Kirby Smart, Stetson Bennett offer high praise for Florida's Billy Napier
Kirby Smart is in for another chummy pregame meeting on the field when Georgia plays Florida on Saturday. He’ll shake hands and share a couple of laughs with Billy Napier and it most certainly will not be the first time.
The two coaches worked together for four years at Alabama. Napier was an offensive analyst for the Crimson Tide in 2011. He left for an on-field job at Colorado State in 2012 before returning to Alabama as wide receivers coach from 2013 to 2016.
The two coaches may have worked on different sides of the ball, but, by all accounts, they got along great. Billy Napier and Kirby Smart both recruited the state of Georgia. They both cut and/or sharpened their teeth under one of the most demanding and successful College Football coaches ever in Nick Saban.
Billy Napier was on the Alabama staff when Smart gained the opportunity to become the head coach at Georgia. Smart has followed Napier’s career since it has taken off.
“…He’s very thorough. He’s an extremely hard worker,” Kirby Smart said on Monday. “Great husband and father. He’s a good leader of men. And I knew from the first time he got to Alabama, I don’t know what year it was, but whatever year he got there, he was going to be really good because he paid attention to detail. He took a lot of notes. He was just really smart. You knew he was there to learn. And I think he capitalized on his time he spent there to look at football from a different perspective maybe from what he looked at previously. And he was really successful at ULL. Which is a great school, great location, a lot of good football players. But they won a lot of football games with him there.”
Billy Napier flourished as the head coach at Louisiana-Lafayette. He led the Ragin’ Cajuns to a 44-15 record during his four years there and won three out of four bowl games. Florida came calling after it ousted Dan Mullen last season.
Georgia’s quarterback almost played for Billy Napier
Stetson Bennett IV knows the Florida head coach quite well. Billy Napier had just wrapped up his first season at ULL and was working to ink his second recruiting class in his first full cycle.
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Bennett was high on the Ragin’ Cajuns board. It’s unclear whether or not Bennett was really set to sign or committed to ULL, but it was one of the places he was strongly considering. Either way, it was all for naught once Georgia swooped in.
The Bulldogs knew they were losing Justin Fields to transfer and they would, at the very least, need a backup for Jake Fromm in the short term. They were familiar with Bennett from his time as a preferred walk-on and scout-team quarterback in 2017. Georgia tried to keep him then and they worked quickly to get him back during the Early Signing Period for the 2019 class.
Bennett remembers that time well. Telling Billy Napier and Samford head coach Chris Hatcher that he was going in a different direction was a tough task. But no love or respect has been lost.
“I think Coach Napier has built a good program,” Bennett said. “I loved him whenever he was at Louisiana. They’re always going to be a force to be reckoned with down there.”
