Billy Napier is showing a lot of players the door- and rebuilding the Florida Gators in his image. (Photo credit: Kim Klement, USA Today)
As anybody who follows the Florida Gators knows, the football program is losing players left and right.
In some cases, the moves were obvious (such as Ventrell Miller being out of eligibility and O’Cyrus Torrence declaring for the NFL Draft as a projected first round pick). In many more cases, the moves were not necessarily slam-dunks to happen but easily predictable (such as Gervon Dexter, Justin Shorter, and Richard Gouraige leaving for the NFL). Some were frustrating, but understandable (most notably Anthony Richardson declaring for the NFL Draft). And some were downright stunning (such as Michael Tarquin and Ethan White entering the transfer portal).
And as the defections piled up like autumn leaves, questions began to grow about the long-term outlook of Billy Napier at Florida- and to a certain degree, I have to admit that I do think it’s justified. For one thing, Florida just went 6-7, a record that, even for a first-year head coach, is not objectively a good one. For another thing, you would expect such a roster purge to take place during a new coach’s first offseason, not the second.
But at the same time, there are three things that are critical to keep in mind.
1: We wanted the Florida Gators to flip the roster, and that’s exactly what’s happening
The recruiting classes that Dan Mullen signed at Florida were actually pretty good on the surface- he signed back-to-back top ten classes (per the 247Sports Composite rankings) in his first two full cycles- but something was off. Actually, a few things were.
Let’s look at the first of those classes, the 2019 class. CB Chris Steele never even made it to summer practice. QB Jalon Jones was thrown off the team for sexual assault. DT Jaelin Humphries has seldom seen the field in four seasons. OT William Harrod plays almost exclusively on special teams. LB Diwun Black couldn’t qualify and had to be rerouted to JUCO for two years, and though he did finally make it to campus two years later, he eventually got himself ejected from the program. WR Dionte Marks saw the field on special teams in just two games before transferring, and LB Jesiah Pierre’s time at Florida can be similarly summarized.
And those are just the players who made it to campus. It’s not super relevant here because they don’t need to be replaced, but just as another footnote to the deception behind Mullen’s class rankings, two more- Deyavie Hammond and Wardrick Wilson- never even made it that far.
That right there is nearly half of an entire signing class that failed to produce anything for the Gators. And if you think it’s a fluke, it’s not; the same goes for the 2020 class. Jahari Rogers, Issiah Walker, Mordecai McDaniel, Lamar Goods, Jalen Lee, Fenley Graham, Gerald Mincey, Kamar Wilcoxson, and Johnnie Brown either saw the field extremely rarely or never at all.
Of course, every class is bound to have a few missteps, i.e. takes that don’t pan out. But not only were there such an alarming number of those under Mullen, the takes who have at least made it onto the field haven’t lived up to expectations, either.
TE Keon Zipperer (Class of 2019) showed flashes early and still has one final year to make some noise, but in his first four seasons in Gainesville, he has not been what many have been hoping for. Same goes for LB Derek Wingo. DE Lloyd Summerall (Class of 2019) played primarily on special teams before leaving. CB Ethan Pouncey made four tackles in 2021 and got into just three games in 2022. S Rashad Torrence has been a fixture in the starting lineup and has made some plays, but has been responsible for plenty of really bad things happening too- at best, we’ll call him inconsistent, and the same goes for Tre’Vez Johnson. OT Josh Braun played a good bit in 2021, but was demoted to a backup role in 2022 behind an offensive line that turned out to be just fine without him. WR Ja’Quayvion Fraziars caught just five passes all year, and even fellow receiver Xzavier Henderson, while producing to a respectable degree, has not been the difference-maker many thought he could be. Even QB Anthony Richardson didn’t live up to his expectations. And we won’t even get started on Brenton Cox.
And after class after class with more disappointing players than highly productive ones, many Florida Gators fans saw Billy Napier as the guy the program needed to completely restructure the team’s DNA. In other words, a lot of fans saw Napier as the coach who would stockpile the Florida roster with “good takes,” and replace the Mullen signees who remained with those good takes.
Well, that’s exactly what Billy Napier is doing.
Sure, you would have ideally liked for him to perform this reconstructive surgery before year one and not after it, but it’s perfectly plausible to think that he didn’t truly know what he had with his roster before coaching a single game, and only after coaching a full season did he understand the extent of the roster issues- and better yet, fix it with a recruiting class that has his personal stamp of approval on it and is almost exclusively comprised of four-star signees.
Another thing to feel good about: the 247Sports Composite ranking system says that Napier’s 2023 recruiting class has an average player rating of 92.34; this is a full tenth of a point higher than Miami’s class that has so many fans up in arms, and dwarfs the average rating of all four classes Mullen signed by a whopping 1.75 points. This class is loaded with quality signees from top to bottom, as opposed to a mix of highly-rated kids and some “filler” pieces just to sign a full class.
