Mullen sees growth in second scrimmage, Franks better
Florida coach Dan Mullen broke down what he saw from the second scrimmage of the spring, which featured a better performance from quarterback Feleipe Franks.
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Coming off the team's second scrimmage of the spring,
Dan Mullen wasn't overly positive or negative either way about his team's performance.
He saw some definite signs of growth, though, including how the team handled the scrimmage as a whole. As always, there's still room to improve there.
"I thought we played better football as a whole, certain things on Saturday within each individual play," Mullen said. "I think we really still need to improve on understanding game situations and how to play out the scrimmage, you know what I mean?
"When offense, you have an advantage, we start a drive with great field position, those are the ones you have to capitalize. Defense, you've got them pinned up and defense has the advantage, those are when you've got to capitalize."
The Gators did that at times on Saturday, as
Feleipe Franks turned in a much better day than the previous scrimmage. Mullen said he put together the best numbers and had a few touchdowns.
Most importantly, Franks is still learning how to manage the offense. But he made a number of plays with both his arm and his feet.
"He did good. He threw a couple of touchdown passes," Mullen said. "Number wise, Felipe had the best numbers at the quarterback position."
Ironically, the one thing that seemed to trouble the offense on Saturday was handling basic looks from the defense.
With the defense installing its new 3-4 scheme under defensive coordinator
Todd Grantham this spring, the quarterbacks have gotten used to facing heavy pressure everywhere. When the defense played a more vanilla style at times on Saturday, the quarterbacks weren't used to it.
"They handled some hard situations very well, and then all of the sudden they got like the easiest situation you can be in and you get a 3rd down and 12 and you're playing us and it's coming from every different direction," Mullen said.
"They started getting used to handling all these exotic blitzes coming at them. Set in a base defense out there and everybody like freaked out because it was a base defense. I’m like, ‘Come on, it’s back to day one.’ You can’t miss those opportunities. But overall I thought they managed the game better than the week before."
All that will come in time. With spring ball wrapping up, there's still one thing Mullen wants to see, though.
His team hasn't quite figured out how to play with relentless effort for short bursts on a consistent basis. Though the Gators did a better job focusing on the next play in the second scrimmage, it's still an area that needs work.
Mullen wants more out of them over the next week to feel like spring ball really counted.
"The biggest thing we need to get out of them this week is the effort," Mullen said. "It’s not that they’re not giving effort. It’s them understanding how much effort they can give. Our guys are going hard, (but) I don’t know how much they’re straining.
"There’s a big difference between going hard and straining. Between guys thinking they’re going hard and that absolute strain to give everything you possibly have. If we can learn to do that better this week I’d say it’s been a pretty successful spring for us overall."
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