Florida Gators College Football Pregame Quote, 12/22/2020

I just kind of asked Dan [Mullen] the same question, but obviously you’re aware of the external pressure on the defense, the criticism and everything. Do you think this is your last game? And if not, what does the defense have to do to get to a championship level going forward under your leadership?

Yeah, well, my concern is always next opponent. If you look over the last four years, we’ve been able to put together some pretty good defenses. We’ve had some challenges this year with a lot of things that are going on. And you take the situations that come up and you make the best of it and you find ways to win games.

From an evaluation standpoint, when you look at it, this will be our third straight New Year’s Six game since coming here. We got to the SEC championship game, and we were six points away. Last year, we played Georgia, and we were seven points away. And the comment was, you know, what’s the difference between us and Georgia? And we said seven points.

Right now, what’s the difference between us and the SEC championship game? It’s six points. Because if you look, Alabama is a very talented defense. And at the end of the day, we gave up six more points than they did during the game. So we’ve got to find a way to eliminate that and to get the win. Really, it gets down to wins and losses and how you’re going to go about winning the game.

So that’s the process for me, is how do you go about winning games and what have we got to do to win this game coming up. And that’s really what the focus is.

Kind of building off that, Dan [Mullen] said, when there’s an issue for example, he compared it to if his wrist is hurting, he’s not going to cut off his arm. He’s going to address what the other problems are. What are some of those addressable issues? And I know you have less practice time this week

Go back and look at the Alabama game. First of all, they’re a very talented team. When you go back and look at the first half, we came in quick and the third down penalties. You go back and look at the first drive, we had a third down penalty that allowed them to extend the drive.

The second drive, we actually created a turnover, but we turned it back to them within the interception itself. And then the next two drives, we were actually off the field and we had a couple of third down penalties that allowed them to extend the drive.

So if you go back and look at those, I mean, we have to eliminate that. So I think, from a situational standpoint, it’s kind of interesting that we’ve actually played better third down defense this year than last year. But it may not be showing up to people that way. But our third down percentages actually have been better.

To me it’s just about understanding that there’s a discipline involved in the game and that we’ve got to play cleaner. And that needs to be the approach that we take in this game, is to, one, let the seniors that are leaving go out with another New Year’s Six win.

The next thing is the younger players that are coming back. I think it’s real critical that they get some snaps and get some play time because that lets them see where they are. It also builds confidence for the future and the fact that they’re ready to take the horns as we move forward next year to be the kind of defense that we want to be and play to the standard that we have played two of the last three years.

Obviously, coming into the year, Kaiir Elam received a lot of hype, I guess you would say, for lack of a better term. How would you evaluate his season this year? I think he leads the SEC in passes defended.

Kaiir is a guy that I’m really proud of. This day and age, it’s really hard for guys sometimes to take critical looks at themselves on what they’ve got to get better at. And he is very passionate about the game. He is very tough on himself in the standpoint of wanting to be exact in what he does. He’s a competitor.

The guy competes in everything he does. He’s a smart guy that really tries to understand the whole concept, not just his play, but what’s happening around him, which can make him a better player. And I think the accolades that he’s gotten is really a credit to his constant persistence in working to become a complete player.

And I mean that from being able to come up and support the run to defend the pass, to being a good blitzer, to doing everything that you need to do as a football player to help your team win. And that’s where I think Kaiir is. He’s a complete player that really works to be a perfectionist at his craft.

Would you just talk about what it means to you to play in a game of the magnitude of the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic and you’ve obviously been around for some time to get your team in a game like this?

First of all, it’s an honor to play in the Cotton Bowl, in the Classic. I remember, as a kid growing up and it was colder back then. At least we don’t have to worry about the weather. There was some cold days back then when I watched them play as a kid with my dad.

Obviously, there’s a lot of tradition in this game. We’re very humbled to be a part of it, to be part of the New Year’s Six bowls. We understand that we got a great challenge in Oklahoma and their fantastic offense and what they do.

So, really, it’s about us being able to go out and represent ourselves one more time and the University of Florida and work to play to our standard and go out and send like I said before, send the seniors out the right way, as well as let the young guys coming back get a taste of what it’s like so that they understand the amount of work involved to make sure that this continues as a part of our program.

