Billy Napier hopeful headway in recruiting carries over to football

NASHVILLE — Florida coach Billy Napier spoke for more than three hours during his trip to SEC Media Days on Wednesday. He conducted over a dozen interviews on radio row and with various networks, including On3, along with his appearances at the main stage and other rooms.

He started his day meeting with local reporters from the UF beat. Napier made several newsworthy comments throughout his time in Nashville; however, one statement from his first 15-mintue media scrum stood out.

“I think it’s evident in recruiting right now that we’ve adjusted, and we’ve adapted and evolved,” Napier said. “And we’re hopeful we’ll see some of that in our football as well.”

This was one of a few notable things he said during his 80-second answer to a question about the biggest year-over-year gains for the Florida football program.

Napier drew some laughs at the beginning of his response.

“You know, I’m about as OCD as they come,” he said with a smile. “I think each part of our calendar, each part of our offseason, each phase as we call it, each stage, we’ve had a year of experience, right? And we adjust, we adapt, we evolve, we make the necessary changes.”

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The most obvious example, as Napier alluded to, is on the recruiting trail. The Gators boast the nation’s No. 3 class in the 2024 cycle and already have the same number of commits (21) as high school signees in their 2023 class, which ranked No. 13 nationally.

Napier is hopeful the Gators can make similar strides on the football field this year. One of his reasons for optimism is the familiarity, connection and trust that he and his staff have with the players. It wasn’t there this time a year ago due to multiple factors.

“I think the challenge in taking over a job in today’s dynamic,” Napier explained, “is you’re trying to create trust in a small window of time, right? With NIL, which creates instability, uncertainty, there is a natural insecurity of a player. ‘You didn’t recruit me.’ ’You don’t know me.’ ‘Do you think I’m a good player?’ ’Do you have a plan for me?’

“And I think with the portal and all the other variables, that creates a significant challenge. Not to mention just the basic things about, hey, we’ve got a place that needs to be torn down and built back up again.”

Napier and his staff flipped the roster this offseason, adding 35 total recruits and transfers to offset the 35 departures. Year 1 was a learning process that he has quality controlled and made necessary changes for 2023.

“The biggest adjustment is the recruiting calendar and the pace,” Napier said. “Essentially, you’re behind a class as soon as you sign up unless you’re recruiting this pool of players. I wasn’t recruiting that pool of players (at Louisiana).

“Heck of a year to get your first SEC job with NIL and the portal, and I think we navigated that well. I feel good about how we adjusted systematically. All the other parts of our process, I think, are signed, sustainable, and repeatable. Those were the big adjustments for myself.”

Napier didn’t mince words about the Gators’ shortcomings in his inaugural season. He’s also confident about the gains his team can make this fall.

“I think one of the things we did, we went through an extensive evaluation of Year 1,” Napier said. “Consistency stuff. Can we handle success. We like to talk about handling failure but every time we got momentum last year we fell flat on our face. So, we essentially lose five one-score games. The margin of error in this league is real small. I think we learned a lot from that, and I think we’ll benefit from that this year.”