New Year’s 6 bowl games are always a bit tricky. Teams that play in them are obviously some of the best teams in the country, but unless you’re playing in the two NY6 games that are also College Football Playoff semifinals, it means your season didn’t end the way you wanted.

So yes, the Florida Gators making it to the Peach Bowl in Dan Mullen’s first year with the program is huge, but the Gators also could have potentially done much more.

Still, Mullen spoke about the Peach Bowl during a press conference on Monday, and per a press release from the Peach Bowl, he discussed how he’s keeping the Gators motivated:

“I’ve been in this situation before,” he said. “Very rarely are you going to go undefeated. That shouldn’t be the goal. I don’t ever plan on losing a game, but very rarely does that ever happen. So what you have to do is always keep your focus on, are you getting better? The whole goal to me is, are we a much better football team at the end of the year than at the beginning of the year? How have we grown and worked to continue to improve? Because that’s what you can control a lot of times. And that’s what we talked about after the Kentucky game and the guys continued to work and continued to buy in. We ended up having a pretty successful season.”

The Gators can also use the fact that they’ve never beaten Michigan as motivation to play well on Dec. 29.

Getting a 10th win would also be huge for Mullen in his first year at the helm in Gainesville.