Staples: Billy Napier's time at Florida has run out

It has to be over.

Whether the official end comes later Saturday, Sunday or some day in the next two months, it doesn’t matter. The Florida football program has to be under new leadership next season if the people in charge of it want anyone to donate a penny or to buy a ticket.

On Saturday, dedicated Florida fans who watched Billy Napier put a mediocre product on the field for his first two seasons stood in a driving rain at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and watched Napier put a terrible product on the field for the second time this season. Napier spent nine months promising the Gators would be better.

A 41-17 season-opening bludgeoning at the hands of rival Miami put a huge crack in that illusion. Saturday’s 33-20 loss to Texas A&M — which was well in hand before touchdowns in the end of the third and fourth quarters — shattered it completely. Napier’s sunshine-pumping was either a bald-faced lie intended to stall for time or an earnest statement that proves Napier doesn’t actually know how a competitive roster looks. Either option is unacceptable. 

Once again, Napier’s team got so overwhelmed on both lines of scrimmage that it rendered moot the quarterback debate that raged all week. Forget Graham Mertz or D.J. Lagway. Tom Brady wouldn’t have made a difference Saturday for the Gators. 

For the entirety of his Florida tenure, Napier has been presented by Florida’s administration as an analytical, deliberate program-builder who would construct a team that could compete for SEC and national titles. That has proven to be fiction. Napier is by most accounts a fine person and a wonderful boss, but he has constantly been outflanked by the coaches who are supposed to be his peers.

Lane Kiffin has turned Ole Miss into a power.

Eli Drinkwitz has made Missouri a force.

Kirby Smart, the coach that Napier was hired to help Florida overcome, has kept Georgia at the top of the sport.

Mike Elko, the first-year head coach Texas A&M hired after buying out Jimbo Fisher for $77 million, took what he inherited, added some from the portal and created a nasty defensive line. And on Saturday, Elko and his staff got a backup quarterback ready to throttle the Gators in The Swamp.

Napier, meanwhile, was given more resources than a Florida coach has ever been given. Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen couldn’t hire a cast of thousands. Napier was given an open checkbook. But it appears few of those people he hired knew what they were doing, and Napier showed that he wasn’t taking notes about how to manage a staff of that size while working for Nick Saban at Alabama.

Napier was hired to bring Florida back. He has collected millions of dollars and only made the Gators worse.

Napier’s contract calls for a buyout of more than $25 million, with half due up front. That’s incredibly expensive. But it likely will cost Florida more in lost donations and ticket sales to keep Napier.

He’s reached the point where the decision about whether he stays employed is a simple math problem. There really is no choice.

He inherited the quarterback who would go No. 4 in the NFL Draft (Anthony Richardson) and went 6-6 with him. Napier then had a chance to truly make the roster his own.

He and his staff were slow to offer in the transfer portal and got outflanked by their rivals. Meanwhile, a collective attached to Florida, acting under the direction of one of Napier’s staffers, signed Class of 2023 quarterback Jaden Rashada to the dumbest deal of the NIL era. Rashada, a quarterback whose market value was about $400,000 a year, got a deal that could have paid $13.8 million over four years if it hadn’t been terminated because it violated Florida law and NCAA rules and because the booster who had pledged to fund it backed out. Napier built a roster that went 5-7 in 2023.

Hope still sprung through the 2023 season because Napier and company had assembled a strong group of commitments for the class of 2024. But six top-200 players flipped to other schools by National Signing Day. Lagway still signed, but he and edge rusher L.J. McCray were the only foundational pieces.

This offseason, Napier lost his best edge rusher (Princely Umanmielen) to Ole Miss and his most talented tailback (Trevor Etienne) to Georgia. But Napier and his staff either didn’t attempt to sign transfers of comparable quality or failed to land them. Yet all offseason Napier and his assistants said this team would be better because it was loaded with players who truly fit the program.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to fit on a schedule that still includes games against Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, LSU and Ole Miss. 

The afternoon before the disastrous season opener against Miami that revealed the Gators’ roster for what it was, athletic director Scott Stricklin visited with SEC Network host Paul Finebaum. Stricklin is probably inextricably linked to Napier. Stricklin fired McElwain and hired Mullen*. He fired Mullen and hired Napier. The list of SEC athletic directors allowed to hire three head football coaches is very short.

*There has been some revisionist history suggesting firing Mullen was Florida’s biggest mistake. Anyone who believes that wasn’t paying attention to Florida’s program in 2021. Yes, Mullen was excellent from 2018-20. But he came back for the 2021 season a different coach, and that person wasn’t going to be able to compete with Kirby Smart, either.

On that fateful Friday, Finebaum asked Stricklin about Napier’s tenure to that point. 

"I really believe Billy Napier is going to be the coach at Florida for a long, long time."

Scott Stricklin says patience with the Gators under Billy Napier will be rewarded: pic.twitter.com/c8trlykrOR

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) August 30, 2024

“He is very methodical, which long-term is going to be really good for Florida and for our football program,” Stricklin told Finebaum. “He’s not going to cut a corner. He’s not going to take a shortcut. It’s going to be a really, really solid foundation.”

Apparently, “cut a corner” means “use the rules as they are written to build a competitive roster.” The myth of methodical needs to end now. This hasn’t been deliberate. It has been ham-fisted.

Stricklin kept going.

“He’s going to get this thing going to be at the level all Gators want it to be at, which is winning championships and playing in meaningful postseason games,” Stricklin said. “Once he gets it to that point, it’s going to stay at that point. I see the steps he’s taken, the caliber of young people he’s brought in. He’s improved the roster. He’s improved the overall structure of the team.”

If Stricklin actually believed those last two sentences, he doesn’t need to be anywhere near the hiring process for Napier’s replacement. If he believed that, he also doesn’t know what he’s looking at. This is complicated because Florida has an interim president and a massive leadership vacuum. But hard decisions must be made.

We’re not done with that Stricklin interview, though. 

“We have been patient at the university,” Stricklin said. “That patience is going to be rewarded. I really believe Billy Napier is going to be the head coach at Florida for a long, long time.”

No, he won’t.

Not unless the Gators want to turn The Swamp into a morgue.

Saturday was supposed to be a showcase for Napier’s improved roster before a national audience on ABC. It ended mercifully on ESPN Plus.

The college football world wanted to watch No. 1 Georgia, not the wreckage of the Gators.