Spring has sprung; now the hard part begins for Billy Napier

Camp Napier concluded Thursday night at The Swamp before an announced crowd of 45,000 that came from all parts of Florida for the Orange and Blue Game. How close that was to the actual number of warm bodies in the stadium is anybody’s guess. There is no guesswork when it comes to Florida’s No. 1 quarterback, however.

If there were any doubts that Anthony Richardson is THE man then they were erased in the first half of the Blue Team’s 34-0 win over the Orange when Richardson completed 13-15 of his passes for 167 yards and two touchdowns. AR15 finished the game completing an efficient 18-24 of his passes for 207 yards while running for 22 more and another touchdown.

It made for a pleasant night for first year head coach Billy Napier, who said the atmosphere was “even better than I expected to be honest with you.” This was the 15th and final time Napier will see the Gators on the field until August, so he had reason to be happy with what he saw, but there was no time to wait for the euphoria of a first night in The Swamp to wear off. There were recruits waiting and that was a far greater priority than answering questions from the media, so he cut the question and answer session in the South End Zone meeting room short to get in a few last words before the recruits headed off into the night.

The high school kids will get plenty of follow up communication from Napier’s assistants and the “army” of analysts and support people whose sole purpose in life is to spread the Florida gospel. When Napier presides over the staff meeting at 7:45 in the morning, no doubt he’ll be asking a lot of questions about the high school kids, but bet the farm and everything else you hold sacred that talk will shift to roster management.

Specifically, Napier is going to have to make some very hard decisions. The spring football game was fun for everyone, head coach included. Having to deal with who may or may not be a Gator past May 1 is probably the most difficult aspect of Napier’s job.

Napier admitted he has some talented players, just not enough of them, and not every one of the players who saw the field Thursday night is talented enough to ever sniff the playing field moving forward. He is going to have to be brutally honest and tell some kids they just don’t fit into the long range scheme of things.

It can’t be fun to conduct an exit interview when you have to tell a kid whose lifetime dream might have been to play for the Florida Gators that he’s just not good enough, especially if you know the kid you’re talking to has tried his very best to do everything the right way. How do you suggest to that kid that if he has a future in football at Florida other than as a member of the meat squad that he ought to put his name in the NCAA transfer portal, knowing fully well there will be at least a thousand kids who transfer out who won’t have a scholarship next year?

But that’s one of the things Napier is going to have to do in the next couple of weeks. Something else he’s going to have to do is re-recruit players he would like to keep who might be leaning toward a transfer. That is an unintended consequence of the transfer portal. It’s not just about acquiring new talent that elected to change scenery from St. Somewhere Else, but also about re-recruiting players on your own roster who have talent but may not be feeling the love.

“A guy goes in or the rumor mill starts swirling this guy is going in,” Napier said. “That's why we have an entire group of people in the back that's what they do every day. Bird Sherrill, Chase Clark and that crew, we're working on college personnel every day.”

It is the job of Sherrill, Clark and the Crew to know who’s leaving, who’s thinking about leaving and who needs to be coaxed to stay. It’s all part of roster management. It is more than simply dealing with attrition. It has everything to do with having enough good players to compete at the highest levels. One you know who is with you and who you need to be without, then you can set about the task of finding some players.

Florida needs a bunch of them. Five walk-ons, Napier told us a couple of weeks ago are going to get scholarships. Tackles Kaleb Boateng and Mark Pitts are probably two of them. Another might be Noah Keeter, who was conscripted from linebacker when three scholarship tight ends went down with spring-ending injuries. All Keeter did Thursday night was catch three passes for 53 yards and a touchdown. He’s played defense all his life but he looked like a natural pass catcher in the Orange and Blue Game.

Heading into the spring, the thought was the Gators were close to being over the 85-scholarship limit, but when five walk-ons are about to get scholarships and the head coach says not only will UF be very active in the transfer portal, but will be looking to sign 10 or more, then that says there will be quite a bit of attrition.

It is expected that by May 1, the transfer portal ranks will swell by at least 1,000 players nationwide who are convinced they need to find that green pasture of their football dreams. The majority of players in the portal have no business dotting an SEC roster, so finding replacements has to be a very selective process.

Napier isn’t into hit or miss when it comes to adding plug and play types from the portal.

“From a personnel standpoint and everything that we do, we want to make every decision in the best interest of the team,” Napier said. “There will be an opportunity. I don't necessarily think we’d turn down any good player, a player that can get it in our two deep and make our team better, that’s what we're looking for.”

Without coming right out and saying so, Napier essentially declared what we all know, that in the Southeastern Conference you better have a minimum of a two-deep that is game ready. That’s just to compete. If you’re going to win, you better go well beyond the two-deep with players close enough in the developmental process that they can go to whatever level is next when a second teamer answers the next man up bell. Injuries are just a reality in the SEC. No league sends more players to the NFL. This is a league where the players are bigger, stronger, faster and they hit harder, which means there will be injuries so you better have a roster full of good players to deal with them.

So it will be off to the portal for Napier and the Florida Gators. Key in, for a moment if you will, on that statement about not during down a player who can fit into the two-deep. That very well may have been a hint that Napier doesn’t think Florida has 44 SEC-caliber players ready to go this fall. If that’s the case, then where does he go to find them?

"I mean typically I would say there's some sort of relationship with most of these kids, a pre-existing relationship,” Napier said. “You have knowledge of the player, maybe someone in the building recruited the player, someone in the building's connected to the area.”

Running back Montrell Johnson, right guard O’Cyrus Torrence and backup right tackle Kamryn Waites were with Napier at Louisiana. Napier knew Ohio State transfer quarterback Jack Miller III from when he was the offensive coordinator at Arizona State back in 2017. Corner Jalen Kimber, who transferred in from Georgia, was from Mansfield, Texas, a place where Napier and the Rajin Cajuns recruited regularly.

“So far of the young, the players that we've added to our team, we had a connection with them before they got here,” Napier said. “I think that's what you're going to see for the most part going forward.”

Because the players Napier will be recruiting from the portal will be expected to play right away, those pre-existing relationships will help to minimize the risk. Nothing is perfect in evaluating players, but every precaution has to be made to bring in the right players.

The advantage Napier and his staff will have these next two weeks when they hit the portal hot and heavy is that they have that “army” or support people and analysts who have been making their lists and checking them twice since they arrived on campus. They’ve been looking over players already in the portal as well as scouring rosters to find players likely to transfer.

If you were at The Swamp Thursday night and you have a roster, you might want to hold onto it for comparison sake because in the fall there might be a whole lot of players who played in the Orange and Blue Game who are plying their trade somewhere else. Is it necessarily fair that college football has reached this point? Not necessarily so, but it’s the way the rules are written now.

Get used to it.