The Florida Gators face a uphill slog back to SEC relevancy, but Billy Napier can't afford a slow-burn rebuild

Billy Napier has made plenty of smart and prudent observations since becoming Florida’s head coach, but after a demoralizing Year 1 in Gainesville, the Gators’ head coach probably wishes he left one thought unsaid. 

“Coming here is the least stressful job I’ve had because I can fix everything that I think needs to be addressed,” Napier remarked during ‘talking szn’ back in July. 

Billy Napier has $51.8 million reasons to sleep well at night, but I doubt he goes to bed quite so quickly some six months later. They don’t make a Nyquil strong enough to relieve the restlessness there is around Florida’s football program right now. 

Gator Nation wasn’t expecting a championship this fall, but a floundering 6-7 season in Year 1?

Napier just concluded his first season on a seven-year contract, so it’s too early to know if he’s the guy to return Florida to national relevancy. But it’s not too soon to start asking questions like, “What all was actually accomplished this year?”

And, “How long is this rebuild going to take?”

Because you want to know what a Year 0 looks like? See: Billy Napier’s 2022 Florida Gators. 

UF’s 6-7 season — it’s second-straight losing record for the first time since Jimmy Carter was president — was a lot like every episode of Westworld after its inaugural debut. 

Meandering. Unpleasant. Mostly a waste. 

Napier & Co., cashed all their chips in a season-opening upset over Top 10 Utah, but the victory proved to be the lone highlight of the entire year, as the Gators mostly went bankrupt the next 12 games of the slate including a complete no-show in 30-3 blowout loss to Oregon State in the Las Vegas Bowl on Saturday. 

The idea that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas is false. The Gators are bringing all their problems back to Gainesville.

It was bad this fall that Florida got throughly outplayed in all four rivalry games (losses to Tennessee, LSU, Georgia and Florida State). It was worse that it lost at home to a mediocre Kentucky and then on the road at Vanderbilt. The season’s nadir was kicking a field goal with 30 seconds remaining in the bowl game to preserve a silly scoring streak.

Saturday’s end result wasn’t a surprise with so many opt-outs and transfers, but that the players who were in Sin City displayed such little fight certainty wasn’t an encouraging sign for the future.

Napier preached hope and promise postgame, saying that Florida’s culture, which was rotten when he arrived after the dying days of the Dan Mullen era, is getting better. 

“Sometimes I think the result doesn’t necessarily show the growth we’ve observed,” Napier said. 

“I think the dynamic within our team and within our locker room from where we started at to where we are today, the connection there and the relationship piece. I think our issues on the field have been execution specific. I do think that we’re always working on the culture part but I do think that we made a ton of progress in that area. Just what I observed in that locker room compared to some of the things we observed maybe when we first got here, it’s a completely different ball club.”

That may be so. 

But much like his stress comment, it’s a strange statement to say out loud considering Florida is set to lose more than 40% of its current roster because it didn’t look like a different ball club than in recent seasons.

Per Gators Online, Florida has already lost 27 players to the draft, transfer portal, or dismissal. There will be plenty more departures, too. 

Napier is changing the culture by changing the roster.

Give Florida’s new coach a dose of truth serum and he probably would admit he should’ve started UF’s roster culling a year ago. 

He didn’t, and that’s why 2022 seems a lot like a washed season and Napier has to quickly make up for lost time. If the Gators want to avoid a repeat next fall, Napier has to hit to transfer portal hard this offseason. Like Lincoln Riley hard. 

Florida needs help across the board, desperate for quality SEC bodies at quarterback, receiver, defensive end, linebacker and safety. Landing a quarterback like Grayson McCall would be a strong start.

A year ago, LSU played its bowl game with less than 40 scholarship players. First-year head coach Brian Kelly opted to pound the portal to restock his roster. Napier didn’t. 

Well, one program vastly exceeded expectations in 2022. The other is now falling further behind in the SEC.

WHY FLORIDA CAN’T BE A SLOW-BURN REBUILD

During the preseason, I compared Florida’s football program to an aging Ferrari. A year into Napier’s tenure, he’s slapped on some nice new tires and fresh paint, but the engine is still hissing. 

