Practice Notebook: Mullen and team starting slow to finish fast
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Todd Grantham’s new Florida Gators defense is dependent on being fast.
“We blitz a lot. We don’t let anyone else dictate our pace,” explains linebacker David Reese following the Gators first spring practice Friday afternoon.
“Defense usually are supposed to be the reactors, but no, we set the pace.”
For now however, new head coach Dan Mullen and staff are setting the pace, a that pace requires being steady—running a marathon, not a sprint…but still finishing in good time.
“We have our install process and all that, so we're still taking things step by step, day by day,” says Reese.
“But we're trying to have a quick learning curve so we can get this done as soon as possible."
With only 14 practices left there will be a lot to go over during a short amount of time, and not just for the defense. While Grantham wants his defense—especially his front seven—to be fast, Mullen is molding an entire team to learn how to first take things slow. The team spent most of their first day on fundamentals, as Mullen and players alike understand the importance of crawling before walking.
“They did a good job of not putting too much stuff for us today coming in, especially with these freshmen coming in here and knowing that it’s going to be new to them while most everybody else has done spring practice before,” comments linebacker R.J. Raymond.
“They did a good job of only putting in a certain amount of stuff to let us come out here and fly around and be able to teach other and just kind of play the game. Like they said, if there is a mistake, they’ll fix it, but what they really focused on was our effort. Just come out here and fly around and play fast. You can’t coach that, but they can get the stuff fixed in meetings and stuff like that. So that was really the biggest thing…not putting 35 plays on us the first day, especially with a new coaching staff.”
This process is by design for Mullen who wants his players to understand more than just what to do, by why they’re doing it as well.
“That's what spring is about. At the end of spring we're 0-0…so it's not so much to me about the scheme as much as it is really getting it learning offensively, one, learning what to do. Then we'll learn how to do it. Then finally we'll learn why we're doing it within that progression.
But to me it's constantly working our fundamentals every single day, if we can do that. Because every day I've got to be a little bit better of a fundamental football player, so we'll spend a lot of time on that. And eventually through repetition they'll pick up the scheme. But what I want to make sure is when we do understand the scheme we have great technique and fundamentals to execute it."
The Gators will have until April 14 to put together those fundamentals at which time it will be on display for fans in the annual Orange and Blue game.
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