Paul Finebaum on Billy Napier: ‘I don’t see how he can survive’ with Texas A&M loss
Despite only playing two games so far this season, Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier has found himself on the hot seat. With that, Paul Finebaum believes he needs to find a way to beat Texas A&M on Saturday.
As Finebaum explained during an appearance on Always College Football, he doesn’t see a way forward for Napier if the Gators lose to the Aggies thanks to the general sentiment surrounding his struggles as the team’s head coach.
“I think must-win is really an understatement,” Paul Finebaum said. “Should Billy Napier fail to win this game and Florida loses, I don’t see how he can survive. I know that sounds like we’re going for the headline, we’re not.”
Billy Napier was initially hired by Florida ahead of the 2022 season. Since then, he’s led the Gators to a 12-15 record. That includes a 41-17 loss to Miami to open the season and helped put him in the position where the Texas A&M game is a must-win.
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“I was down there a couple of weeks ago and my pulse of that situation is all the goodwill Billy Napier found in the offseason, and he found a lot, went out the window,” Finebaum said. “There’s virtually no confidence in this program without a win.”
Notably, the schedule only gets harder from here for Florida. With every game looking like a challenge, finding wins where he can get them is going to be vital for Billy Napier.
“By the way, a win over Texas A&M doesn’t guarantee anything except it stops the hemorrhaging, and that’s exactly what it is,” Finebaum said. “The schedule has been known for months now, even Central Florida in a couple of weeks looks precarious without a win. Then Tennessee. The only part of the schedule that got a little bit easier is a home game on the other side of the second half of the season against Kentucky… we can sugarcoat it all we want but it’s a waste of time. He better win this game.”
Billy Napier breaks down plan for playing multiple quarterbacks vs. Texas A&M
The quarterback position has been a point of interest at Florida, with freshman DJ Lagway showing promise in the time he’s taken over for an injured Graham Mertz. Now, Billy Napier has shared his plan for using multiple quarterbacks against Texas A&M.
“I think you’ll have some defined parameters going into the game so we can have confidence in both players, anticipate what to expect, not only for the quarterbacks but for the team,” Napier said.
“Then there’s always a little bit of a feel within the game based on how things are going. We’ll define it for the players. We always do that at the end of the week for every position, not just the quarterback in terms of how many plays. Sometimes it’s the play count, sometimes it is specific to possessions, one-to-one, two-to-one, three-to-one. All positions on our team we try to define that before we go to the park.”