For Billy Napier, it’s time to roll with DJ Lagway. The future is now. Or there won’t be a future for Napier in Gainesville. (Photo credit: Florida Gators)
It seems as though a quarterback controversy is a rite of passage for each Gator football coach, and Billy Napier is no exception.
For Napier, though, the strings he ultimately pulls here will likely determine whether or not he has a job in Gainesville moving forward. That’s a rather seismic development two weeks after the majority of the fanbase seemed to be on his side heading into the season. But that’s what happens when you get blown out by a rival, and then the backup QB comes in and lights up the scoreboard. More specifically, that’s what happens when your prized five-star freshman QB comes in and sets a freshman record at Florida with 456 passing yards in a single game, even if that game is against Samford.
Of course, it’s a little more complex than that. Graham Mertz has done far more positive than negative during his time at Florida. He won over his entire team with a gritty touchdown run against Tennessee last year, and his 2023 season actually ended with him giving all he had, plowing through a pair of Missouri defenders in a fight for the first down line. He was, to be frank, pretty bad two weeks ago against Miami, overthrowing routes when he wasn’t failing to even notice them in the first place, but one bad game should never, in a fair and just world, be grounds for benching a quarterback who also gave you the type of 2023 season that Mertz did.
But we don’t live in a fair and just world. The University of Florida made that pretty clear this weekend by abruptly deciding to ban grass parking twelve hours before kickoff of a home game despite no prior warning and a literal century of history of fans parking on the grass. On the contrary, we live in a world where unfair things are going to happen, and it’s up to us as adult human beings to react and respond to them accordingly.
And for Billy Napier, that means making a tough decision at the quarterback position.
The benefit to starting Graham Mertz is that, aside from one bad game, he rarely misfires on throws within 20 yards and seldom makes bad decisions that hurt the football team. He’s your safe play, the guy who takes what the defense gives you and doesn’t force any ill-advised throws. Sure, his upside is basically Doug Johnson minus the turnovers, but you can win ten games a year with Doug Johnson if you end up having a good defense and just a slightly-above-average offensive line. And even if you have neither, he won’t be the reason the team loses games. So to be very clear, by no means is Graham Mertz a bad quarterback.
And as an aside, there’s a level of deeply-held respect and appreciation for Mertz because of all the things I listed above, and because he’s a first-class young man who does things the right way. When DJ Lagway and walk-on Aidan Warner scored touchdowns, it was Mertz who was leading the cheers for them. That’s a great thing, because it shows that in Mertz, we have a guy who truly will do anything for that logo– which is all we as fans can ask for.
The problem with starting him is that he’s not the best quarterback you have on your roster, certainly not from a ceiling standpoint, and there’s nothing gained long-term by riding him to the end of the season. Nor is he the best athlete you could put behind the controls, which is going to be crucial if 40% of your offensive line remains a construction site for the rest of the year. And after what we saw– yes, against Samford, but still– it’s getting really, really hard to argue that Mertz gives Florida its best chance to win, both in the short term and the long term.
Even with the obvious handcuffs that Billy Napier places on the offense with his play-calling (go ahead and cite Russ Callaway or “the staff” as a whole, it’s still Napier’s offense), there’s just an element of “wow!” that DJ Lagway brings that Mertz does not. It’s really not something that’s up for debate, as there are certain things in life that are strictly factual, and Lagway being the superior athlete is one of those. Beyond the extra dimension of the offense that Lagway unlocks with his running ability, the way he can throw the football into a tight window when his feet aren’t even set is simply astounding.
And maybe I should stop making the argument for DJ Lagway from a “down the road” and futuristic standpoint. Because Lagway has those capabilities right now. Today. As in, during the week of practice leading up to the Texas A&M game, Lagway has the ability to make spectacular things happen, the kinds of things that make fans go, “wow!” Talent like him just doesn’t come around very often, and to not wring every ounce of production out of that talent possible is outright malpractice.
