Mountaintop isn't in sight yet for Billy Napier, Gators

“The mountain doesn’t say you are black, you are white, you are weak, you are strong. It’s one rule for everybody. If you give up, you die.” -- Nirmal Purja

Billy Napier Monday Press Coference

Halfway through season two as Florida’s head football coach, Billy Napier finds himself nowhere near the summit of the mountain he’s climbing to restore the Gators to Southeastern Conference and national prominence.

“I think there’s some clouds, and I can’t see the top of the mountain yet,” Napier said at his Monday morning press conference. “That’s what I would tell you.”

This mountain is rather steep, and its origins date back to 2011, long before Napier was hired. The fingerprints of Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen are prominent in transforming Florida football from the perennial powerhouse it was into the program Napier inherited in December of 2021. The Gators went 6-7 in 2021 and in his first year on the job, Napier duplicated that mark.

It will take two more wins this season just to equal the win totals of the last two years, three to show tangible evidence of progress. Heading into Saturday’s game with South Carolina (2-3, 1-2 SEC) in Columbia, the Gators (4-2, 2-1 SEC) have already surpassed the low expectations of Stewart Mandel, The Athletic’s editor-in-chief of college football. Mandel predicted a 3-9 season with a 1-7 record in SEC play. Las Vegas oddsmakers and the staff at Athlon predicted 5-7, so a Saturday win would assure at least matching that total.

From 1990-2010, the Florida Gators went 210-57-1, the best record of any college football team in the country. The Gators won three national championships and eight Southeastern Conference titles. From 2011-21, the Gators went 87-52, which is tied for 27th best in the country. Napier is currently 10-9 in his season-and-a-half in charge.

Napier understands fully well that Florida football didn’t begin a descent into mediocrity overnight, that it took years of neglect to get where the Gators are today. Not all of it had to do with hiring the wrong coach, although that’s the easiest place to point a finger. Muschamp had no previous coaching experience so much of his four years on the job was spent learning how to juggle the coaching aspects with fund-raising and administrative demands. With the advantage of perhaps a couple years coaching at a Bowling Green followed by a couple of years at a pre-Pac-12 Utah, things might have turned out differently.

McElwain was a bad fit from the moment he compared playing quarterback at the University of Florida to his dog Clarabelle. Fans never understood how it is a coach making more than $4 million a year couldn’t get his teeth whitened. He had everybody fooled the first couple of years at UF, but when nearly all the defensive talent left behind by Muschamp found its way to the NFL, McElwain was a goner. He cooked his own goose when he lied about death threats to his family.

Nobody could ever question Dan Mullen’s ability to call plays or design an offense that could put points on the board. Mullen’s problem had everything to do with recruiting and choosing to remain loyal to defensive coordinator Third-and-Grantham. Fish in the fridge start to stink after three days and must be tossed. Three years into Grantham and Mullen should have encouraged him to take the Cincinnati Bengals job when it was offered.

Facilities were an issue, too. Muschamp complained that he hesitated to bring recruits to Florida’s practice fields because they were so rundown he was always fearful that someone would get seriously hurt while a prospective Gator was watching. McElwain got the indoor practice facility he asked for, but that was delayed because some genius didn’t include end zones and bathrooms in the original design. Mullen constantly groused that training facilities were in the South End Zone of The Swamp, what seems like an overnight hike from the practice field. The Heavener Center opened up almost a year after Mullen lost his job.

There were other issues, all of which piled onto each other to make a mountain that Napier must scale. Fans want success now. They point to the Band-Aid fixes through wholesale use of the transfer portal at other schools, but Napier’s plan is use the transfer portal sparingly to address positions of immediate need while building a foundation through exceptional recruiting of high school kids. Florida’s current recruiting class is ranked No. 4 by both 247Sports and On3. It is entirely possible the final class ranking could be higher.

The problems and issues Napier inherited weren’t overnight in the making, nor will they be erased overnight.

“I think it's important that we understand that growth, improvement, development, is not a one-day event,” Napier said Monday. “I think ultimately for the individual players, staff members that we have, for us as a team, you just don't get to the top of a mountain in one day. You've got to climb the mountain.

