Florida Gators at Rock Bottom: Time to Part Ways with Billy Napier

Billy Napier being interviewed after the loss to Texas A&M

“I need your help, Barry Manilow. I’m miserable and I don’t know what to do. Sing me a song, sing it sad and low. No one knows how to suffer quite like you.” – Ray “I Need Your Help Barry Manilow” by Ray Stevens

Moments after the field was cleared Saturday at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for a lightning delay with 11 seconds remaining in the first quarter, Jacksonville sports talk guru Terry Norvelle quipped, “Has any coach in college football history been fired during a weather delay?”

It was bad then but Texas A&M’s lead was only 10-0. It got progressively worse when play resumed 47 minutes later. Rock bottom was hit when the clock flatlined at 00:00 to end the first half with the Aggies leading the Florida Gators 20-0.

Texas A&M won this fiasco, 33-20, but don’t be fooled. It wasn’t that close. Miserable would be a much more accurate description. Even with a true freshman who only got the start after the regular QB experienced shoulder pain in warmups, the Aggies dominated the Gators, methodically chewing them up and spitting them out. The Aggies played the way an SEC team is supposed to. They were rough. They were tough. They were relentless.

With few exceptions, the Gators played like refugees from one of the NCAA’s lower divisions. They were reminiscent of that line from the Sermon on the Mount that says “the meek shall inherit the earth.”

Aggie domination showed up in total yards – 488-301 – and in a 37:26 differential in time of possession. A more than 15-minute difference in possession time means the defense can’t get stops and the offense isn’t giving any help by controlling the football.

Dog’s butt ugly is what it was.

By the time this one came to a merciful end, a vast majority of the 89,993 who bought tickets were left feeling like Wile E. Coyote freefalling to the bottom of a deep canyon after his rocket-powered roller skates purchased mail order from Acme sputtered and died before he could catch The Roadrunner.

Oh splat!

What made this loss so hard to take was its resemblance to so many games in the Napier era at Florida. In the season opener against Miami, the Gators were grabbed by the lapels and slapped silly. Against the Aggies they were once again brutalized on both sides of the line of scrimmage.

Against both Miami and the Aggies, the Gators couldn’t block, couldn’t tackle and were powerless to stop big plays. In both games, the Gators couldn’t run the football (25 carries, 52 yards vs. A&M) and they struggled in pass protection which led to three interceptions in both games.

Not only did the Gators fail to stop the A&M running game (310 yards, 5.6 per carry) but they couldn’t sack Marcel Reed even though they tried to daze and confuse him with every blitz known to mankind. The Aggies didn’t turn the ball over, didn’t give up a sack and only punted once.

Texas A&M hit 15 big plays that gained 323 yards – five pass plays that were good for 159 yards and 10 running plays for 164. That’s an average of 21.5 yards per big play. On their other 57 plays, the Aggies gained 165 yards, an average of 2.89 per play.

That’s not dissimilar to the Miami game when the Hurricanes ran off one big play after another. How many other games in the past two years have the Gators lost because they gave up a ton of big plays?

Too many. That’s how many.  

When the Gators marched down the field to score on a 14-yard Graham Mertz pass to Elijhah Badger on the opening drive of the third quarter, it set off a wave of hope that a comeback rally was in the works. The Aggies stomped that notion into oblivion on the Aggies’ second play after the Gators kicked off. Reed rolled to his left, set his feet and heaved to Cyrus Allen, running free as a banshee some 40 or so yards down the field. Once the ball was secured in his hands, Allen ran through the Florida secondary which looked like kids chasing the ice cream truck. One more big play, this one good for crushing any thought of a successful Florida comeback.

There were no comebacks to be had on this night. By the time this game ended before a near-empty stadium, message boards were filling up fast with calls for Napier to be fired. Steve Russell’s post game call-in show on WRUF was scorching hot with demands for both Napier and athletic director Scott Stricklin to be canned.

This isn’t the first time in the Napier era that the fan base has erupted with calls for his dismissal, but it might be the last time because there is every chance Napier won’t survive past Monday. If reports from various outlets are correct, the University of Florida Athletic Association Board of Trustees will meet this morning to decide when, not if, Napier’s gainful employment as the Gator head football coach will come to an end. Reputable people say adequate buyout money has either been collected or pledged, somewhere in the neighborhood of $26 million. From another report, Dan Enos, who has head coaching experience at Central Michigan and several years experience as an SEC offensive coordinator, will be the interim.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way for Napier, but it wasn’t supposed to end in similar fashion for Ron Zook, Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain or Dan Mullen, either. None of them got to finish out their final season before the hammer came down and buyout checks were written. The only coach since Steve Spurrier (2001) to leave on his own volition was Urban Meyer (2005-2010), who won 65 games and two national championships.

