Editor’s Note: This is a transcript from an interview with new head football coach Dan Mullen conducted by sports editor Justin Ammon and editor in chief Carl Smith. Listen to the podcast online at reflector-online.com.
Reflector: Coach, has it been tough being a new father and a new head coach simultaneously?
Mullen: Well, I think they go hand in hand because when I took the job, I actually adopted about a 100 football players, you know? I adopted 100 kids in December and then had another one born in February, so I think the only difference is at night, the other 100 go sleep somewhere else and the one sleeps under my own roof. They seem to be around the house a whole bunch and I spend as much time with the other 100 as I do with my newborn. It’s been a lot of fun.
Reflector: How’s the transition been to Starkville?
Mullen: Transition’s been great, the people, the reception, the student body, the Mississippi State fans, the people of the state of Mississippi and the whole community of Starkville has really welcomed my wife and I with open arms, so I think that’s made the transition here very easy.
Reflector: There’s been some weird news being generated about Jackie Wayne [Sherrill] sitting in on one of our practices. How’s it been with that and how’s it been to be able to call him for advice every once in a while?
Mullen: It’s great, I talked to him earlier today. Obviously, most great programs when you go around the country, they have former coaches that have been there, former retired coaches especially guys that have led teams to an SEC Championship game, you know, they’re around the program a whole lot. I know Jackie doesn’t live here in town now, but you know what, it’s been great having someone with experience, that’s been here, that has won a lot of football games here, that you can call and ask advice to. And the nice thing with Jackie is not just here, he’s won a lot of football games everywhere he’s been. So having that ability to have somebody that you can lean on and call on for advice is a great thing. It’s great having him around to help out our program and giving that advice as somebody with as much experience as he has.
Reflector: Jackie won back in the 90s with a strong running game and defense. Some diehard fans think that maybe the only way we can win – to kind of “out tough” our opponents. Do you think we have the resources to take a different approach?
Mullen: Yeah, there’s a lot of different ways to win football games. Out toughing your opponents and playing great defense, those are two critical parts of it. When people look at it, you need to play great defense, and there’s a lot of different ways to play great defense. One is to get two first downs every time you have the ball and have great special teams and punt and pin the other people deep. If you put the ball inside the 10-yard line, the offense’s chances of scoring are 3 percent. If you start in the drive at the 40-yard line, their chance of scoring is 40 percent. So special teams and offense play an awful great deal in playing great defense, too. I think when you look at the entry season of the game of football, there’s a lot of different ways to win. Playing great defense is definitely our number one goal and our plan to win. We’re going to play great defense here and the offense is responsible for that, the special teams are responsible for that, and obviously the defense is responsible for that. On being a physical team, that’s just what you’re going to see with us. We’re going to be a very, very physical team. I think the plan to win and how you people win football games is never changed. You better play great defense, score in the red zone, win the turnover battle and have great special teams. Besides that, there’s a million different ways to do each one of those things, but those four things had better get done to win games.
Reflector: After a lot of the practices that we’ve had, what do you think is the strongest part of our team so far? What is the part you think that needs the most improvement?
Mullen: The overall team effort has been real good. They’re trying to do things and trying to embrace the program that we have going right now. Positionally out there, I’ve been pleased that our linebacker core has some depth to it, which is good. Even if a guy gets tweaked at practice, another guy just steps right in and they continue to perform. We need to improve on the defensive line. I’ve been pleased with the offensive line, it’s come along pretty well. It’s just hard to say. The running back position looked like it was going to be a strength of the team and then it just suffered two major injuries right there. That’s hard to overcome. When you go down our third string, the guy who was running our third string is now starting for us, you know, Anthony Dixon. There’s going to be drop off, the fourth string guy Robert Elliot wasn’t even out there practicing. You’re talking three of the top four tailbacks haven’t practiced much, that’s going to hurt any position.
Reflector: How much improvement have our wide receivers shown?
Mullen: They’re coming along slowly. One, that’s a crew that’s had a bunch of injuries through spring, that’s a crew that obviously wasn’t very deep to start with; they just didn’t have very many receivers here. We need to go recruit a lot of receivers.
Reflector: Your recruiting class was loaded with receivers.
Mullen: Yeah, some. I think people look at it and they look at that stuff and they’re not all going to be receivers; some guys are going to play defensive back, some other things in there, there’s one or two other guys that were actually signed and played some junior college that aren’t going to be able to come here. We just need to continually recruit receivers to get that position built up, hopefully get Brandon McRae back healthy next fall, and that’ll start to build up the depth that we need in the receiver position.
Reflector: How long do you think it’s going to be until the depth of your recruiting class starts making an immediate impact on playing?
Mullen: We expect this year’s recruits to come in and play right away. We don’t recruit guys to sit on the bench and red shirt, we expect them to come in and play right away. Hopefully they come in – they get about a month of summer school before they start up the season – so hopefully in that time they can kind of get adjusted to college life and then have the ability to come in and make an impact on our team next season.
Reflector: Speaking of new recruits, I know that this Tyler Russell kid has generated a lot of excitement. You think he’ll be given every opportunity to compete and play at the position?
Mullen: He’ll be given the opportunity to compete next fall. One of things I think you’ll see is playing quarterback in the SEC is not the easiest thing out there . Tim Tebow’s freshman year, he averaged eight plays a game. That was the year before he won the Heisman; he only played average in eight plays a game for the entire season. People look and say, “No, there’s no way. He did a lot more for that Florida championship team,” but he only played eight plays a game. That’s about what he was ready to play at that point. Tyler’s going to be given the opportunity to come in here and compete. I think one of the things though is there’s going to be a big learning curve for him. Obviously I wouldn’t have recruited him if I didn’t think he was going to be a great quarterback in the future, it’s just going to be a learning curve for him getting used to the college game.
