Your back’s against the wall, Billy Napier. Let’s see what you do now. (Photo via Florida Gators)
As we talked about both in written form and on our YouTube show, this offseason for Billy Napier is make or break. He’s either going to make the moves needed to return the Gators back to glory and at least give us all some semblance of hope that he’s capable of doing so, or he’s going to be doing something else in 2025.
We hinted at what those things are, but today, let’s discuss them in more depth.
1: Shore up a top five recruiting class
If Billy Napier does nothing else, it is absolutely essential that he hold onto this 2024 recruiting class- the one that, if we’re being real with ourselves, is frankly the only reason he still has a job.
Hairline fractures have already appeared on the payload’s front hull: Wardell Mack, Jamonta Waller and Nasir Johnson have already flipped. Of course, hairline fractures are, by themselves, harmless. Accrue enough of them, though, and the entire thing shatters into a million pieces- and if that metaphor comes to fruition with Billy Napier and this 2024 recruiting class, it will spell the death of his Florida tenure.
Now, let’s back off the ledge for a second before we jump off it. There’s really only one more current member of the class (Amaris Williams) who feels like a flight risk at this point, and Florida does have irons in the fire for other top targets- some of whom are committed elsewhere, and some of whom are not. So this is not to say that a complete and utter collapse with this recruiting class is imminent- or even going to happen at all. It’s just that Napier has to stop further damage from happening.
But there’s also no denying that the momentum that Billy Napier had been building on the trail has stalled out, as Florida’s class has slipped from #3 in the 247Sports Composite rankings to #5. That, if it turns out to be the Gators’ final ranking, is fine- but it also fails to account for the fact that a pair of perennial heavyweights in the Lone Star State with booster bases that are basically Fracking Lords (translation: they’re really rich) are quietly sitting behind them in the rankings and waiting to make their moves. Texas (currently a top ten team) and Texas A&M (which just hired a proven winner in Mike Elko) still have plenty of room to take more commits in their class, too, and if they hit on a slew of eleventh-hour targets and Florida misses on theirs, you can kiss that top five class goodbye, as Florida’s backup plan takes are backup plans for a reason.
Part of this is the portal. Billy Napier is going to have to hit that portal hard. And I do mean “hit.” Various players will enter the transfer portal in the coming days and weeks, and unlike a year ago, Napier is going to have to strike quick, while at the same time not compromising his evaluation process that he’s so famous for- one that clearly let him down with Damieon George and Jalen Kimber.
In particular, Florida is going to need at least two big-time offensive linemen, an edge rusher on the defense, a corner, and a veteran linebacker presence to add to the team in 2024. There’s definitely talent in all those spots, but experience and depth are major problems and the portal can help fix that.
As it stands today, Florida has one guy left on the high school board it absolutely can’t miss on in Jordan Seaton and a few other miscellaneous guys at various positions they’d really love to have, like DL Dealyn Evans (Texas A&M commit), ATH Jameer Grimsley (Alabama commit) and Chance Robinson (Miami commit). But Seaton is the big fish at play here, a five-star offensive lineman who could start on day one as a true freshman. And with what’s hopefully a new offensive line coach… uh… well, actually, about that…
2: Hire a true offensive line coach
I’m not here to blanket-blame Billy Napier for everything that’s gone wrong. I do believe in intellectual honesty, and fairness. And in the name of intellectual honesty and fairness, I do believe that his two-OL coach system was an innovative idea. It was worth the attempt- after all, the offensive line is the most important position in the sport outside of QB and possible the defensive line, so why not put extra emphasis on that position with two position coaches? So yes, I do give him points for the attempt.
But it’s beyond obvious now that it’s not working, and while some of the offensive line’s failures can also be attributed to a plain miss in portal addition Damieon George (which is also their fault), there’s just no way to debate that it was anything other than a failed experiment. Putting aside the fact that two offensive line coaches cost you a spot on your coaching staff somewhere else- and boy, oh boy, did Florida pay for that elsewhere- a laundry list of recruiting misses and failure to develop either a top-tier offensive line or a competent one with some depth behind it is ample proof that it’s not worth the extra staff spot.