Yes, ideally Florida would have signed 30 of them and not 20, but with the way Napier was able to overhaul the talent at his last stop in Louisiana, I’m willing to believe that the Florida Gators only signing 20 high school players is an indication that Napier will outright refuse to sign a player just to “fill a class.” He values quality over quantity. And while yes, quantity does matter to the extent that Florida will need to add enough players to fill a complete college football roster, Napier is going to clear that baseline minimum with supplementary additions through the transfer portal while not compromising his dedication to not take players he does not want.
That’s what a roster flip entails. You remove the players you don’t want and replace them with players you do want. It just might suck for one more season while a mostly young team puts the pieces together.
On the note of players Billy Napier didn’t want leaving…
2: Keep an eye out for where the transferring players wind up
I’ll start this one off by immediately pointing out that Avery Helm hurts this point here by transferring to a TCU team that made the College Football Playoff. Additionally, offensive linemen Ethan White (a second-team All-SEC selection) and Michael Tarquin are very likely going to end up at programs of comparable prestige. And DL Jalen Lee, though he did not have a huge impact for Florida in 2022, transferred to LSU- he certainly landed at a great next destination.
But those four guys are the exceptions. Let’s look at the sum of the transferring players, and see where they wind up. Because that’s going to be a very telling way to gauge their value, and prove who wanted them.
So far, we’ve got RB Lorenzo Lingard transferring to Akron (not even a Power Five program), DB Kamar Wilcoxson transferring to Temple (also not a Power Five program), DL Lloyd Summerall transferring to South Florida (yet another non-Power Five program), a trio of Gators (LS Marco Ortiz, S Corey Collier, DL Chief Borders) transferring to a Nebraska program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2016, OL Josh Braun transferring to Arkansas (a low-level SEC program), TE Nick Elksinis transferring to South Carolina (another low-level SEC program), S Donovan McMillon transferring Pittsburgh (a decent-but-certainly-not-elite ACC program), and TE Griffin McDowell transferring to UT-Chattanooga (not even an FBS program).
Those ten aforementioned transfers- no ill will intended, just being factual here- left Florida for lesser programs. Those were all sizable steps down. And yes, Helm, Tarquin, White, Lee, and possibly Nay’Quan Wright will be exceptions to this, but if the overwhelming majority of the guys who transfer out- who by the way were all recruited by Dan Mullen- go on to play for lesser programs, it would suggest that the “roster flip” we’ve all been clamoring for is truly happening. The next step will be to wring production out of the players that Napier brings in this coming season, as well as continuing the development of the guys he brought in last season.
Speaking of which…
3: The Florida Gators’ best/most promising players in 2022 were transfers and true freshmen
There were not very many bright spots on the 2022 Florida Gators football team. How could there be? Florida went 6-7, after all.
But while there weren’t many, there were a few- and with the exceptions of Ventrell Miller, Princely Umanmielen, Jason Marshall, and I guess Anthony Richardson by proxy, the best players for Florida were Billy Napier’s handpicked players.
The running game all functioned because of Napier’s guys. He brought Montrell Johnson over from Louisiana and snatched Trevor Etienne away from LSU and Clemson, and even though it took some time for them both to overcome Nay’Quan Wright- certainly no slouch himself as a runner- on the depth chart, the duo of newcomers combined to rush for 1,560 on 273 carries for a whopping 5.7 yards per carry between them. And while four of the five starting offensive linemen blocking for them were Mullen leftovers, far and away the best of the group was O’Cyrus Torrence, another Louisiana transfer who came over with Napier. Torrence, in fact, put together one of the best individual seasons any Florida Gator offensive lineman has ever had, and earned himself a brick outside The Swamp as a first-team All-American.
A quick look around the depth chart reveals that this was a theme. Ricky Pearsall was a drag-and-drop piece into Florida’s wide receiver room from Arizona State, and all he did was haul in 33 passes for 661 yards and five touchdowns. Cornerback Jalen Kimber came over from Georgia, and he was feared by opponents enough that he was only targeted 16 times in eleven games (and 101 snaps), and he allowed just eleven catches- two of which were incredible catches that he was in perfect coverage on and the receiver simply made a great play.
And while the true freshmen who came in as part of Napier’s first class didn’t find themselves on All-American lists, they contributed more than most of the Mullen leftovers.
Rookie safeties Kamari Wilson and Devin Moore– two eleventh-hour additions to that 2022 class- grew into key roles in the secondary, made a few typical freshman mistakes but displayed more consistency and a lot of promise as the season wore on. Defensive tackle Chris McClellan– who will always be a personal favorite of mine because he committed to a school and not a coach, and Napier chose to sign him- quietly developed into a reliable piece on Florida’s defensive line and put some really nice things on tape. Linebacker Shemar James- who first committed to the Florida Gators under Mullen, decommitted, and then eventually signed to play for Napier- underwent some growing pains but overcame them to break into the starting lineup for three games and record both a sack and a forced fumble against FSU.
Of course, nothing is guaranteed, but that all bodes very, very well for the next round of incoming transfers and high school signees. Somewhere along the way, Napier is doing his due diligence as an evaluator of both pure talent and fit in his program; while of course he’s going to have misses here and there like every coach does, his high hit rate through only one season indicates a great deal of skill as an evaluator. And he’s not likely to lose those skills any time soon.
