Billy Napier explains the emphasis in most recent scrimmage

Florida held its latest scrimmage this past weekend, and Billy Napier is learning more about his team. He’s also emphasizing some things he expects from the program as he gets ready for Year One.

One of Napier’s biggest focal points is the “formula” that goes into victory. With that comes an emphasis on the turnover margin, sticking to fundamentals and, most importantly, finishing strong. That was a big discussion point during the scrimmage.

“I think overall, we want to go execute our formula in terms of how we win games,” Napier said. “We say, ‘Own the ball. Attack the ball.’ The turnover margin, obviously, is the most significant statistic relative to playing winning football. We want to be situation experts relative to the down and distance, the field zone, the clock. We want to master our craft, which is all about techniques and fundamentals. And we want to be aggressive in all three phases, and the collective effort of all three phases being an issue for the other team. We want to finish.

“We talked about legendary finish, and that’s finishing plays, that’s finishing possessions and ultimately, it’s finishing the game. It doesn’t change. The formula’s worked for us. Typically, when you go back and look in the competition, it comes down to the basic things. We’ve got to do the simple things well, and that’s what I see and I think we need to improve.”

Billy Napier hammers team, coaching staff over specific problem following recent scrimmage

Billy Napier knew he had plenty of work cut out for him when he decided to take the head football coaching position at Florida. While Florida has been going through spring practices over the past month, Napier has had the chance to really evaluate his team while they’ve been on the field — and there’s been both positives and negatives from his viewpoint.

Meeting with the media Saturday following the scrimmage, Napier shared that his team didn’t perform the way he had hoped.

“I do think that we had a few too many undisciplined penalties today. … That’s probably the main takeaway,” Napier said, in part. “Last week, we played 120 plays and had two penalties. This week, we were way up there. I’m not sure how many exactly we had, but too many for my liking. … But overall, general message here – need more consistency across the board, both sides – and certainly the kicking game, as well. … I think we need better execution, and then we need to make better decisions at the point of contact and post-whistle when it comes to discipline.”