GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we recap the Florida Gators lost to Georgia on Saturday in Jacksonville.
Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre breakdown what went wrong for the Gators on Saturday on both offense and defense.
Andrew and Nick also talk about what’s left for the Florida Gators for the 2019 season and how the Gators can overcome Saturday’s loss.
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, we lied. We’re not talking about a win after the game on Saturday. Florida got outplayed.
Nick:                         Yeah. Shoot, my predication was 34-17 Florida, and I remember at one point looking at the scoreboard, and it’s 16-3 and thinking can they get 31 unanswered and make me look smart? I don’t know. I felt confident. We’ll get into it a little bit later, I think a lot of my confidence was I felt Georgia was reeling coming in, and Florida would have a game plan. I want to get into that probably first, because you and I talked about it. I was still in the press box, and we talked about it. I think there was a game plan, but there was only a Plan A, and once Plan A got taken out of the window, I think there was no Plan B. Dan Mullen offensively never got into a rhythm or a flow, and it was just a weird game in the sense of it was like commercial timeout, review, coach calls a timeout, review. There was really no flow to the game.
Andrew:                 Right. The reason I picked Florida was I thought Dan Mullen would outcoach Kirby Smart, and he didn’t. He got outcoached. This coaching staff got outcoached. Todd Grantham got outcoached again. I didn’t expect that. I think Kirby Smart’s a really good recruiter. I have my doubts on Kirby Smart as a game day coach, but Kirby outcoached Dan Mullen.
For me, Nick, what’s concerning is this is the second time Dan Mullen’s been outcoached in this game. You look at Dan Mullen as a coach and as a play caller, different things. Dan Mullen always has a wrinkle, always has something that is different to get the offense going. Let’s face it. On Saturday he didn’t. On Saturday he looked like a coach and a play caller that was lost a little bit.
Nick:                         Yeah. One credit to Kirby. I mean, Kirby’s a great defensive coach, I think. He’s a great defensive mind. I almost wonder, just based on obviously a coach is going to be upset after the game, but I’ve covered a couple losses for Dan Mullen, and normally he’s pretty okay. No coach wants to lose, but Will Muschamp would act like a family member had just died after a loss.
Andrew:                 Right.
Nick:                         Everyone handles it differently. Dan Mullen, for the most part, I think is able to kind of compartmentalize things. Losses don’t ruin everything for him. He can kind of just look at it analytically. I think there’s something personal. I don’t know if it’s Georgia. I don’t know if it’s Kirby. Maybe it’s causing him in the leadup to the game to get more tight, to game plan tight, to coach tight. Last night he was not in the mood for conversation, was not in the mood for questions. I mean, that’s good. I’m sure people listening to this like to hear that. They don’t want a coach that’s okay with losing to Georgia. It just made me wonder.
I don’t have any inside information on Dan and Kirby hate each other or stuff like this. I’m just wondering if maybe it’s something where he doesn’t like Georgia, doesn’t like somebody on the coaching staff, and is treating the game differently, which we think he should, but instead of using it as motivation just kind of getting too tight, because like you said, we didn’t see that creative Dan Mullen when it comes to play call and play design.
Andrew:                 I mean, let’s face it. There’s no love lost between Kirby and Dan. Dan spent most of the off season and the spring game...