Reflector: About the depth of our secondary, because we lost Derek Pegues who was just a complete game-changer, not only on defense but on special teams as well, how are they looking this year?
Mullen: They’re doing pretty good. The two guys to me that I think are probably going to – we’re going to make an improvement even over where we were last year with Marcus Washington and Charles Mitchell. You lose Pegues, but I think they’re actually going to be much better than he was even. When you have that, you’re actually upgrading that position a little bit right now. It’s important for us just to keep the young guys. There’s also some young guys in there, so we don’t have a lot of depth or experience there, [so just] to keep growing.
Reflector: Talking about depth and the talent of our players, we all know you come from the juggernaut program that is Florida. Do you think any of our current players could actually start for Florida?
Mullen: Yeah, there’s several on our team that I think have to ability to. What our guys are learning to do is compete, play as hard as some of those kids do at Florida. I think that’s what makes Florida good is how hard their team plays, maybe not the talent, I don’t know, I mean Florida, you don’t see the NFL draft coming up right now, you’re not sitting here talking about all the first round picks from the University of Florida in this year’s draft. What they do is they have a great team that knows they’re playing to win, that plays the game extremely hard, and if we can get that done, we have enough talent here to be successful.
Reflector: You can teach X’s and O’s all day long, zone/man coverage, but how do you teach that fire, that drive to win?
Mullen: Well, that’s what the game’s all about. The X’s and O’s, they’re OK. If you look at it, if there was a perfect offense or a perfect defense, everybody would run the same offense or same defense. It really comes down to what you believe in, your execution of what you do and how hard your team plays. The most invested team usually wins that game on Saturday, so we’ve got to make sure that we are making on the field and off the field, we’re the most invested football team.
Reflector: When Coach Croom came in 2004, there was a ton of excitement generated for our program. The same type of excitement, if not more, has been generated upon your arrival. With all respect to Coach Croom, his strategy didn’t quite pan out. How do you think your football philosophy differs and how it could succeed where, I say he didn’t succeed but .
Mullen: I have no idea what his strategy was so I don’t know how mine would differ from his. I know exactly what mine is. I’m following a very similar plan that was used when I got hired as an assistant at Bowling Green, an assistant at Utah and as an assistant at Florida. There’s some tweaks and we’ve made our own adjustments to it, but overall, the plan hasn’t changed a whole lot on what it takes to build a successful program for us. It’s worked those three times, so I’m certainly hoping it’s going to work here for us.
Reflector: How many games do you think we’re going to win this year?
Mullen: I have no idea. I look at our schedule and I don’t plan on losing any. I figure if there was a game on the schedule and I said, “Boy, I don’t think we’re going to win that game,” I guess I’d give the staff a week off and let the boys off practice if we’re not going to win the games. So as I look at it in the regular season, I expect us to go 12-0.
Reflector: Which game are you looking forward to the most? Is it the Florida game?
Mullen: Jackson State [the first game]. I’m looking forward to that Jackson State game. I don’t pay attention to who’s on schedule after them at this point. The next team, we’ll get ready for them that next week. That Jackson State game is the one that stands out pretty big for me right now.
Reflector: What would you say to all the fans to encourage them to come out to the Maroon and White game this weekend?
Mullen: I think this is a great opportunity, one, to see the new football program and see how the football program’s going to be run. But also, you take a weekend on a college campus where you can bring your friends and your family up, admission’s free of charge, it’s not going to cost you even a penny, just come on up, and you get to see the excitement on a college campus. We’ve got a great baseball game going on, there’s all different other events, and all the tailgating and all the celebration in the parking lot, you get to come and watch some football, I know there’s a concert after the game. I think it’s a great weekend to come up to Mississippi State, to spend some time here and fall in love with this campus, the student body and all the excitement of things that are happening. With all those activities, it’s going to be one heck of a family fun weekend.
Reflector: I think you were pushing for a possible 40,000 fans to come out to the game. Do you think that record will be set?
Mullen: I hope so. I certainly hope so. I’ll be there and my family will all be there and the people we know, our friends will be there, so the rest is up to the Mississippi State student body and the fans. What do we have, 18,000 students here at this school? So if every student brings three people, we shatter that record right there. That’s all we need. Each student has to come to the game and have three people show up with them. If we can do that, we’re going to shatter the 40,000 mark.
Reflector: Last year’s game, the regulation ended in a 0-0 tie. What do you predict for this year?
Mullen: Well, I don’t know. I’ll tell you what, though, that’s the tough thing. Everyone should have been happy last year because it means you had a heck of a defense coming back right there. I guess in this year’s game if we score in the 40s on both sides of the ball, everybody will be shaking their heads and a little concerned about the defense. When you play each other in a game like that, I don’t know what a good result is; a lot of points means a bad defense, no points means a bad offense, or a lot of points can mean a great offense and no points can mean a great defense.
Reflector: You said we’re not going to be a passing team, we’re not going to a running team, we’re going to be a team that does both things on the ball. How long do you think it would take recruiting to get a spread offense type system here that you ran in Florida?
Mullen: Well, that’s what we’re going to do. Florida’s 50-50 run-pass. Our goal is always to have over 200 yards rushing and passing every single game and that balance at the end of the season. I think Florida last year was 55 percent run, 45 percent pass. That’s my version of it; I still want to be a balanced, balanced football team. At the end of the year, if we end up 50-50, we did a heck of a job to keep the defense honest. Our goal, the spread offense, and there’s a lot of different ways to do it and you say, “Well, you need four receivers, five receivers.” You don’t need anything. All we’re doing is trying to make the defense defend the entire field and try to create advantageous matchups one on one out there in the field.