I assume you’ve gotten to go through some Oklahoma video in the last couple of days. Can you speak about how much of a transition you’ve seen in season from them, either with the new tailback (Rhamondre Stevenson) coming in at midyear or the progression of the new quarterback (Spencer Rattler), struggled a little bit early, has played much better late.

I think, one, when you talk about the running back, dynamic guy, can accelerate, can make guys miss, can create double digit runs, can find a seam that maybe is not always as big as it needs to be and makes things happen. So I think that that’s obviously helped.

Then the quarterback, he was a highly recruited guy out of high school. A lot of people wanted him. And if you look at his Game 1 continuity all the way up till now, he’s a guy that you can tell is getting more comfortable in the system, understanding more about where to throw the ball, where to go with it relative to the formations and what the defense is giving you.

And then he has the ability to make plays with his feet. He can pull it in the run game. He can extend plays in the pass game to get guys open. I think the one thing that we’ll have to be conscious of is the word “plaster” this week, meaning that even when you’re playing zone, as he continues to scramble, you’re going to have to basically match the guy in your area and cover him man to man because he really can extend plays for guys to get open, which creates explosives. And he’s doing a nice job with their offense.

Last year the defense obviously performed statistically at a better level, didn’t seem to make some of the mental mistakes. What do you pinpoint for that, like the third down situations against Alabama?

Well, I think when you go back and look at those individually, I think one was a hand to the face. I mean, there’s going to be a few of those within the game. Sometimes they’re called; sometimes they’re not. It’s a penalty. You’ve got to understand it. I think that anytime you have guys that are going in and out of the game, you’re going to sub relative to situations that come up. And you’ve got to be on top of what situation is coming up and be able to get into that.

So it’s we do have some new guys, guys that are learning every day. Guys are working hard every day and believing in the system. And I think a big reason to say that is if you look at the second half and the way the guys played and really fought their hearts out and really continued to grind, there’s obviously belief in what we’re doing because we were able to get it back within a six point game and have a chance to take the lead.

Somebody we haven’t talked a lot about, Brad Stewart, really kind of seemed to play all over the place Saturday against Alabama. What has he just kind of brought to the defense this year, and what do you hope to see from him against Oklahoma?

Brad was a guy that, based upon our DB situation, we moved to nickel, to our star position, which is really ability to play corner, have some run support, blitz, match guys underneath, man to man kind of deal. It’s a good role for him, and he embraced the role. He worked hard at it. And he brings a certain physicality to that. And that freed us up to keep other guys at other positions.

So I think he’s a guy that has continued to progress. Even though it was a new position for him, he’s a football player. He understood leverage. He understood blocks. He understood running to the ball, doing those kind of things. He understood how to cover guys as a safety. So it just kind of fit naturally. And, again, it allowed us to get our best players on the field and put him there to give us some flexibility with some other guys.

I know Dan [Mullen] and Kyle [Trask] especially don’t pay attention to the awards as much, at least from what they’ve said throughout the season. But Zach Carter, I mean, he was left off the All Coaches and there was a guy on there who had only played six games. What are your thoughts on that as well as the season he had for you?

Well, I’ll just speak about Zach because I haven’t seen the list. So I’ll just talk about Zach in itself.

I think, when you look at Zach, he’s a very talented player in the SEC. He’s a leader for our defense. I think the arrow is really up on him and rising as a player. He has the ability for us to play early downs as an end, okay? We can move him inside if we had to. But it creates a little bit of a mismatch when he’s playing end against tight ends and things like that. So that ability gives us a chance to win those situations there.

And then because of his versatility and his ability to learn and be creative, we move him inside on third down in passing situations to create mismatches inside. He’s got size. He’s got quickness. He can be stout at the point of attack. He’s really worked hard with Coach [Nick] Savage at becoming a better core strength guy. And you kind of see that on tape. And he’s had some really good games for us.

There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s a guy that creates match up problems. And that’s why we try to move him around a little bit, to create those problems. I think that as we move forward this year and next year and he moves forward in his career, I think we’re going to see that he does become a dominant player and the kind of player that is going to be able to play on Sundays.