Gators HC Billy Napier is doing the one thing you cannot do at Florida, and it should cost him his job
It’s been time for months. Billy Napier needs to go
It’s been a difficult season for the Florida Gators, and it’s only getting worse. They went into Coral Gables and had a chance to take the lead down 13-7 against the Miami Hurricanes, but they failed to get a first down in their final three drives and lost 26-7 in brutal fashion.
The Gators went into the game missing four of their top eight defensive lineman and still held up well against the Hurricanes, holding them to -0.08 EPA/play across the entire game. Their best offensive metric was success rate, and that was just 43% (60th percentile).
With that defense, the Gators should have been in great shape to get their second win and right the ship of a team that had College Football Playoff aspirations. Ultimately, they are failing because of Billy Napier.
Billy Napier’s brutal offense should get him fired
When you come to coach at the University of Florida, there is an expectation of having a high-powered offense. That was set back in the 1990s with Steve Spurrier, and continued with Urban Meyer and Dan Mullen. In the last 35 years, the Gators have won three National Championships and played for a fourth, mainly due to the success of their offense.
When Napier came to Gainesville, he was replacing a good offensive coach in Mullen, but poor recruiting caught up to him, and it cratered at the end in the worst way.
The Gators’ defense has allowed just 57 points in its first four games (14.25 on average), and the team is somehow 1-3. That’s unacceptable in many ways, especially since the ask for the Gators’ offense is only to get around 20-25 points, given how well the defense is playing.
This offseason, Napier was asked to give up play-calling, and he refused to hire a real offensive coordinator. Instead, he promoted from within, and Russ Callaway isn’t being asked to do much of anything in terms of play calling. He was asked by the media after the brutal 18-16 loss to South Florida if he would give it up, and it was a resounding no.
That came to a head against Miami, when the offense wasn’t just bad; it was brutal. It was 0-13 on third down and gained just 141 total yards, including a paltry 61 through the air. Your five-star quarterback, DJ Lagway, who was sixth in the Heisman Trophy odds going into the season, barely looked like a high school starting quarterback on Saturday night. He looked lost in the pocket, had zero confidence throwing down the field, and his teammates weren’t making plays for him. The entirety of the unit is disjointed.
The underlying metrics courtesy of Game On Paper show the Gators’ offense was brutal on every level.
- EPA/play: -0.21 (14th percentile)
- Success rate: 34% (17th percentile)
- Yards/play: 3.20 (1st percentile)
- EPA/dropback: -0.45 (9th percentile)
- EPA/rush: -0.01 (47th percentile)
- Yards/dropback 2.85 (5th percentile)
- third down success rate: 8% (0th percentile)
They aren’t just bad; they are futile. This is what you would expect to see from a program like Kent State after playing the likes of Alabama, Ohio State, and Florida State in three consecutive weeks. You can’t have this at Florida.
The defense had the Gators in the game the entire way, and that’s with all the injuries. What’s Napier’s excuse when it comes to the poor performance on offense? The offensive line was projected to be one of the best in the country, the weapons on the outside were superb, and Jadan Baugh had already emerged as one of the best running backs in the country. All of that before even mentioning the presence of Lagway. Where is the excuse? Simple: there isn’t one.
The scheme is archaic when it comes to the gimme downs on third and fourth. Defenses already know what’s coming, and they stop it relatively easily. This isn’t year two of Napier’s tenure; we are entering year four with the players he has brought in. This is how he wanted to build this team.
It’s not even close to living up to the standard of Gators teams in the past. Jim McElwain lasted just 34 games and was fired in his third season after going 22-12. Napier is now 20-22 in his fourth season at the helm. If the administration wasn’t sure about when to replace Napier, this might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It’s been over for 12+ months, and now it’s time to make it official.
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