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Dan Mullen and Willie Taggart arrived in the state of Florida with an enthusiastic welcome and outrageous expectations, hailed as the last saviors of rival schools just 150 miles away.
Two games in Florida and Florida look like stripped programs, revealing problems requiring immediate answers. Rather than showing tangible progress under their new coaches, both Florida and the state of Florida won defeats on Saturday night – Florida, who lost to Kentucky for the first time in 32 years; Florida State for playing Samford, an FCS foe, a week after being swept away by Virginia Tech.
It was an embarrassing weekend, if only because beating the Kentucky and FCS teams has been a reality in both programs for over three decades. The Florida and Florida state brands no longer intimidate their opponents as they used to do. nor their respective stages.
Twenty-two years ago, Tim Couch and Kentucky embarked on the Swamp, overlooking his pedigree and anticipating that he would have the answer to Florida's big question. 1996 will certainly be the year of the end of the long series of defeats. Florida won 65-0.
Florida played with Kentucky for the sport. Until recently, it became apparent that the Florida advantage under Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer had definitely disappeared.
In the states of Florida and Florida, Saturday night, it was proven that there was no quick fix to the problems that had accumulated for years.
Miami, led by Mark Richt, the third-year coach, showed serious shortcomings in the first week of LSU and Florida's Power 5 programs were sad this year.
By entering the season, Gainesville and Tallahassee benefited from the unique optimism associated with the arrival of a new coach. In both cases, however, this optimism covered the issues that now seem obvious: neither team has a reliable quarter, especially now that they are both transitioning to new plans. Neither team has produced elite receivers for years. Neither team has produced a dominant offensive line for years. Neither team has depth in defense or killer instinct.
How does this happen in two schools of a fertile recruitment home, where athletes and speed enthusiasts should fill every inch of the list? The lack of recruitment has hurt the two schools, but the same is true for the lack of development and responsibility of the players.
You can see that in the way teams watch when they play. There are no obvious leaders on the ground, no alphas calling the shots. There's no braggart either, the guy the Seminoles carried with them when they crushed their opponents en route to the national title in 2013, the guy the Gators had always had when they participated in championships ten years ago. There is no physics, no aggressiveness. The players pass passively through the movements, hoping against all odds not to be wrong.
These are all signs that the cultures of both schools have had to change, and eliminating bad attitudes and bad habits does not happen automatically when a new coach takes over. The programs that often have the easiest transition between the main coaches are those who already had a solid foundation to start and players who are enthusiastic and willing to accept the changes.
Taggart and Mullen had no real foundation, not after the bad seasons robbed players of team spirit, camaraderie and trust. In the state of Florida, Taggart ordered his players to eat together, change their lockers so that offensive and defensive players could mingle and institute accountability teams because his players were separated.
After losing 24-3 to Virginia Tech in the first game of the season, Taggart said he had not seen sloppy performance and ragtag come. But he had growth problems in his first year at almost all stops, so watching his players struggles with each transition.
Perhaps he saw it coming, but he could not admit it because he understands how much he is in a hurry to recover the state of Florida the most quickly possible. Selling a "deadly simplicity" as a slogan for the offense only works when the offense is effective to score many points. What's more, it's never a good sign when players swear after a match not to let the team part as in 2017, when Florida State was 7-6.
In Gainesville, many expected Mullen to do a miracle at the quarterback given his history in both Florida and the state of Mississippi. But Florida has not had a useful shift since Tim Tebow left, nor does she have a lot of offensive skills or offensive talent, especially about Jim McElwain.
Mullen and Taggart have won in their previous stops and have uniquely understood what to do in their respective schools. It is natural for a new coach to be responsible for what he inherited from former coaches. But the responsibility to change is now theirs. Even though it is true that patience is never a virtue in college football, both are in jobs that are waiting more than ever before.
"A game never defines anything," said Mullen after the loss to Kentucky. "It's a match in a long season, and much more important to me is where our attitude will be on Monday."
If he and Taggart want to be judged on the finished product, not on the first two games, people need to see progress – even if it's small. Their jobs demand almost instantaneous results, especially in a state where they dominated so easily.
Now, they both find themselves watching UCF, which may be the self-proclaimed national champion, but at the very least is the undisputed king of Florida.
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