Billy Napier explains Florida's pre-snap penalties against Utah

Florida fell in its season opener against Utah on Thursday night, dropping a 24-11 game as it failed to ever really get going offensively.

Even when the Gators did get a little mojo going on offense they managed to blow it with some silly mistakes. Pre-snap penalties crippled the offense in key moments of the game.

“I think that, first of all, I think the crowd impacted the game,” coach Billy Napier said. “There’s no question about it. Early on a couple of those short-yardage situations we had procedure issues. Guys flinching. Two in particular that were costly.”

Florida was flagged nine times for 46 yards and while the overall yardage total was well within reasonable expectations, the number of pre-snap penalties was costly. When they came proved downright deadly.

The Gators twice had situations where they could have converted and put themselves into terrific scoring position, only to line up improperly.

“Then we’re just a little bit on or off in two formations there where we’ve got to communicate with the officials better, and those proved to be issues,” Napier said. “One of them was a third-down conversion that didn’t cost us, the other one was a costly third-and-1 where we convert the play but it gets called back because we’re a little bit illegal in the formation.”

Those are relatively simple things that will need to be cleaned up as the season wears on. Right now Florida’s not a good enough team to overcome many of those mistakes, particularly the pre-snap penalties.

Napier: Adversity presents a choice

Following the team’s loss, Napier was asked how he’ll get his group together and continue progressing forward. His answer was fairly straightforward.

“I told the team that I think adversity presents a choice, right? You can choose character or you can choose to compromise,” said Napier. “One thing that I know about this group is I think that we’ve worked hard on building some intangibles. And, already, I can see that this group will respond the right way. I believe that.

“I sat at the press conference last year after we beat Utah and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve got to work on‘. And I feel the same way sitting here today. There’s no question that this game? You’ve got to handle the ups and the downs. You’ve got to remain consistent in your approach.”

Florida will get a chance to clean up some of the pre-snap penalties next week against McNeese before Tennessee comes to town in Week 3.