So Billy Napier must do what Dan Mullen refused to do: part ways with longtime assistants, namely Rob Sale and Darnell Stapleton, and go shopping for a top-flight offensive line coach. I don’t pretend to know the exact workings of Florida’s financial situation, but to act like Florida is somehow hampered by a shallow pool of choices here is just plain lazy. Obviously, Billy Napier isn’t going to take a current head coach or position coach away from their current schools to a demoted role as the offensive line coach, but beyond that, Billy Napier needs to think big.
Maybe he can bring Ohio State offensive line coach Justin Frye back home? Frye was a GA at Florida in 2009 and 2010, working a little bit with the Pouncey brothers, before his career took off (we’ll ignore that some of it was with Steve Addazio) and eventually he wound up at UCLA in 2018, working the o-line for Chip Kelly. Four years later, Frye bounced and reunited with Ryan Day, with whom he’d worked for a few years at Boston College.
Here’s the problem: Frye is making an even one million dollars to coach the Buckeyes’ offensive line this year and is rumored to be a head coaching candidate at Indiana. Here’s the solution: if he isn’t given a head coaching job, make him an offer he can’t say no to. Sure, I realize that’s easy for me to say as I’m not a multi-million dollar UF donor, and I’m not even saying it’s Frye or bust, necessarily, but I am saying that this OL coach hire is one that Florida absolutely cannot afford to miss on. And while it may be difficult to land an offensive line coach of such a caliber, that’s just one feature of the hole Napier’s got to dig himself out of.
Again, it doesn’t have to be Frye, necessarily. Florida could also go and retrieve someone like Phil Trautwein from Penn State, who was an All-SEC selection for the Gators during their 2008 national championship run and is a great recruiter for the Nittany Lions. The point is, it needs to be someone like that, someone of that excellent caliber who’s coaching Florida’s offensive line.
On the topic of offensive assistants…
3: Hire an offensive coordinator
We’re light years past the point of debating this one. Billy Napier needs to hire an offensive coordinator. And not just so that he can say he hired an offensive coordinator, mind you, but one who can shake up the offense and oversee a massive improvement in not just the statistics, but the way the unit functions from play to play.
I wrote my list of ideal candidates back in October, and while some have come off the board already (admittedly, Jeff Lebby was a bit pie-in-the-sky, as he’s already taken a new job as the Mississippi State head coach) there are still two viable candidates who remain.
Number one of these is Jeff Scott, the long time Clemson assistant who also coached at South Florida and has deep ties to the Sunshine State. To me, this would be a solid hire, albeit not ideal; Scott’s offense is a bit too similar to Napier’s for me to get excited about it. But there’s also the thinking that with Scott calling the plays, that hat gets taken off of Napier’s head and there’s less stress holding him back from doing other in-game duties correctly. So I can understand this as the safe hire.
The other one would be Ben Arbuckle, and there’s a lot more of the risk/reward matrix at play here. He’s not known as the elite recruiter that Scott is- not that he’s a bad recruiter, per se, he just isn’t known to be a gangbuster on the trail. But his offense sure does look more imaginative than Napier’s, with waves of receivers flying in every different direction and pass concepts that are specifically designed to free up a primary receiver.
And if Napier wants to really pull a magic trick, maybe he could even lure Ryan Grubb away from Washington, where he’s teamed up with Kalen DeBoer to build an offensive machine. Grubb won’t come cheap, but as is the case with Frye, maybe it’s time that stops being an issue and Florida does what needs to be done to be a contender again. Is it likely that Florida hires Grubb? No; hence the categorization as a “magic trick”.
