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Tom VanHaren, ESPN staff writer
As Florida fans watched the Gators’ spring game, a spark of hope was lit as the offense showed flashes of excitement and fun. It was just a spring game, yes, but those same fans sat back and watched an offense that sputtered season after season.
The last time Florida’s offense ranked in the top 50 in scoring or total yards was in 2010, when Urban Meyer was the coach. In fact, Florida’s average rankings were 90th and 107th among FBS programs from 2011 to 2017 in each category.
These numbers are in large part why Dan Mullen is now the coach. The last time Mullen was with the Gators, during the 2008 season, Florida’s offense finished fourth in scoring and 15th in total yards. Mullen now hopes to revive a stagnant offense. And he’s brought in some familiar faces to help him.
Chief among them is quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson, who played for Mullen at Utah and coached with Mullen at Mississippi State from 2014 to 2016. Johnson, along with other offensive coaches, has the daunting task of bringing life to a position group. Immense struggle for several seasons.
“I think the biggest thing is to set an expectation from the beginning,” Johnson said. “From the position, setting expectations and what happened in the past is over. You have the opportunity to start from scratch, learn the system and develop from the system so you can perform at a higher level.”
There are three quarterbacks on the roster — Felipe Franks, Kyle Trask and Emory Jones. Jones is only a freshman, and Trask has yet to see game action. That leaves Franks as the only one to play a down in college football.
After Mullen and his staff hired, Jones was added to the 2018 recruiting class late in the process, and there wasn’t much film on the other two quarterbacks for Johnson and the coaches to figure out what they really had before the start of spring ball.
“When we first got here we were in recruiting, so any free moment we had was trying to finish the class of 2018,” Johnson said. “But I was able to go back and just watch all the games, pull some clips of Kyle Trask before he got hurt. Look at those guys and see what they can do, what they’re doing on offense and get a feel for the personnel going into it.”
Because the offensive coaches were familiar with each other during their stops at Mississippi State, installing the offense was not a concern; It was simply determining what the quarterbacks were capable of and how they would adjust to the new system.
Franks completed 54.6 percent of his passes with nine touchdowns and eight interceptions in an up-and-down season in 2017. His first season did not go as planned; And as Florida sputtered to a 4-7 record, naturally, that weighed on Frank mentally.
That restart was crucial for Franks and his confidence, and he fully bought into what the new staff was trying to implement in Gainesville.
“It’s going in the right direction, and these guys really know what they’re talking about,” Franks said. “Where to give guys freedom, with our playmakers, give them the freedom to get into space and make a play. They know how to get them open and that’s one of the biggest things for us is to create an offense within our offense and free up the playmakers. .”
The full offense has yet to materialize, but Johnson is optimistic about what he has done to study the three quarterbacks and stay ahead of the playbook. Franks and Trask appear to be ahead of Jones, but no starting quarterback has yet been named.
That’s not a concern for Johnson, as he believes reps are going to be the biggest help for every quarterback. As time goes by and players become more familiar with the system, real progress will occur.
“The beauty about our offensive staff is everyone has been together for so long, we know the ins and outs of what we want to do in great detail,” Johnson said. “Being around each other, we have some things that we had in my freshman year in Utah. For the most part, the install has been seamless and we understand what the potential issues are and what the potential questions will be.”
That familiarity also has Florida fans hopeful, and hoping that Mullen can recreate some of the magic they saw when he was offensive coordinator under Meyer — or even some of the success this staff saw at Mississippi State.
Fans got their first real look at what this offense is headed toward, but the players have been seeing progress since arriving on campus. The staff and players are hoping that history repeats itself and this offense returns to the top of the rankings.
“Coach Johnson told me that when you learn a new offense there will be a slump in practice, but when you get over the slump, you’ll go right up,” Franks said. “Once the offense gains confidence in its coach, it goes straight up from there. It’s a process that other people don’t see that the coaches trust the players, the players trust the offense and the quarterback trusts himself and we’re on the right track.”
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