- Sep 4, 2014
- 21,419
- 80,063
I understand why some want Mullen to stay, but considering how this team ultimately underperformed this season due to several bad coaching decisions, I'm not going to be sad to see Mullen go if he takes another job this year or gets fired in a year or two. My problem with him is that after he does something really dumb, he tries to justify it and make excuses for it.
This team had the potential and opportunity to be undefeated going to Atlanta, while being a lock for the CFP and the Heisman regardless if they win or lose (i.e., Notre Dame). But we all know how that played out. If Mullen had made better coaching/recruiting decisions in the past, we would have been in a better position to actually outright win the CFP. But it's also worth noting that if Franks never gets injured, we're probably an 8-9 win team last year and a 6-7 win team with him this year with arguably the best passer in the school's history holding a clipboard.
He's keeping Grantham after the worst defensive season in school history, so the defense will continue to suck, and Trask/Pitts are gone. So we are going to run the ball more with success but likely score less points per game. We're realistically looking at an 8-9 win season, far from a championship contending team that we'd expect from a coach in his fourth year making 6+ million a year. Maybe at year 6 he'll have a team good enough to compete for championships, but it's hard to not think that it'll be another wasted year due to bad coaching decisions based on this year.
He's not our version of Mark Richt cause Richt actually won a conference championship. Mullen is his own type of coach. A guy who will consistently keep a team somewhat relevant with 9-10 win average seasons without winning any championships.
If he does that, he’ll be gone before long. We’ve already seen he can be abrasive with the administration and isn’t overly liked by boosters. But while he’s here, as long as he’s not completely falling on his face, we may as well get behind him and hope he proves us wrong. That’s my mindset. As I’ve said before, I’d much rather be watching an experiment while winning games than what we witnessed the last two hires.