Florida Gators head football coach Dan Mullen had plenty of explaining to do on Monday in his first in-person press conference with the Florida football press corps since prior to the 2020 season’s coronavirus-related restrictions.
And to his credit, he did a lot of explaining — and was honest about what he couldn’t explain, either — in a half-hour session that ranks with his most forthcoming and unvarnished since coming to Gainesville.
After a preamble in which he made Florida’s game against Samford sound like a showdown when it’s most important because of how the Gators will honor veterans and military personnel as part of a “Salute to Service” program timed to the game’s proximity to Veterans Day, Mullen responded to questions about what compelled him to fire Todd Grantham and John Hevesy and what Florida needs to do to right its trajectory with the sort of plain-spoken honesty that fans have recently craved from him.