Gators 3.0: How Jim McElwain Has Resurrected Florida Football

You are not going to layer on the swag and play football for Jim McElwain. You are not going to primp, boast, wear a visor, have a towel stuck in your pants or otherwise dress up for TV. You are not going to check your look with a pregame selfie.

And, man oh man, you are not going to aim a throat-slash at the camera. You saw/heard the ferocious side of McElwain, the Florida football coach, when Kelvin Taylor pulled that stunt September 12.

This week, you saw McElwain's decisiveness when defensive back Deiondre Porter was arrested for multiple felony counts and suspended indefinitely. You wonder if quarterback Will Grier, busted for PEDs, went public to confess on his own Monday or was persuaded by the first-year Florida coach.

This is Gators 3.0.

Steve Spurrier modernized the SEC and Florida (1.0). Urban Meyer unleashed more might (2.0). McElwain is putting in the steel (3.0).

In a week gone sideways—where Grier's season ended, LSU looms, the Gators are relying on the second-string quarterback, mourning over the iconic Gator Spurrier quitting and Porter arrested—the 53-year-old McElwain looks shrinkproof.

If not for the bumbling of Tennessee, which spit up a 13-point lead in the fourth quarter, Florida would be 5-1 and have less shine. But the Gators' determination was also a factor in the comeback against the Vols, and if you think Florida is simply lucky to be 6-0, what do you think about that 38-10 throttling of No. 3 Ole Miss?

Year	School	W-L
2012	Colorado State	4-8
2013	Colorado State	8-6
2014	Colorado State	10-2
2015	Florida	6-0

"As soon as he was hired, I tweeted out that Florida just got a hell of a coach," said Garrett Grayson, the backup quarterback for the New Orleans Saints and former quarterback for McElwain at Colorado State. "I mean, we went 3-9 three years in a row before he got there, and by his final season with us we were 10-3.

"When I first got to CSU, I never in a million years thought we would be ranked in the Top 25, and he got us there. He was not that flashy coach people were wanting, but he is going to get those players to buy in and focus on every little detail. Florida is going to win a lot of football games."

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Grayson said the players at Colorado State chafed at not being able to wear their kerchiefs and visors and dangling towels. They did not rebel, though.

"We played as a team, and we all looked the same as a team," Garrett said. "It's the only way he wanted it."

Grayson remembers the team's first meeting with McElwain after he was named coach at Colorado State on December 13, 2011. It wasn't an introduction. It was a scolding.

The quarterback did not dare take his eyes off McElwain as the new coach humbled the team. Grayson did not want to be caught looking around the room at his teammates, who were silently seething with each criticism.

"We're all sitting there after the meeting going, 'Who is this dude to call us out like that?' " Grayson said. "But then we watched some film, and he had obviously seen some stuff from the film he didn't like. We all realized we were trying to make a play for ourselves, instead of making a play for the team. That was something we picked up on.

"Then we started seeing the cliques, and this guy hung out with this guy and this guy hung out with that guy. What he said was something we needed to hear."

Grayson threw for 4,006 yards and completed 64 percent of his passes in 2014. He said McElwain used motion frequently to help him identify the defense as zone or man-to-man. McElwain used various formations and more motion to force defenses to stay in their base defense and not get exotic.

The Rams offense thrived, just as Alabama's did when McElwain was offensive coordinator there from 2008 to 2011. That's not a surprise to his boss at Alabama, Nick Saban.

"He does a really good job of coaching the quarterback," Saban said. "I think he can coach the quarterback that he has, to do what he (quarterback) can do. That's always important."

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

When Florida wanted to hire McElwain, there was a dustup over a $7.5 million buyout clause in his contract with Colorado State. That issue was settled, but there was still leftover baggage with his CSU staff. McElwain took only two Colorado State assistants with him to Florida. One of the assistants left behind, Greg Lupfer, did not get a coaching job this fall.

"I knew that if you didn't win you get fired," Lupfer told the Denver Post's Cameron Wolfe. "But I didn't think you could go 10-3 and lose your job. Sometimes loyalty is thrown out the door.

"You always get a sense of betrayal. I honestly thought he was going to take me."

McElwain's style also rankled CSU assistant Dave Baldwin. According to the Denver Post, Baldwin decided midway through the 10-3 season in 2014 he was going to hunt for another job at the end of the season. Coaching can be a salty business.

