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