Florida coach Dan Mullen has sky-high expectations this year for the Florida Gators:
“I expect us to go undefeated this year,” Mullen told the Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday, via 247sports.
“I’m not guaranteeing it, because I’ll be honest with you, I have two national championship rings here at Florida and we didn’t go undefeated in either of those two seasons. We still won a national championship.”
For Mullen’s Florida Gators to go undefeated this season, that means they’d have to defeat UGA, his nemesis in the SEC East. The Bulldogs have posted three straight wins against the Gators.
Mullen is known to say brash things every offseason, including verbal jabs at Georgia. For Wednesday’s boldness, Mullen said it’s all about instilling confidence in his team.
“When I look at our schedule every year, I assume we are (going to go undefeated),” Mullen said. “If I looked at it (the other) way and said, ‘Hey, I don’t see us winning that game,’ I guess I’d tell the coaches, ‘Hey, why don’t you guys go home? We’re not going to win this one anyway,’ so this time of year you assume you go undefeated every year.
“If we don’t say stuff like that, nobody has anything to talk about. … People have to understand there’s a big difference between confidence and cockiness. When you sit there and you say, ‘Hey, we expect to win the game this weekend,’ that’s not cockiness, that’s your confidence in ‘Hey, I’m going to work hard and prepare the right way.'”