"I wasn't going to work for the man again," Baldwin, who is an assistant coach at Oregon State, told Wolfe. "I'm going to be happy where I'm going to be."

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What do people think of Jim McElwain now?

When Florida hired him 10 months ago, he was the football coach in the plain brown wrapper. There were yawns galore. McElwain had no curb appeal. He was the middle-aged guy with a run-game background at Alabama. Another straight branch from the Nick Saban tree, just like the guy he was replacing, Will Muschamp.

McElwain was the offensive coordinator at Alabama when the Crimson Tide won two national titles, but the general reaction was that the Gators whiffed. So far, it looks like Florida squared it up and hit it solid.

We'll see if it lasts. McElwain is just halfway through his first season. Can he recruit? How is his no-nonsense style going to play during a full season on the recruiting trail? It works for Saban, but not for all coaches who sheriff. Is the guy underneath that brown paper wrapper really Florida 3.0, or another bust like Muschamp?

An NFL player personnel director who is familiar with every SEC coaching staff said the Gators got it right. McElwain brought in Geoff Collins from Mississippi State to run the defense, and the Gators have been stifling at times on that side of the ball (11th nationally in scoring defense—14.3 points per game).

"They are building it the right way, approaching it the right way," the NFL player personnel director said. "Very detailed in their preparation, great teachers, great motivators, relentless workers, passionate about coaching and developing players.

"He was the right guy for the job. Always was."

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If you were driving in Gainesville this summer and suddenly saw one box truck, another box truck and then another, that was probably McElwain's new army moving into town. The coach said he was going to expand the Gators' organizational chart, and if it is anything like Alabama's, it means ambitious player personnel people and quality-control types moving into town with all of their belongings.      

McElwain told an NFL scout the Gators were going to devote new space in the football complex for the comfort of NFL evaluators so they would come around often to see his players. It is vintage Alabama.

Architects, plumbers and drywall workers in north Florida rejoice. New coach means new money. McElwain forbids swag on the field, but there is no restriction for swag off the field. The Gators are in a building boom.

But the first remodeling was on the field.

You saw it already. Rather, you heard it.

McElwain's tyrannical outburst on Taylor went coast-to-coast. Look at Taylor's actual gesture. It was not overly demonstrative; it was almost a quick, let-me-steal-a-moment-here thing. It wasn't much…except to McElwain.

For him, it was everything. It was a chance to address the culture of the Gators. Profanity flew. McElwain apologized, but he sent his message. It was really loud, but it was really clear. Did he purposely overdo it for the team to see?

"He believes in execution and character and players and people doing things the right way," Saban said. "He's got a great personality and a good sense of humor and relates well to players. It doesn't surprise me at all that he is doing a really good job."

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It doesn't surprise Gil Brandt, either.

Brandt would haul up Route 191/Gallatin Road from his place in Big Sky, Montana, to Bozeman to watch Montana State practice during the week. It was 1995 and he started paying attention to a young assistant coach. Brandt, the former general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, admired the young coach for paying attention to detail day after day in practice. He admired the young coach even more because he was the offensive coordinator, but he could coach the center and the long snapper and the wide receivers, too.

Brandt then saw that young coach, Jim McElwain, at the Oakland Raiders training camp soaking up X's and O's. Brandt kept tabs as McElwain went to Louisville, Michigan State and then the Raiders as an assistant coach.

"You could tell 20 years ago that he was going to be a really good head coach," Brandt said. "You could just tell."

Brandt said McElwain and Colorado State developed two players from west Texas who played at a Class 2A school in Bushland, Texas. Weston Richburg, a CSU center, was the first player ever drafted from the small town's high school. He was taken in the second round of the 2014 draft by the New York Giants. One round later, Crockett Gillmore, a tight end from Colorado State, was picked by the Baltimore Ravens.

"Tom Landry was off the charts with coaching each position, and Nick Saban is a heck of a coach for defensive backs, but I don't know if Saban could coach the offensive guards or the deep snappers like this guy can," Brandt said. "This guy understands the full spectrum of coaching and developing players."

McElwain, said Brandt, is why Florida will still be a tough out in Death Valley Saturday night without its starting quarterback.

"He'll have a plan to overcome losing that quarterback Grier," Brandt said. "He won't complain about it. The guy will find a way to be competitive without him."

Ray Glier covers college football for Bleacher Report.