Florida coach Dan Mullen wasted no time identifying problem areas after his team’s worst defensive season in over a hundred years.
Mullen fired secondary coaches Ron English and Torrian Gray, according to one person familiar with the situation. The person spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Friday because the shares were not disclosed. 247Sports first reported the shots.
The 10th place Gators (8-4) allowed 30.8 points per game in 2020, the maximum since dropping out of 41.2 in six games in 1917, and the secondary was a significant part of the problem.
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English has trained Florida security guards for the past three seasons, and Gray has trained cornerbacks for the past two seasons.
Florida conceded 52 and 55 points, respectively, in consecutive defeats to Alabama and Oklahoma’s eighth place at the end of the year. The Sooners racked up an impressive 684 yards – the most any team has ever won against Florida – at the Cotton Bowl on Wednesday night. Florida’s previous record was 629 yards in a 62-24 loss to Nebraska at the 1996 Fiesta Bowl.
It was the third time this season that Florida’s porous defense has yielded more than 600 yards. The unit allowed 613 to open on Ole Miss and 605 for Crimson Tide in the Southeastern Conference championship game.
Mullen made excuses for two of them, first pointing to his team’s lack of confrontation at the pre-season camp before facing the rebels and then blaming the injuries and opt-outs for the team’s embarrassing performance against Oklahoma.
Still, the defense conceded 35 or more points in half of its 12 games, twice as much as during defensive coordinator Todd Grantham’s first two seasons in Gainesville. The unit ended with 50-point consecutive matches, the first time Florida has done so in consecutive games since 1917.
The Gators played without three defensive players in the Cotton Bowl. Defensive striker Kyree Campbell, linebacker Ventrell Miller and cornerback Marco Wilson opted out of the final to start preparing for potential careers in the NFL. They were also left without Shawn Davis security and overtaken the rusher Jeremiah Moon. Davis lost the last four games to an injury and Moon was left out of the last seven games for undisclosed reasons.
Even with these nice guys, Florida’s defense was mostly a disaster. Failures, missed assignments, missed opportunities and mistakes at critical times were a constant in 2020.
Mullen clearly needed to make changes.