Billy Napier addresses his role as play-caller, how the Florida staff will be made up

Billy Napier, Florida’s new head coach, brings an offensive-minded play style to the Swamp: he’s coached tight ends, quarterbacks and been the offensive coordinator at Clemson, he’s coached quarterbacks at Colorado State, tight ends at Florida State, wide receivers at Alabama, quarterbacks at Arizona state and more — getting a new gig at Florida, he says, won’t change that.

Napier still plans on calling the plays for the Florida Gators offense moving forward, regardless of who he hires as his offensive coordinator. He plans on maintaining his strong foundation of offensive principles.

“I will be calling the plays here,” Napier said in his introductory press conference. “I think it gives us an advantage, in my opinion. We’re one of the only teams in the country to have two offensive line coaches (at Louisiana). We’ll have an offensive line coach and an assistant offensive line coach (at Florida).”

Napier has not yet filled out his coaching staff at Florida, but as he pointed out, his Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns had a unique support staff. He had two assistant coaches working specifically with the offensive line: Jeff Norrid and Darnell Stapleton. Napier has some work to do with filling out the rest of his staff, but a recent report indicated that Napier will bring two Louisiana-Lafayette coaches — defensive coordinator Patrick Toney and running backs coach Jabbar Juluke — with him to Florida.

“We will construct our staff on both sides of the ball and put a premium on the line of scrimmage. The offensive line, defensive line and edge players will be very important,” Napier said. “Certainly, when you’re coaching offensive line, you’ve got to coach five players. Nobody’s got one coach coaching five DBs. I don’t know why you wouldn’t have two guys coaching the offensive line. So, I’ll coach the quarterbacks with help from an offensive analyst, and then call the plays. And we’ll have that advantage of having two offensive line coaches.”

Napier comes to Florida with an intriguing resume, with his most recent stop being a four-year stint as the head coach at Louisiana-Lafayette. Napier in 2018 took over a Louisiana program that had not eclipsed six wins since 2014, and he turned the Ragin’ Cajuns into a top-25 program with apparent ease; after a 7-7 campaign in his first year, Louisiana amassed two 11-win seasons and a 10-win finish. The Ragin’ Cajuns finished 2020 as the No. 15 team in the AP top 25, and they should finish in the top 25 once again this year.

He’ll have plenty of work to do turning around a Florida program that made it to the Gasparilla Bowl by the skin of its teeth, clinching bowl eligibility by winning the regular-season finale. But Napier has made clear his intentions of revamping the Florida offense heading into the 2022 season.