Former Florida Gators commit Isaiah Bond fries the Gators on a 34 yard touchdown catch. (Photo via Texas athletics)
It is true, all those who still care to defend the job Billy Napier is doing as the Florida Gators head coach, that Florida did not exactly have its A-squad for what was supposed to be a high-stakes showdown between blue-blood flagship programs.
But it’s also true that only one of those two programs has been acting and operating like a blue-blood program these days as the other one devolved further and further away from its glory days into the depths of irrelevance.
And the resulting fight between Mike Tyson in his prime and Glass Joe on his deathbed played out exactly as you would’ve expected.
Texas scored first, scored second, and scored the next four times in the game as well to open up a 42-0 lead on the Florida Gators in Austin in the teams’ fourth-ever meeting. From there, the Longhorns were content to cruise, playing backups and killing clock in what would eventually finish as a 49-17 score. With coinciding losses by Miami and Georgia, Texas is poised to jump up to at least #3 in the new CFP rankings.
How strong the Gators’ opponents are, though, is not the concern.
Never mind the injuries. Those are pardonable if the game is a 10-10 deadlock at halftime and the resulting depth takes its toll in what finishes as a 38-24 loss. The plain fact is that Florida was flat-out embarrassed by a program it fights for recruits with– again.
On the Longhorns’ second drive of the game, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian sent a message. Facing a fourth and one from his own 24 yard line, he elected to go for it. In doing so, he announced to the world that he didn’t respect Florida’s offense enough to go 24 yards for a touchdown if his Horns didn’t pick it up.
Why the lack of respect? Well, perhaps that’s because Florida was starting a walk-on transfer from Yale at quarterback. Injuries to starter Graham Mertz and backup DJ Lagway left Napier with a decision: Aidan Warner, the aforementioned walk-on, or Colorado State transfer Clay Millen, who in 2022 set an FBS freshman record by completing 72.2% of his passes.
Once again, Napier made the wrong decision.
Warner started the day with two errant passes that his receivers had to break off their routes for to make great catches on, and a third completion pass to Aidan Mizell on a screen behind the line of scrimmage that Mizell turned into a five yard gain with his athletic ability. He finished the day 12/25 with 132 yards, no touchdown passes, and two interceptions. Millen never even entered the game.
The Eyes Of Texas collectively rolled back into Bevo’s head as the Longhorns merely laughed and went to work bullying Florida for three hours. And they rubbed it in the Gators’ noses.
On that fourth and one at their own 24, Jerrick Gibson– a former Florida commit– pushed the pile and got the first down. On the very next play, receiver Isaiah Bond– another former Florida commit– took the ball on a reverse and raced 44 yards down the sideline to completely flip the field. Two plays later, Matthew Golden took advantage of one of many busts in the Florida secondary for an easy 29-yard touchdown catch, giving Texas a lead they would not relinquish.
Things just got worse from there.
At various points in the game:
- A line judge had to tell QB Aidan Warner that too much ball movement by the ball or his hands on fake snaps would result in a false start
- Florida’s field goal team could not properly get set prior to the snap, triggering a false start
- Trey Smack then missed the resulting 30 yard field goal
- Jordan Castell missed multiple tackles and got beat twice for touchdowns– and would have been beaten for two more if not for an errant throw by Quinn Ewers and a drop by Matthew Golden
- Florida’s defense got caught napping, could not shed any blocks, and allowed Quintrevion Wisner to go 50 yards untouched for a touchdown on a screen
- Warner began the second half with a terrible throw right to Andrew Mukuba, who returned it deep into Florida territory to set up another score
- Allowed additional touchdowns by former commits Bond (34 yard pass from Ewers) and Gibson (14 yard run)
The Florida Gators gave up 353 yards in the first half, and ended the game having surrendered 562 yards of total offense. That’s the fifth time in nine games that the Florida Gators have surrendered more than 450 yards this year.
Additionally, Texas marks the third game of the nine that Florida has played that the Gators found themselves down by 26+ points at some juncture in the contest, after Miami and Texas A&M. It’s also the seventh time this has happened in the 2.75 yards of Billy Napier’s stewardship. Florida found themselves down by 26 or more in 2022 against Georgia (28-3) and Oregon State (30-0), as well as in 2023 against Kentucky (33-7) and Georgia (43-13).
With the loss, Billy Napier drops to 15-19 at Florida. Seven of those fifteen wins have come against Eastern Washington, McNeese, Samford, South Florida, Central Florida, Charlotte, and Vanderbilt. Already sporting the worst record of any Florida Gators coach since Raymond Wolf in the 1940’s– and with more financial resources at his disposal than any Gator coach to precede him– Napier now faces a pair of ranked teams in his next two games before finishing against an FSU team that’s so bad, it would be a tall task for even Napier to lose to.
Steve Spurrier finished his Florida tenure with 27 losses in twelve years. Ron Zook finished his Florida tenure with 14 losses in three years. Urban Meyer finished his Florida tenure with 15 losses in six years. Will Muschamp finished with 21 losses in four years. Jim McElwain finished with 12 losses in two and a half years. Dan Mullen finished with 15 losses in four years.
Billy Napier has 19 losses in 2.75 years.
Napier is also 1-10 against rivals (FSU, Georgia, Tennessee, Miami, and LSU). The betting experts in Vegas say it’s likely he will drop to 1-11 in that department next week when LSU comes to town.
And it’s despite all of that that athletic director Scott Stricklin boldly announced that Napier would be returning as Florida’s coach, a giant middle finger with a side dish of loogie in the face to a fanbase that loyally packs the Swamp for every home game anyway, perhaps wanting to soak in the special environment at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium before Stricklin ruins that too with his massive stadium reduction plans.
There is nothing to be positive about right now. It is an unserious program. Years of middling NIL with an athletic director who’s more concerned with shaking the right hands, rubbing the right elbows, and kissing the right babies than he is in funding a serious athletic program, combined with a coach who routinely loses to teams he’s already got more talent than, have placed Florida in this rut– a rut that neither man seems to have any interest in getting out of.
DJ Lagway and his big-play receiver Elijhah Badger will be back at some point, possibly next week, but that still doesn’t solve for a defense that ranks exactly 100th in the FBS in terms of yards per game allowed and 77th in terms of yards per play. And the possible return of Lagway definitely doesn’t cure the in-game incompetence and sheer stupidity that have plagued Napier ever since he took the field for the first time against Utah in 2022. Saving the buyout money for Napier and using it to bolster the Gators’ portal budget could help, at least in theory, but that, too, doesn’t do anything to address the various forms of malpractice Napier’s teams have been responsible for, like not counting to eleven, running two players out with the same jersey number, slow-developing play-calls that beg the defense to blow them up, or completely neglecting the clock down two or three scores in the fourth quarter.
In all kinds of weather, we’ll all stick together for F-L-O-R-I-D-A. But it’s best if we not kid ourselves about the current weather conditions over the state of this program. We’re amidst a monsoon of misery, a category five shitstorm that’s raining pain down upon this fanbase.
And as the nature of college football is cyclical, the Florida Gators will one day rise from the ashes– but until then, it’s advised to batten down the hatches and ride it out until the sun one day returns.
