Analyzing if Florida, Billy Napier will hire an offensive playcaller, make additional staff changes

Many eyes in Gainesville this offseason have been on the staff for Billy Napier at Florida. However, Nick de la Torre at GatorsOnline tempered any expectations of many further changes coming, especially on the offense.

De la Torre joined during ‘Andy Staples On3’ on Sunday to discuss the Gators’ staff positions and if a new play-caller on offense could be on the agenda. He explained that the key complication at the moment is their total of assistant coaches. At the moment, they’d need to remove at least one assistant in order to bring someone new in to call the offense.

“Right now? I get asked the question daily. Who are they going to hire as offensive coordinator? I give my own associate athletic director, company line that there is no current open position on the coaching staff,” said de la Torre. “You would have to make some sort of adjustment to the role. Is that taking one of the two offensive line coaches into an off the field role? Do either of them want to leave the field and be in an off the field role?”

“You would have to create a space in your assistant coaching pool. You can only have 10 assistant coaches that are on the field,” de la Torre explained.

On top of that, de la Torre agreed with Staples that Napier may just not want to hire someone else to wear the headset. It could be a positive for their sideline depending on who they’d hire. Still, considering the circumstances, they believe that Napier’s mindset is that the safest hands may still be his own.

“The question for me is does Billy Napier think his job is on the line?” asked de la Torre. “If he looks at the offense last year and the reason why Florida lost games? He could realistically look at himself in the mirror and say the offense wasn’t the issue. The play-calling is not the issue.”

“You’ve seen the moves that were made were defense, defense, and strength coach – not anything on the offense,” de la Torre noted. “If Billy Napier doesn’t think his job is on the line then why change? If Billy Napier does think his job is on the line, are you going to put that fate into somebody else’s hands, a different playcaller?”

Florida’s offense finished just inside the Top-60 overall this past season. They averaged 28.4 points and 409.1 yards of offense per game during their year that finished at 5-7. Those were similar numbers to the season prior during Napier’s first campaign.

There are plenty of things to fix at Florida following two straight losing seasons to start Napier’s tenure. It’s just that, at this point, de la Torre isn’t sure if hiring another offensive assistant will be one of them.

“That’s where I can look at the situation from maybe a 30,000-foot viewpoint and think that they’re not going to hire an offensive playcaller,” said de la Torre. “One – Billy Napier probably doesn’t think the offense was an issue and, in most games, it wasn’t. Two – if he does think he’s going to get fired, like you said? Go out on my own terms. I’m not going to put my fate and my job status in somebody else’s hands.”