Billy Napier rejects media narrative around USF win: 'We're 2-1, but we've got work to do'

Billy Napier has Florida at 2-1 after a victory over South Florida, and that’s all that matters to him.

While some may raise their eyebrows at the difficulty the Gators had with the Bulls, Napier isn’t letting the media run with that narrative. During his postgame press conference, Napier had nothing but praise for South Florida.

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“I’m going to tell you, the South Florida team that I watched tonight is a high quality team. So I think that’s, I don’t know if I agree with you. The team we played tonight showed up and executed pretty well. They were coached well, good design, good handful of skill players. They blocked us, made it hard on us at times. I don’t think you can get caught up in that. I don’t care who they played or who we played, the Gators played South Florida tonight, we did enough to win,” stated Napier. “That’s a credit to our players for sticking together, for competing through the adversity in the game. They made mistakes, we made mistakes but we made enough plays to win.

“So I don’t think we, I know that sometimes that’s part of the profession, but in our world, I don’t really care about who they played, or what their record is or what the outside world thinks about it. We beat South Florida tonight, and I think they’ve got a good football team. I think we’ll see as time goes there, they’re going to continue to be a factor in their conference.”

While Napier believes South Florida is a solid team that deserves his respect, he also recognized that Florida has some work to do in the coming weeks.

“I think that what we’re learning about our team is that we’ve got he intangibles, we need to improve execution. Certainly did enough to win tonight, but we’ve got work to do. Nobody’s been hiding around that,” added Napier. “I think each week we’ve stood up here and said, we stood up here when we won Week 1 and said hey, we’ve got work to do. We said it on Monday, we said it on Wednesday the next week. I think I feel the same way, that’s what I would say. I feel the same way. We’re 2-1, but we’ve got work to do. I think football is a sport and a team game where you’re always a work in progress. If you’re undefeated, everybody’s patting you on the back, then you’ve got work to do to resolve that. If you struggled a little bit and you found ways to win, you’ve got issues to resolve that.

“The work is not going away. I appreciate your comment, but I don’t know if I agree with you. I think Jeff Scott’s team played pretty good football tonight.”

Nevertheless, Billy Napier and Florida will have a tough game next weekend against Tennessee, and will need to be on their best to leave Knoxville with a victory in Week 4.