Dan Mullen announces hiring of David Turner as Florida's new DL coach
Florida has made the hiring of David Turner official. He fills the vacancy at defensive line coach left by Sal Sunseri, now at Alabama.
Multiple outlets reported Friday that Turner would be the new Gators defensive line coach, but UF did not make an official announcement until Sunday.
“David is a great addition to our coaching staff and the Gators football family,” head coach Dan Mullen said in the official announcement. “We spent some time together at Mississippi State and he has produced numerous first-round picks in the NFL over this 30-plus years of coaching. Having spent 16 years in the SEC, he understands that this is a line of scrimmage league and our defensive line will continue to play fast, physical and aggressive under his leadership.”
Turner has 33 years of coaching experience, including four with Mullen at Mississippi State (2009, 2013-15). Turner left MSU after 2015 for Texas A&M. He spent two seasons on the Aggies staff (2016-17) before the coaching change in College Station. In 2018, Turner coached defensive line at UTSA. As Mullen mentioned, Turner has a total of 16 seasons of SEC coaching experience with stops at Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Kentucky, Alabama and Vanderbilt.
Turner has coached several players to reach the NFL, including 2017 No. 1-overall selection Myles Garrett, 2012 No. 12-overall selection Fletcher Cox, Josh Boyd, Jovan Haye, Kyle Love, Pernell McPhee and Preston Smith.
Welcome to Florida @coachdt48! Excited to have you and your family in Gainesville and work with you again. pic.twitter.com/RVoyZOBcvB
— Dan Mullen (@CoachDanMullen) January 27, 2019
Featured image via Dan Mullen on Twitter.
Solid hire and potentially an upgrade as a recruiter. Add to that a home run DB coach hire that is definitely an upgrade both as a coach and a recruiter. Coach Mullen continues to not be able to do any wrong.
Not sure it’s an upgrade from a coaching stand point. Sal’s experience and track record is hard to beat but i agree with you on recruiting. I can see this being an upgrade by having someone more personable on the road meeting with recruits and their family. With that, Dan oversees and runs so much of this program that i’m not worried about the fall off in coaching at that position
He has a very impressive coaching resume including some impressive names, history will Mullen, tons of history in the SEC — so it may not be much of a drop off in coaching. But I agree, that’s the closing thing to an iffy point in the new hires. All in all, great job.