Go Away Breh
Franks was not great that first year.
In fact he was about to get replaced by Trask after getting blown out by Mizzou at home but trask got injured and then we got on a lucky streak against some bad teams: Will Muschamp's SCar (who whooped our asses before another classic Muschamp collapse in the Swamp, thankfully in our favor that time), fcs Idaho, Willie Taggart's Sad Indians, and then a disinterested Michigan who had playoff hopes and gave up 60 in the Game that year.
Basically, Franks "turned it around" against some really trash teams to end the year. Kudos to Dan and him for that, because Napier couldn't even do that, but really not that impressive if you look at it closely.
Then Franks got exposed vs Miami in Manny diaz's first game ever as a HC, producing this gem:
And then we were about to lose to Kentucky for the second year in a row when Franks broke his leg at the end of the 3rd quarter and Trask led a miracle come back (yes Dan was that close to going 0-2 vs kentucky after we beat them 31 years straight. Still finished 2-2 against them too).
If Franks didn't break his leg, that might've been a 7-5/6-6 type team. We would've fired Dan sooner, and that would've been that.
But Trask coming in when he did really saved Mullen from being a total disaster, instead of being just a partial one.