Billy Napier sends message to Florida fans amid struggles

Florida appeared to be cruising into its annual showdown with Florida State prior to Saturday, having won two straight going into a road trip to Vanderbilt. But the Gators were upset 31-24, falling to 6-5 and leaving first-year coach Billy Napier attempting to send a message to Florida fans amid the team’s struggles.

Patience.

“That’s an interesting question,” Napier said, asked by a local reporter what he’d relay to fans given the up-and-down season. “I would tell you that we’ve got a lot of folks working extremely hard. A lot of people that care.”

One of Napier’s real pitches to fans when he took over was that he had secured a significant investment from the program adminstrators to rebuild the infrastructure around the program, including the staffing inside the football offices.

He hired a self-proclaimed ‘army’ of off-the-field staffers, delegating a ton of work in various areas to folks he’d worked with in the past that he really trusted.

He’s confident that whole group is just getting started.

“There’s nobody that cares and works like this group of people,” Napier said. “Players, staff members. The time that these people spend relative to doing their job at a high level, I would say that one day at a time, one person at a time, this group’s going to, we’re going to get it done.”

Message to Florida fans is stay the course

One thing that became abundantly clear on Saturday in the loss to Vanderbilt was that Florida simply has to start games a little quicker out of the gates. It’s been an on-again, off-again iissue for the team at various points.

“Handling success, handling failure, being a consistent competitor, and I think ultimately when you see that you kind of flip that switch at times when you get behind or maybe you’re behind the eight ball or it’s a closer game than you expected,” Napier said.

The goal at Florida, of course, is not to be in competitive contests against Vanderbilt.

Napier will get a chance to flip the momentum in his favor on Black Friday when his team travels to Tallahassee, Fla., to take on a red hot Florida State team.

The two programs will kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET with a national broadcast on ABC.