GAINESVILLE, Fla. – After cornerbacks coach Charlton Warren decided to head to Georgia, Dan Mullen needed a replacement to coach cornerbacks. But before he even started looking, he already had his guy. He just didn’t know it yet.
Torrian Gray was named new cornerbacks coach on Jan. 21, just two days after Warren left, and the reasoning for the quick turnaround was simple. Every corner on the team wanted Gray to be their coach.
“I've never been in a situation where we lose a coach and basically every player on the team starts texting me, is there any way we can go hire this guy,” the Gators head coach said on Wednesday.
“And I'm like, okay, and then I'm like, you know kind of I had never met Torian, but everyone of our players was like, but we have to get him, we have to get him.
“And I'm like, okay, well, he's currently the secondary coach of the Washington Redskins, so that sounds like a really good idea, but you know he was here and he went to the Washington Redskins. So I love the thought process behind that from our players.”
As for coach Gray, well he had no inklings of returning to Florida. He hadn’t thought about it or even known there was an opening for that matter. Then he received a text.
“It was interesting because I'm sitting -- whatever I was doing on a Saturday night, I don't remember -- and I get a text from Jeawon Taylor 'Coach, would you come back?' OK, let me look on Twitter, why would he ask me that,” coach Gray thought.
“So OK, I see coach Warren had left. Then Marco gives me a call, C.J. gives me a call. 'I would take it again, yeah I would be interested, I would love to come back. That's home.' If you want to, bring it up to your coach. It was interesting getting that process going in that manner."
After receiving initial word from his now new players, Gray decided to reach out to defensive coordinator Todd Grantham. After talking with him and safeties coach Ron English, they told him Mullen would give him a call the next morning.
“So coach Mullen calls me in the morning and we're talking, 'Hey, we'll bring you in the next day,'” Gray said. “So I came in Sunday night, got in around midnight and talked to coach Mullen on Monday morning. (Mullen) offered the job and it was just kind of spinning and going from there."
Mullen had never met the guy, but after a few phone calls, a meeting, and showing him around campus, he was sold on what Gray wold bring to the Gators.
“As I started to research and as I talked to people, both in college and several people in the NFL about him, I thought, well, wow, it's a really unique deal of how highly everybody spoke of him,” Mullen said of Gray.
“And one of the things that brought him down and got to meet him and his personality and be around him and see how he fits in our program.
“Because I think it's one that everyone, the current players speak really highly of him, guys that have worked with him in college say boy, what a great recruiter, great personality as a college coach.
“Talked to guys in the NFL and talk about his development and his ability to develop young players and all of that sounds great, but you also have to make sure they fit in within your program and your staff. And then his personality of how he fits in.
“I think for us it was, they're two great additions that have the ability to make us better immediately and long-term here in our futures.”
It’s rare to see a coach hired to a staff with no connections to anyone on it, especially when that staff has already been assembled.
I think it is safe to say Gray wasn’t on Mullen’s radar when he first started thinking about candidates.
However, when you have a consensus from your entire secondary about one guy you would be a fool not to explore the option. And that’s exactly what Mullen did and he liked what he saw in Gray and pulled the trigger.
Mullen hired Gray, but Taylor, Henderson, Wilson and the rest of the defensive backs brought Gray back to Gainesville.
