\u201cFire Billy! \u2026 Fire Billy!\u201d rang throughout Ben Hill Griffin Stadium as the Gators beat Mississippi State by the skin of their teeth on Oct. 18.<\/p>\n
Florida fans got their wish the next morning when athletic director Scott Stricklin informed the Gators coach he would be relieved of his duties.<\/a><\/p>\n Stricklin replaced Napier with a different Billy,\u00a0 promoting wide receivers coach Billy Gonzales to interim head coach. Gonzales is off to a 0-3 start, but the record doesn\u2019t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n Gonzales made his debut against No. 5 Georgia in Jacksonville on Nov 1. While the Gators lost 24-20 to Georgia<\/a>, it was the closest game the Gators had played against the Bulldogs since a 44-28 win in 2020, when Kyle Trask threw for 474 yards to stars Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney. To put that in perspective, Napier went 0-3 against Georgia, each game by at least a 14-point margin.<\/p>\n Many fans were excited for the new play-calling after Napier\u2019s exit, but Florida\u2019s offense still missed out on opportunities even with quarterback coach Ryan O\u2019Hara calling the shots. The Gators went 2-for-11 on third down and 0-for-2 on fourth down.<\/p>\n Gonzales seemed to have resolved communications issues, such as instances when players weren\u2019t on the field for kicks, causing game delays or unnecessary timeouts for Florida. That success was only temporary.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCommunication was really good during the game,\u201d Gonzales said after the loss to UGA. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have any substitution errors, no delay of games, didn\u2019t have to call any timeouts for any phase because of any issue.\u201d<\/p>\n The Gators then were embarrassed in a 38-7 loss at Kentucky<\/a> after beating the Wildcats 48-20 in The Swamp the year before.\u00a0<\/p>\n Florida looked lost on the field and quarterback DJ Lagway threw three interceptions in the first half. Unlike Napier, Gonzales benched his five-star quarterback for a true freshman Tramell Jones Jr. in the second half.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll take complete responsibility, and that\u2019s on me,\u201d Gonzalez said after the loss to Kentucky. \u201cI told the players that after the game. They gotta keep together, do not splinter, continue to keep working and to keep pushing.\u201d<\/p>\n Florida then went into Oxford to take on No. 6 Ole Miss. After starting down 10-0, Gonzales\u2019 team rallied to take a 24-20 lead going into halftime, looking like a completely different team than the one that looked like it wanted to quit a week before.<\/p>\n \u201cWe played extremely hard,\u201d Gonzales said. \u201cIf you look at the film again, the players played hard.\u201d<\/p>\n Statistically, it was Florida\u2019s best game under Gonzales. The Gators went 6-for-13 on third down and had 326 yards of offense. Lagway looked the best he\u2019s had all year, apart from the win against then-No. 9 Texas. Florida went 3-for-3 in the red zone and was driving to take the lead with nine minutes left in the fourth quarter before a tipped pass was intercepted on third down.<\/p>\n \u201cI scrambled out, had Aiden [Mizell], he beat his defender. The guy in front of him just made a good play and tipped it,\u201d Lagway said. \u201cAnd at the end of the day, it\u2019s just that we got to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though Billy Gonzales is 0-3 as Florida\u2019s interim coach, it\u2019s not as bad as the record seems. He is 2-1 against the spread in his three games, covering against Georgia and Ole Miss. Gonzales came in to take over a team that has been all over the place all season, and didn\u2019t have an entire offseason in the head coaching role. For a team ranked No. 15 in the Associated Press Preseason Poll and now 11th in the SEC and out of bowl-game contention, Gonzales\u2019 main priority has been keeping this team on the rails.\u00a0<\/p>\n The game against the Rebels, one of the best teams in the nation, is a huge accomplishment. While Gonzales may not be Florida\u2019s head coach next season, he has shown leadership qualities that players look for in their coaches.<\/p>\n Florida has a chance to get Gonzales\u2019 first win Saturday against No. 23 Tennessee<\/a> under the lights in The Swamp and continue a 10-game home win streak against the Volunteers.<\/p>\n Category: College Football<\/a>, Gators Football<\/a>, SEC<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFire Billy! \u2026 Fire Billy!\u201d rang throughout Ben Hill Griffin Stadium as the Gators beat Mississippi State by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10858,3009,28,56,6082,30,29,6083,58],"class_list":["post-52768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-billy-gonzales","tag-billy-napier","tag-florida","tag-florida-football","tag-florida-gators-football","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-gator-football","tag-gators-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52768","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=52768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}