{"id":11561,"date":"2025-10-19T23:29:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T23:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/11561\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T23:29:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T23:29:06","slug":"florida-gave-billy-napier-everything-he-asked-for-and-got-500-football-in-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/11561\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida gave Billy Napier everything he asked for and got .500 football in return"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Stricklin thought Billy Napier<\/a> would get Florida off the rollercoaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSince we won our last national championship, we\u2019ve had years where we\u2019ve had some good success \u2014 high-level success,\u201d Stricklin told me in spring 2023 for a story that appeared in The Athletic. \u201cBut we have been incredibly erratic with some incomprehensible lows that you wouldn\u2019t expect the University of Florida to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Urban Meyer left Gainesville following the 2010 season, Florida had highs. It won the SEC East three times and finished with double-digit victories four times. But the dips were shocking. Will Muschamp\u2019s Gators went 4-8 in 2013 and lost to then-FCS Georgia Southern. Jim McElwain\u2019s Gators were 3-4 when McElwain was fired following a loss to Georgia in 2017. Dan Mullen\u2019s 2021 team was 5-6 when Mullen was fired.<\/p>\n

Stricklin wanted Florida football to feel less like a thrill ride and more like a ski lift \u2014 a calm, deliberate, steady ride to the top. That\u2019s why he hired Napier and effectively gave him a blank check to hire the kind of staff Steve Spurrier, Ron Zook, Urban Meyer, Muschamp, McElwain and Mullen never could. Napier was also the beneficiary of the $85 million Heavener Football Training Center, a palatial training complex that Gators brass started designing when McElwain was still the coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Napier never delivered that steady climb. On Sunday, he was fired after leading Florida to a 22-23 record<\/a> in three-plus seasons. Instead, all the issues that plagued Florida early in Napier\u2019s tenure \u2014 a lack of on-field discipline, plodding, predictable offensive playcalling \u2014 still hamstrung the Gators in his fourth season. Despite seriously upgrading the talent on the roster that Mullen left behind, Napier never came close to winning like Mullen did in his first three seasons.<\/p>\n

Napier promised a recruiting operation that would blanket the nation and compete with the likes of Alabama\u2019s Nick Saban<\/a> and Georgia\u2019s Kirby Smart<\/a> for players. Napier had resurrected his career working for Saban (and with Smart) after getting fired as Clemson\u2019s offensive coordinator following the 2010 season, and Napier dropped his share of Sabanisms as he built a jumbo-sized staff that mimicked Alabama and Georgia\u2019s in volume but not in effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Every year, Saban evaluated every position in the organization and made clear to every staffer what that person\u2019s role was and \u2014 most important \u2014 what it wasn\u2019t. At Napier\u2019s Florida, staffers weren\u2019t always sure who did what. Plus, Napier\u2019s distribution of then-limited on-field assistant coaching positions early in his tenure was head-scratching at times. Before the NCAA lifted rules limiting the number of on-field assistants before the 2024 season, Napier used analysts for the roles of quarterbacks coach and special teams coordinator. Those coaches weren\u2019t officially allowed to coach players in practices or games, but Napier considered it the best use of resources.<\/p>\n

So when Florida could never seem to put the correct number of players on the field for field goal block or when the field goal team ran onto the field while the Gators were trying to run a fourth-down play against Arkansas in 2023 \u2014 resulting in an illegal substitution penalty that ultimately cost Florida that game \u2014 it was a direct result of those decisions by Napier. And even though some of the staff names changed, the issues never got cleaned up. In a loss at Miami on Sept. 20, Florida sent out 10 men to attempt to block a Miami field goal. In Napier\u2019s final game, a 23-21 win against Mississippi State on Saturday, putting 12 men on the field for a fourth-quarter two-point conversion nearly cost Florida a win.<\/p>\n

Napier also presided over the single dumbest recruitment of the name, image and likeness era. Florida signed quarterback Jaden Rashada<\/a> in December 2022 after flipping his commitment from Miami the previous month, but Rashada never arrived on campus. A since-defunct collective attached to Florida had signed Rashada to a deal that purported to be worth up to $13.1 million over four years. When the booster who was supposed to fund the deal balked at the amount, the contract was terminated. Ultimately, Florida released Rashada from his letter-of-intent. He then went to Arizona State and Georgia and now plays for FCS school Sacramento State. Rashada is currently suing Napier in federal court alleging fraud. Napier, through his attorney, has denied Rashada\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

The episode embarrassed Florida and called into question Napier\u2019s ability to evaluate quarterbacks. But Napier rebounded on that front as the NIL era evolved. He did bring in better talent, and the crown jewel was class of 2024 quarterback D.J. Lagway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the improved roster never produced better results because Napier refused to let someone else handle offensive play-calling even after he proved ineffective at the role in his first three seasons. Hiring an OC was supposed to be a condition of Napier\u2019s continued employment when Stricklin decided to keep him in November 2024. However, when Napier declined to hire a playcalling OC between the 2024 and 2025 seasons, his message was clear: He would stand or fall doing it his way.<\/p>\n

At the time, there was reason for optimism that it might work. After a rough start to 2024 during which the decision was made to fire Napier, only to be reconsidered, the Gators rallied around Napier and then-freshman Lagway, who was forced into the starting role when Graham Mertz tore an ACL at Tennessee. After Lagway led Florida to late-season upsets of LSU and Ole Miss, it seemed the Gators had finally turned a corner under Napier.<\/p>\n

Florida staffers convinced defensive tackle Caleb Banks<\/a> to put off the NFL for one more year. They returned Jake Slaughter<\/a>, who looked at the end of 2024 like the best center in college football. Tailback Jadan Baugh<\/a> and linebacker Myles Graham<\/a> looked ready to make big leaps as sophomores.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And of course, former five-star recruit Lagway had offered a tantalizing sample of how high his ceiling could be. But Lagway\u2019s offseason was the first warning sign that the promise shown at the end of 2024 would never be fulfilled. Lagway had a nagging shoulder injury dating back to the 2024 season-opener that forced him to stop throwing for most of the offseason. He didn\u2019t throw in spring practice, and various other injuries popped up and limited him throughout the summer.<\/p>\n

Still, optimism remained. That all came crashing down week two in an 18-16 loss to USF. The Gators couldn\u2019t control the line of scrimmage, and Lagway just looked rusty. The following week at LSU, Banks came back from a foot injury only to be lost again late in the game, and five Lagway interceptions spoiled an excellent performance from the defense in a 20-10 loss.<\/p>\n

Against Miami, Lagway threw for an abysmal 61 yards and the Gators got dominated on both lines of scrimmage in a 26-7 loss. Miami\u2019s Mario Cristobal, who was hired the same week as Napier, seemed to have his team ready to compete for a College Football Playoff berth and a national title. Meanwhile, Florida remained stuck exactly where it was when Napier arrived.<\/p>\n

A home win against Texas was bittersweet; it ultimately only served to remind everyone what could have been had the Gators\u2019 on-field management matched their roster construction. A loss at Texas A&M and the win against Mississippi State \u2014 a maddening reminder that nothing was ever easy with Napier \u2014\u00a0sealed the deal.<\/p>\n

In a way, Napier achieved what Stricklin hoped he would. Napier got Florida off the roller coaster.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, he crashed the Gators into the valley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott Stricklin thought Billy Napier would get Florida off the rollercoaster.\u00a0 \u201cSince we won our last national championship,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10595,28,30,29,9276],"class_list":["post-11561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-billy-napier-99-murray-county","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-regwall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}