Billy Napier: "We're getting there"

They know. No reminder is necessary for the Gators to realize how very fragile this season has been. At 4-2 the Gators aren’t all that far off from where they were predicted to be back in all the preseason magazines and later in July at SEC Media Days.

The record says the Gators are one win above average as they head into Saturday’s last home game for the month of October against LSU (7 p.m., ESPN). A closer look at the record, some examination into mitigating circumstances combined with some self-evaluation and they know just how close they are to being 1-5 at midyear, which would mean fighting to salvage a .500 record for the season.

They also know just how close they are to being 6-0. If the Gators are 6-0 right now they’re probably no worse than sixth in the Associated Press poll and the only team in the country with three wins over teams that have been ranked in the top ten (Utah, Kentucky and Tennessee).

A handful of plays. That’s all that stands between 6-0 and 4-2 or even – heaven forbid – 1-5.

“I heard a coach say one time that you're always really close to being a very good team, and you're always really close to being a very bad team and that describes our team in a lot of ways” Billy Napier said Monday morning.

In the wins over Utah, South Florida and Missouri, there were enough mistakes made to say that the Gators won in spite of themselves. The 3-point win over Utah was preserved by a diving interception in the end zone by Amari Burney. The 3-point win over South Florida was an absolute gift. What are the odds that during a 3-play sequence two different snappers are going to deliver one-hoppers? The first one was dribbled between the quarterback and the running back to take the Bulls out of game-winning touchdown contention. The second was bouncer to the holder on a 47-yard field goal attempt that could have tied the game and sent it to overtime. Instead of a decent snap and hold for a kicker whose earlier 47-yarder would have been good from 57, this one resulted in the ball being kicked sideways off the ground. Against Missouri, the Gators got a field goal after a 48-yard punt return by Xzavier Henderson and a 49-yard pick six by Jaydon Hill, who later killed a potential Mizzou TD drive with an interception at the UF four.

In the 10-point loss to Kentucky, the Wildcats were gifted 23 of their 26 points. An interception gave the Wildcats a field goal and a second INT was taken to the house. The only decent offensive play of the game by UK – a 55-yard TDP – happened because the safety froze and there was no over the top coverage when the Wildcats ran a max protect, 2-man route.

Then there is Tennessee. The Gators gave up 17 big plays on defense – 10 pass plays that netted 234 yards and seven running plays that were good for 150. So many of the big plays were the result of one player blowing his assignment. The Gators put up 597 yards and 33 points and yet they lost by five points. Just three or four plays instead of blunders and it’s the Gators who are unbeaten and looking like a challenger to Georgia in the SEC East, not the Vols, whose win over the Gators was just their second in 18 years.

There is way too much similarity in both wins and losses. Every game has been winnable, and all but the 52-17 win over D1AA Eastern Washington has been losable.

“I think there’s a lot of days when you wake up and you’re thinking, man, I’m glad we’re 4-2, but you also think about the potential and that we’re a very capable team,” Napier said. “We’ve been in the fight every week.”

The Gators have been in the fight but at some point they have to start making the difference-making plays and avoiding the ones that turn into difference-makers for opponents. It is the kind of thing that tests the patience of a coach and drives players nuts as well.

Defensive end Princely Umanmielen understands the craziness all too well. He’s been so close to making big plays that could have made a difference all season. It wasn’t until the fourth quarter against Missouri that he finally put it all together. In what was his best game of the season, Umanmielen finished with six tackles, a sack and three tackles for loss. When the Gators needed him most – in the fourth quarter when they were trying to hang on to a 7-point lead – Umanmielen was constantly in the Missouri backfield, harassing the quarterback or making a play to stuff the run. He was a terror off the edge.

In the wins over Utah and South Florida it seemed he was always one step, one hesitation or one small mistake away from making a play that could have made a difference. The mistakes he made against Tennessee he remembers vividly.