“And I think there's important things to remember while we do that. It's going to require a tremendous amount of work. I think that you've got to stretch yourself. You've got to get uncomfortable. It's going to be harder than you thought it was going to be. There's going to be some uncomfortable days.”

The uncomfortable days are here because the Florida job is probably harder than Napier thought it might be. While it’s true that Napier had Louisiana transformed from Sun Belt mediocrity into championship caliber in a single season, it’s worth noting that through his first 19 games on the job the Ragin Cajuns were 11-8.

Through his first 19 games at UF, Napier is 10-9. Louisiana went from 7-7 in year one to 11-3 in year two. For the Gators to get to 11 wins in year two, they’re going to have to go on a rather impressive run against an SEC schedule that’s infinitely tougher than the Sun Belt schedule of 2019.

In 2022, the Gators could have won nine or ten games, but they finished 6-6 due to their penchant for self-inflicted wounds. Through six games this season, the Gators have lost two games decisively but both losses were marred by way too many self-inflicted wounds. The Gators could have very well beaten Utah without all the penalties and mental mistakes. Maybe they wouldn’t have beaten Kentucky, but at least the game would have been much more competitive.

The Gators beat Vanderbilt, 38-14, Saturday to bounce back from that hosing at the hands of Kentucky the week before. It was a good win, but Napier made it a point Monday to emphasize the need to grow past their error prone ways.

“We showed signs of life Saturday in certain parts of our team,” Napier said. “I do think it's important that we understand that even though we got a good result, there are some areas where we need to improve, whether that's communication, fundamentals, decision-making, a lack of discipline at times when it comes to penalties.”

Napier has yet to use youth as an excuse, but so many of Florida’s on-the-field problems can be traced to the inexperience of kids who are required to play on a roster that has seen 42 players transfer out since Napier arrived. When the Gators played Kentucky, the Wildcats had 10 senior starters, which is more seniors than there are on the entire Florida roster. In a couple of weeks the Gators will play No. 1 Georgia in Jacksonville. Georgia has 19 upperclassmen on its first unit offense and defense.

Critics moan and groan about an offense that lacks explosiveness, that the passing game is too much dink and dunk, and that the offense is way too predictable. There have been calls for Napier to give up play calling, but the offense against Vanderbilt had a different look in so many ways than the one just the game before. That’s because Napier had at his disposal freshman Tre Wilson, who has that Kadarius Toney make-you-miss quality, and redshirt freshman tight end Arlis Boardingham, whose ability to catch the ball in the middle of the field can help eliminate the extra safety in the box.

Wilson caught eight passes for 64 yards, scoring on a 19-yard jet sweep. Boardingham caught eight passes for 99 yards and two TDs. The two of them added a new dynamic to the UF offense, a sign of growth and adapting the offense to the available personnel. That is another sign of progress.

In the second half of the season, expect more of what will be perceived as new wrinkles, both on offense or defense. Chances are, the new wrinkles will be nothing more than things practiced for months, only now Napier can put the right players on the field to implement them.

“We have to practice what we know works, tweak and adapt and evolve in the areas where we know we need to do that,” Napier said.

Napier has a plan and a purpose in everything he does. He is a relentless note-taker whether it’s on the field, during meetings or watching film. He always has a way to measure progress. Through six games, the Gators have made progress, but the goal is long term, to get the program to a point where it can compete with anyone and sustain success.

Once again, this is not an overnight process.

“I think it's important to keep perspective here relative to what all goes into the challenge,” Napier said. “I think we have to keep that mindset. Rain, sleet or snow, we have to keep building. Somebody's got to wake up and do the work every day. And we're going to be relentless in how we do that.”

Napier still sees the clouds that hide the summit of the mountain, but the climb goes on. For some schools, even in the Southeastern Conference, winning seven or eight games and going to a bowl every year is a sure sign of success. That might work at some schools, but at Florida just going to a bowl game every year will get you fired.

Napier isn’t willing to settle for good. He intends for the Gators to climb much higher than that.

“Look, we have to understand that it's easy to get about halfway up, easy to get about three-quarters of the way up,” Napier said. “A lot of people do that, but the ability to kind of put your blinders on – the air gets thinner, becomes more challenging, the terrain, the temperature. So, all these little small things that are happening right in front of us, those are the things we have to focus on.”