Dan Mullen's Excuses Make Him Look Like An Enormous Jackass
Dan Mullen and the Florida Gators were blown out 55-20 in the Cotton Bowl by Oklahoma Wednesday night and he immediately went into damage control after the game. The 48-year-old head coach immediately downplayed the loss, acting like it wasn't a big deal and finding excuses. It was yet another occasion where Mullen proved he's an enormous jackass.
Mullen immediately started spinning in his postgame press conference:
#Gators coach Dan Mullen: "The last game the 2020 team played was 11 days ago."
— Graham Hall (@GrahamHall_) December 31, 2020
He didn't stop there:
Mullen continued on #Gators tonight, says "the majority of the guys that were out there were on the scout team for us" for most of the year
— Graham Hall (@GrahamHall_) December 31, 2020
He also claimed the team could have opted out of the game because they had a number of COVID-19 cases, plus a group of skill position players decided not to participate. Star tight end Kyle Pitts and wide receivers Kadarius Toney and Trevon Grimes all opted out of the game.
Florida coach Dan Mullen said “with the number of people that were out for the game, we were under numbers actually...we had the numbers to not play the game”
— Sam Khan Jr. ? (@skhanjr) December 31, 2020
“I give our guys credit..they wanted to go play in that game, wanted to get that experience, wanted to be on that stage”
The postgame press conference felt like a string of excuses from Mullen who doesn't exactly have the best track record in big games. He's 13-38 in his career facing ranked teams and was 1-3 this season.
I get that Mullen is trying to cover for his program being embarrassed on national television, but acting like this wasn't a real game because Florida was short players is hilarious. Dan, you're one of the guys who pushed to actually play a season in the middle of a global pandemic, you own the fallout. This is the football equivalent of you broke it, you buy it.
It's been quite a year for Mullen. He wanted 90,000 people at The Swamp during a pandemic, got fined $25,000 for his role in an on-field brawl, lobbied for his three-loss team to make a New Year's Six bowl over more deserving teams, lost a game to an unranked opponent because one of his players threw a shoe, and made excuses when his overrated squad got blown out in a bowl game. That's quite a year. His team also wound up 8-4 and repeatedly failed in big spots despite being given every advantage and benefit of the doubt by the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.
So yeah, I feel comfortable saying Mullen can go screw right off with his excuses. Players on your roster played a bowl game and got their heads kicked in. If they weren't ready to compete at that level, blame should be aimed squarely at on person: the head coach. Spare me the excuses.