“I know versus Utah there was a play where I rushed off the edge and he seeped through the B-gap,” Umanmielen said. “I just know, if I'd have got off the ball faster, I probably would have won that rep and got there. There's another play where I bull rushed, but instead of keeping my outside arm free, I bull rushed between hands and he ran outside of me. It's just small things like that that have to be corrected. Like versus Tennessee, there was a play where I did an inside move and he ran outside. It's just small issues like that that need to be corrected when rushing a mobile quarterback.”

One wrong move, one blown assignment have happened far too often in the first six games and not just by Princely Umanmielen. Nearly every player who has stepped on the field with the defensive unit has botched plays. Fans groan and wonder what the defensive coordinator is thinking when coverages are blown or tackles are missed. They think the same thing about Napier who calls the plays for the offense.

So often the coach will make the perfect call but the execution is off because one player blows his assignment or a wrong read is made or one tackle is missed. There were more than a handful of plays like that against Missouri. That was a game the Gators should have won by two or three touchdowns, but it wound up a dogfight until the final whistle. The Tigers were on the field for 72 plays that netted 370 yards. There were 11 chunk plays – six in the passing game, five in the running game – that gained 225 yards. There were three huge pickups for first down on third and forever. On the 61 non-chunk plays, the Tigers gained 145 yards, an average of 2.38 per play.

This is a recurring theme. The Gators play winning football about 80-90 percent of the time, but on those plays when there was that missed tackle, that hesitation or that blown assignment they give up huge chunks of yardage.

And yet, the Gators are 4-2 and could be 6-0. The players realize just how close they are to not only being ranked, but top ten.

“We talk about it amongst like teammates and things,” Umanmielen said. “It's like a hard pill to swallow, but we realize how small mistakes can be big differences, and we just realize that, whenever we – like upcoming games, we just have to be better and stop making so many mistakes because the two games that we did lose, it wasn't just like – I feel like we beat ourselves more than the other team beat us.”

Eliminate the self-inflicted wounds and not only are the Gators 6-0 right now, but they’ve won all the games comfortably. Instead, they’re 4-2 and it’s a shaky 4-2. Shaky as in not all that far away from a losing record.

But, you don’t give back the wins just because they’re ugly. Instead you take to the practice field to continue ironing out the rough edges and you continue to preach the kind of discipline that has the Gators tied for fifth in the nation in fewest penalties.

On defense that means eliminating the chunk plays and getting the Gators off the field on third down. The Gators are dead last in third down defense (43-85) in the Southeastern Conference and 125th out of 131 teams in Division I nationally. Because they can’t get the opponents off the field, opponents have had the ball nearly seven minutes per game and have run 85 more plays than the Gators.

On offense, Napier says the Gators are getting closer to where they need to be.

“We’re getting there,” he said. “We like to rush the ball effectively. We like to throw completions. We like to execute at a high rate on conversion downs. We like to create explosive plays. We like to score touchdowns in the red area and we like to play turnover-free and penalty-free football. That’s how you win games. We’ve done some of those at times and we need to do them better at times so just keep working.”

There is a plan to win that Napier has learned in combination of apprenticeships as an assistant for Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban but also during four years as the head coach at Louisiana. He knows what it takes to win and has never tried to speak in pie-in-the-sky terms about the Gators. He’s continued to emphasize that this team is a work in progress.

Fans want more than what they’ve seen so far, but no one wants it more than the head coach, who sees progress being made. Fans want to see the Gators get on enough of a roll to finish the regular season with eight or nine wins. It’s do-able, but it will take improvement in every phase of the game.

Napier has seen enough improvement that he believes there is light at the end of Florida’s proverbial tunnel.

“Where we’re at, I think we’ve a very capable group,” he said. “What I’m hopeful that we see here is we start to minimize errors a bit better, we start to be a little more efficient, we start to believe a little bit more. I think our practice habits are improving. I think that the chemistry, the morale of the group is improving.”

The great teams believe. The great teams get on the practice field every day believing they’re improving to the point that no one can or will beat them. The Gators haven’t gotten to that point in their development just yet, but Billy Napier believes that it’s all very possible.

“I can’t imagine being at a much better place,” Napier said, adding that “The more I’m here, every day that I’m here the more I’m confident about what we can accomplish.”