It could be argued that neither Zook, Muschamp or McElwain was remotely qualified for a job with such a championship past and high expectations. Mullen had plenty of experience and won big his first three years but never seemed to grasp the concept that you can’t sustain excellence over the long haul if you refuse to hire assistant coaches who can recruit at a high level. Still, Mullen, along with Zook, Muschamp and McElwain departed with millions in buyout money and all of them had winning records to show for their time at Florida.

Like the others, Napier will get the millions in buyout money. Unlike the others, he is likely to leave with a 12-16 record and have the distinction of becoming the first coach to leave UF with a losing record since Raymond Wolf went 9-23-2 from 1946-49.

Napier was hired in December of 2021 after the higher ups at the University Athletic Association decided to pull the plug on Dan Mullen after four seasons rather than allow him another year to atone for his only bad season. In the three previous seasons to 2021, Mullen got the Gators to New Year’s Six bowl games. Even though the 2021 season ended with a losing (6-7) record, the Gators did go to a bowl game. The Gators got stomped in Napier’s only bowl game after season one.  

It is an unceremonious end for Napier, who was supposed to be the guy who could coach, recruit, rebuild a championship foundation while restoring the honor of the Florida football program and best of all, halt the revolving door of coaches since Spurrier’s 2001 retirement. In an attempt to end the cycle, Napier was given all the money and resources he needed including the Heavener Football Center, an absolute palace that ranks equal to or better than 95 percent of the standalone football complexes in all of college football.

None of that has mattered enough to turn the program around.

The fan base might have chosen to stick with Napier if 2024 had shown the progress he promised from spring football onward. This was supposed to be a much better team than the one that went 6-7 in 2022 and 5-7 in 2023, but the Gators look poorly coached because they are still plagued by the same mistakes they’ve been making all along.

It was Vince Lombardi who said, “Football is blocking and tackling. Everything else is mythology.” The Gators don’t block well and their tackling is atrocious. The many off the field accomplishments Napier often points to are wonderful, but they haven’t resulted in winning football games, so there is more of what Lombardi called mythology going on than what wins ball games.

The starting lineups of teams that win championships are more often two or three Boy Scouts surrounded by a bunch of borderline psychopaths. Napier points out a locker room filled with high character guys, but what he can’t point out are starting lineups that relentlessly pursue and attain wins. The Gators play nice when they need to play like ogres.

It’s great to be nice, but Napier is paid more than $7.3 million to win football games and the Gators haven’t won despite wholesale changes in his coaching staff, boatloads of analysts and spending more money than any coach in Florida history.

All that should result in tangible evidence of success but here we are three games into season three of Napier’s tenure and the only two decent teams the Gators have played kneecapped them. Napier hasn’t made excuses after either of the losses, but his “we have to play better” or “we have to coach better” explanations no longer resonate with the fan base. Judging by the way the team has played in the losses to Miami and Texas A&M, you have to wonder if they resonate with the team.

A Florida fan base that was teetering on the verge after the Miami game was lost Saturday against the Aggies. Instead of visible righteous anger from the head coach after those two losses, Napier was very, very nice. The way the Gators played in those two games was a reflection of their head coach’s demeanor.

As nice as Billy Napier is, anger and fire seem to be missing from his public demeanor. Perhaps he’s intense at practice, but the intensity is absent on game day when the Gators need it most. Rip your head off if you get in my way football seems to be in hibernation when it comes to the Florida Gators.  

That is precisely why it’s past time to change coaches. Perhaps nice will work somewhere else, but it isn’t working here. Since 85 scholarship players can’t be fired, the only other choice is to say thanks but you can’t work here anymore to the head coach.

The sooner Billy Napier is gone, the sooner feelers can go out to Jimmy Sexton and Trace Armstrong, the two most powerful coach’s agents in the country. Florida needs a successor who will breathe fire into the program, demand winning and run off anyone who can’t embrace his agenda.

Unfortunately,  Billy Napier is not that man.