HOOVER, Ala. – Day 1 of SEC Media Days saw the Florida Gators lead off as the first of 14 schools taking part in the four-day event which got underway Monday at the Wynfrey Hotel.

Head coach Dan Mullen took the stage first, followed by defensive lineman Zach Carter and linebacker Ventrell Miller.

Mullen addressed the media for 20 minutes before taking questions, followed by Carter and Miller who spoke about the Gators’ upcoming campaign.

Below are three highlights from what the Florida contingent had to say:

Given your quarterback scenario that you mentioned a moment ago, do you feel like you'd maybe go back to your bread-and-butter roots? Is there a tweak to your system that you think these guys will offer?

Mullen: "I don't know what my bread and butter is, because we've been all over the place with every different style of quarterback. If you go back, even being a coordinator, you go back to the Alex Smiths and the Chris Leaks, through the Tebows, to Tyler Russell and Dak Prescott. There's been so many different variations.

“I think the key to it is, and one of the reasons we've been successful is, never try to take a square peg and put it into a round hole. It's identifying what our guys do really well and build around the strengths of not just the quarterback, but the offense as a whole.

“We will go to do that this year and build around the strengths of our quarterbacks.”

What caught your eye initially about Emory Jones, like going back years ago? Where has he grown the most in all this time you've known him, and what are your expectations of him?

Mullen: “I think you know me with quarterbacks, I have very, very high expectations of my quarterbacks. My expectations are very high. It goes back to recruiting. When I got hired at Florida, I had a message that Emory sent me. I just sent him a text. He was committed to another school at the time, and he sent a text.

“And he says, ‘Coach, when this shakes out, be ready. I want to be your quarterback.’ And not, 'I want to look at Florida, I want to consider this or I'm thinking about flipping schools.' It was, 'I want to be your quarterback.'"

“So that part, when you look at who guys are, is so critical and who they become. Then, if you look at his progression—I mean, he came in as a very celebrated high school player, highly ranked player, and I think for a couple years now, he's learned, he's grown, he's developed. He's a completely different player than he was when he walked in, in his understanding of the game and in his maturity.

“I have a lot of respect for guys. I think, if you watch and you look at a lot of guys who have had success throughout the years, he had an opportunity to look at a Kyle Trask, who went from pretty much an unrecruited player, who came in and worked, prepared, bought his time, learned how to do it the right way, and all of a sudden was a Heisman Trophy finalist and now is an NFL player and a second-round draft pick in the NFL.

“When you look at that, you look at a Dak Prescott, who didn't play for his first several years on campus, and now is one of the highest paid athletes in the country this year. I think Emory has shown the maturity early on that it wasn't 'I have to play from day one,' it's 'I have to continue to be developed from day one to prepare for my moment and my time,' and that's what he's been able to do.

“As I said, you're looking at a guy, as he comes into the season, he's not coming in with a stat line of nothing. He's coming in with a stat line that he's played in key times in significant games. I think that's huge, and it's prepared him for this time.”

What’s the biggest reason that your defense never figured it out last year?

Mullen: “I don't know about that, because I think, if you look in different games, we're very maybe erratic defensively at different times, but there's a lot of different things that go into that. There's some games we played really, really well defensively. There's games where I thought we played well, but statistically maybe weren't great.

“And if you look in a lot of those games, if you were going to play us on the other side of the ball, you had to play a different style game maybe than you wanted to or expected to, and take a lot of chances, because we were going to try to score points and [make the opponent] keep up with us, or we jumped out to a big lead and you were just kind of—you know, just throw caution to the wind to try to put up yards and points as fast as possible.

“There's other games, one or two early in the year, I certainly think the learning curve of missing a spring practice and the time off and the speed of the game of going to tackle live for the players, and the time off of not being able to do that, I think that showed early in the season, and that improved as the year went on.

“I don't know if there's one thing to say that it was statistically was not where we want to be, but when I look and I go through game-by-game situations, I think it's easy to identify in this game, here were our issues, and it wasn't one specific thing.”