While we’re talking about magic tricks, perhaps the most impressive thing Napier can do is keep one of his best players from vanishing into thin air…
4) Keep Trevor Etienne
The rumors that have been floating around this week are very, very real. Trevor Etienne is considering hitting the transfer portal. Nothing is official as of this publication, early in the morning on the final day of November 2023. Etienne has not entered the portal yet- in part because it’s not officially open. But don’t delude yourself: Trevor Etienne is most definitely thinking about it.
As Gator fans, the idea of losing your electric big-play back would be devastating. But put yourself in his shoes. He’s a future NFL running back, and he’s all but guaranteed to go pro after the 2024 season. And he wants to win something while in college. In his first two years at Florida, the Gators have gone 6-6 and 5-7. That’s simply not good enough.
Making matters worse, for as much as I love what Montrell Johnson brings, Etienne is simply better, and yet Johnson received 152 carries on the year to Etienne’s 131. Now, in fairness, Etienne was hurt for the Vanderbilt game. But this shouldn’t have been a 50/50 split. Etienne’s explosive nature and home run-hitting ability merits at least 60% of the touches, and he simply didn’t get that.
For Billy Napier, the task at hand now is to convince Etienne that the Gators are capable of winning something in 2024, that this is the season he’s been building for- and that he’s going to be the featured back for it. And maybe that’s all true, and maybe Napier truly is planning this- but ensuring that his star player believes that is going to be key to actually being able to do so in a pivotal Year Three for Napier.
To be very clear, losing Trevor Etienne would not be “game over” for Billy Napier. It would just be everything short of it, and place him at the doorstep of that.
You can survive without a top-flight running back in college football, but that’s only if you have an offensive line that’s so excellent that any human being over the age of toddler with working legs could run through it. And Florida, to be blunt, has the opposite of that. What made Etienne so special was his ability to break tackles, and bail his mostly terrible offensive line out, turning what should have been negative plays into three yard plays. Without a guy who can do that, and sort of make up for your offensive line’s weakness, you don’t have a choice but to make it so that your offensive line isn’t a weakness. This, then, places another massive weight of pressure on Napier, as he’ll then have to do that much more to hit the jackpot in the transfer portal in order to cobble together a functioning ground game.
5) Hire A Special Teams Coordinator
Perhaps the most insulting thing Billy Napier has done to date was tab Chris Couch as Florida’s “Game Changer Coordinator.” That move has had… shall we say, interesting results.
The good news was that Chris Couch’s special teams unit was indeed a game-changer over the last two seasons. The bad news was that it changed the game in favor of the other team. Such is what’s to be expected when you appoint a quality control assistant to oversee a part of your football team.
You name it, Florida did it: allowing four kicks (only two teams allowed more) and a punt to be blocked (something half the FBS teams managed to avoid) on the year, catching (or worse, failing to cleanly catch) punts inside the ten yard line, having two guys run onto the field with the same jersey number to give the opponent a first down on a fourth and three in which they were punting, surrendering 111 yards of punt returns (for perspective: Georgia, Tennessee, and LSU allowed a grand total of four punt return yards) on the year, and needing until midway through the third game of the year to realize that Trey Smack was a better kicker than Adam Mihalek.
I don’t have a problem with Couch running the special teams, per se; I have a problem with the idea that any intern could have that power at Florida. It’d be the quasi-equivalent of naming grad assistant Bush Hamdan the interim wide receivers coach (remember that?). As I mentioned with the two offensive line coaches, it was an interesting experiment, but way too much data has piled up for Billy Napier to not make a move here.
Jeff Banks of Texas is probably the hottest name in the special teams coordinator pool. He’ll be a bit pricey, but he’s the best there is. If you can’t get him to make what admittedly does seem like a lateral move, my next target would be Todd Goebbel of NC State. He’s coached a variety of offensive positions, including wide receivers, quarterbacks, tight ends and running backs. Even if none of those assistant coach slots at Florida are currently open, he’s so accomplished as a special teams coordinator that it’s worth a spot just for him on this staff- and he might be able to pitch in and lend his expertise elsewhere.
So you’ve got your work cut out for you, Billy Napier. Get to work.