Sure, Napier cured Florida’s penalty bug (fewest per game in 21 years). He improved the team’s special teams and the OL was much better than anticipated. In-game coaching was an issue at times, but that’s fixable.

Napier had no choice but to invest (and promote, support and constantly back) quarterback Anthony Richardson, yet that decision delivered little currency for the future. Richardson didn’t really improve, is off to the NFL and Florida fans are left hoping freshman Jaden Rashada might be the savior. 

UF’s defense remains a disaster, and it looks like it will take multiple recruiting classes from ever becoming a top-tier unit in the country again.

Napier has complete backing from UF’s administration. The school and its boosters are in much better alignment. He’s been given what Bill Parcells always wanted: To pick the groceries and cook the dinner. 

Florida’s administration even handed him a brand new kitchen (a $90 million football-only facility) with all the appliances and accoutrement he’d ever need. 

According to a recent study profiling spending in college football, USA Today reported that Florida has a SEC-high budget north of $6.2 million for off-the-field football staffers in 2022. 

The Gators are out-spending Alabama, and the two schools who played in the SEC Championship — including their archival — LSU and Georgia by more than $1.2 million annually. 

As promised, Napier has doggedly attacked the recruiting trail, and while it’s been hit or miss at times chasing some blue-chip prospects, he’s out-recruited Dan Mullen’s paper-mache Top 10 classes in his first-full cycle this fall. 

Still, Napier’s strategy of out-Georgia’ing Kirby Smart by stacking recruiting classes and having every resource imaginable is great in theory. Only, you know who else has a lot of resources and even better recruiting classes? Georgia. 

Meanwhile, Tennessee made a leap this fall and continues to further invest in its football program. 

Fair or not, Napier is up against a clock now, as Florida is looking up at all three of its SEC rivals. 

“Least stressful job,” huh?

No one expected Napier to actually “fix everything that needs to be addressed” in 12 months. You can’t microwave a culture change. The issue is it is difficult to point out exactly what has been fixed for the better aside from a couple extra recruiting wins. 

Florida’s “culture” certainly didn’t look overly improved this season. The Gators still don’t have an identity, either. Their roster overhaul started a year too late. 

Every fan base in college football now looks at what Lincoln Riley and Sonny Dykes just did at USC (4-8 to 11-2) and TCU (5-7 to 12-1) — two programs that both won fewer games than Florida last season — in Year 1, and thinks, ‘Why not us?’

Those two programs are probably outliers. One reloaded through the portal. The other engineered a remarkable rebuild mostly on the returns from the roster he inherited. 

But Napier tried to thread the middle in Year 1 and the results played out as such.

That wasn’t the case for Kelly or Kalen Deboer at Washington or Mike Elko at Duke.

For as many challenges as Billy Napier inherited, was Florida’s situation really that much worse comparatively?

There’s no doubt that Napier is savvy and driven coach. His philosophy is a blend of Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban. He came to UF with a blueprint and deep flow-chart, but the initial returns suggest Napier seems like a long-range planner in an instant gratification society sport. 

Florida isn’t Arizona, Georgia Tech or even Colorado with Deion Sanders. 

This can’t be be a slow-burn rebuild.

Not at least if Florida wants to be a SEC powerhouse again someday. Between now and the start of the 2023 season, Napier needs to do whatever he can to make sure Florida makes a significant leap next fall. The program’s transition needs to hit overdrive after a lost year.  

“I think that we had some momentum there this season and we had some missed opportunities, particularly late in the year and I think that’s what we’ve got to learn from that experience. We’re in a position after Texas A&M and South Carolina but what did we learn going to Nashville to play?,” Napier said, spending much of his postgame press conference Saturday asking rhetorical questions about UF’s future.

“What did we learn when we went to Tallahassee to play? I see opportunity. What I’m observing in there, I think is a positive for the Gators. We’ve got to learn from these experiences. Not only the players but also all parts of our organization. Year 1, there’s a lot of work that’s been done.”

After a Year 0, “a lot” is doing some heavy lifting there. I’m fascinated to see what answers Napier finds, though.