Of course, at some point in the DJ Lagway vs. Graham Mertz debate is going to come the fact that DJ Lagway is young, inexperienced, and will probably make mistakes as most freshmen do. Which is a fair point. I’d still argue that the “higher ceiling, lower floor” choice is easily preferable to the “lower ceiling, higher floor” choice, but you could rationally make the case that the absolute last thing in the world Billy Napier needs to do is have a freshman QB make a game-losing play. I disagree, I still say you’ve got to inject yourself with a dose of spectacular and deal with the adverse side effects, but I understand that thought process.
But Billy Napier has been pretty adverse to the “higher ceiling, lower floor” type of boom-or-bust moves throughout his short but historically bad tenure at Florida. His penchant for conservative, overly cautious decisions– most recently deciding to run the clock out on the final drive of the first half against a vastly inferior Samford defense with a 14-0 lead– has been largely responsible for placing his job in such jeopardy. Hell, Napier didn’t do anything to address the disastrous special teams unit until after two full years of fans screaming that it was a problem, and even then he did the bare minimum, hiring a second quality control off-field staffer.
And all of that is downright comical coming from a guy who became famous for declaring, “Scared Money Don’t Make Money.” Unfortunately, nobody in Gainesville is laughing. Rival fans are, but Gator fans aren’t.
For both supporters and haters of the Florida program, though, there’s one common denominator: nobody believes Billy Napier is capable of making moves that are best for the Florida Gators football program. (Hint: his 7-15 record against fellow Power Five schools might have something to do with that lack of trust.)
It feels as though Billy Napier is down to his last chance to fix that. Fate has brought him to a crossroads. He always knew he had a generational QB on his roster– that’s why he recruited him in the first place– and maybe, back when he recruited him, he was thinking he could stow him away for later, as in 2025. But if Napier isn’t careful, there isn’t going to be a later; it’s now or never.
If Florida loses to a very mediocre Texas A&M team with Graham Mertz at QB, as difficult as it is for me to even hint that it could be Mertz’s fault, I feel pretty confident in saying that it’s curtains on Napier’s career at Florida. And for all his slow, calculated deliveries at press conferences, and refusal to acknowledge that he might be doing badly enough at his job to merit not having it anymore, there’s no way he isn’t aware of the “noise in the system”– as a previous fired Florida coach once called it.
Lose with DJ Lagway, at the controls, however, and it’s potentially a different debate, pending the game tape we get on the lines of scrimmage. Because if you go with your hand-picked heir to the throne at QB and lose because he goes through the types of growing pains that most freshmen go through, there’s at least a chance that the booster base could let the Napier-Lagway combo try again the following week at Mississippi State. That chance does, to be clear, bank on Napier not doing anything stupid, which is obviously asking for a lot, but the path to continuing the experiment another week is there.
In the name of full transparency, I wrote this article before watching Billy Napier’s Monday press conference, in large part because I knew exactly what he was going to say. I think we all did. I’ve learned to take his press conference statements with a grain of salt. His stock line of “we intend to use both quarterbacks” just goes in one ear and out the other, because we saw what he meant by that against Miami, when Lagway didn’t make an appearance until after the game was already out of hand. So when Billy Napier says, “we intend to use both of them,” he really means, “I’m starting Graham Mertz and will use him until the game is decided one way or another, because I’m owed north of $25 million if the boosters feel that they have seen enough of me.”
But if Billy Napier has any intention of staying here, and coaching the Florida Gators for more than just another game or two, he has a real decision to make. He can stick to his guns, and go with the “safe” pick, the low-risk, low-reward play at QB who probably won’t make mistakes but also probably won’t do anything tremendous to help him win, either. Or, he can rethink the way he’s done things, walk back his sentiment, choose to live up to his “Scared Money Don’t Make Money” mantra for the first time in his 2.25 years at Florida, roll the dice, and go with the inimitable physical athlete who can carry an entire team.
Choose wisely, Billy. Your job depends on it.
And if you choose wrong, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
