The Roster Rebuild Begins In Earnest For Billy Napier

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better, than he was. Better, stronger, faster.” – Oscar Goldman, from the “Six Million Dollar Man”

The patient in this case is not astronaut Steve Austin but the football program at the University of Florida and the rebuild is not going to cost $6 million but $7.4 million. Per year. Chalk it up to inflation since the last guy in charge of a rebuild was making $6 million when he was summarily dismissed back last November.

Billy Napier has the technology, and he has the people in place to do a rebuild. Make Florida football better, stronger and faster than it was. That’s the job and he seems to be the right guy to do a rebuild. Napier has a plan with everything outlined, detailed and in triplicate. On the surface, at least, everything about him screams at you that if anyone can rebuild Florida football from the ground up – this time in a way that success can be sustained and championships can be won again – that he is the right guy at the right time and at the right place to do it.

Napier is the fourth Florida football coach since 2010. The first one – Will Muschamp – made the mistake of being the guy that follows a coaching legend. Will was all about defense and it showed with the assistant hires he made on that side of the ball. He put together PhD program defenses, Sesame Street offenses, so he didn’t make it. Jim McElwain made it to Atlanta two years with the NFL defense Muschamp left behind. When Muschamp’s guys left to play for the No Fun League the balloon burst and then Mac took the knife to his own program and lied his way out of a job. Dan Mullen had the offense that Muschamp and Mac never had. If he had been fortunate enough to have one of those Muschamp defenses he might still be coaching at UF, but he didn’t. Somewhere along the way, Mullen’s enthusiasm for the Florida job checked out and the offense went AWOL along with a defense that was too often a no show.

Mullen was fired after losing to Missouri in Florida’s final SEC game, becoming the third straight coach to crash and burn on a job that some critics say “chews you up and spits you out.” The search for a new coach didn’t last long. Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin had been preparing for this eventuality since December of 2020 when Mullen flirted with the NFL and basically let it be known that if the right coach with the right job offered, he was all ears. Stricklin began making a list and checking it twice. One by one vetted candidates wound up like lost balls in the tall grass. The one that stood out was Lousiana’s Billy Napier, owner of three consecutive seasons with 10-plus wins, each one better than the last.

At Louisiana, Napier didn’t wake up on third and think he had hit a triple. He took over a program that was spinning its wheels and going nowhere. So, he basically gutted the program, turned his assistants and recruiting analysts loose in the state of Louisiana in search of those diamonds in the rough that had been overlooked by the power programs that regularly raid the state.

It was obvious to Stricklin that this was a guy with a comprehensive plan, the relentless recruiting dynamic and the willingness to roll up his sleeves to do a rebuild. It helped that Napier has the right pedigree – he’s a sturdy branch on the coaching trees of both Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban – and nary a blemish on his character.

“Squeaky clean” is how Stricklin described Napier when discussing the hiring process one Sunday afternoon in January while he was watching Kelly Rae Finley’s Gator women’s basketball team score another win over a highly ranked opponent. “Everyone we asked came back with the same thing,” Stricklin said. “You start thinking this is too good to be true, but there wasn’t a single negative. Not even one.”

Which is why Stricklin flew to Lafayette, Louisiana to see if Napier passed the eyeball test once Florida’s regular season ended with a win over arch-rival FSU. As impressive as Napier was on paper and in the reports that flooded Stricklin’s desk, he was more impressive in person and so the football answer to The Property Brothers was brought to Gainesville to take the structure that’s already in place, gut it and make the fixer-upper better than what it was before.

Here is what has happened in the months since Napier was introduced to the Florida media back on December 5. He’s signed a good – not great but good – early signing class that included huge surprises Kamari Wilson, Devin Moore, Shemar James and Chris McClellan. He brought in five transfers from the portal including right guard O’Cyrus Torrence and running back Montrell Johnson, both from Louisiana and both projected to start in the fall. Next he went about adding more signees for the February class including running back Trevor Etienne, younger brother of former Clemson All-American Travis Etienne and edge rusher Jack Pyburn.

The Gators have gone through the Identity Program phase, which is a polite way of saying mat drills where players are pushed to their limits to toughen them up and get them ready for spring practice early on February mornings. That was followed by spring practice and the Orange and Blue Game, both of which Napier has deemed a success.

What all of that has done is prepare Napier for the next phase of the roster rebuild. After all, this is what college football is all about. The teams with the best roster are the teams that win championships. That’s where Florida fell way behind in the last few years. During the Muschamp years and the first two years of McElwain, the Gators had defenses that could compete with anyone. During the first three Mullen years, the Gators could score points on just about anyone. Unfortunately, there was never a time when you could look at the Florida roster and say it’s complete on both sides of the ball. We’ve gone through years of incomplete, inadequate rosters and that is why Florida went from the program that won more games from 1990-2010 (210) than any team in the country to 32nd in the country (87 wins) in the years since.

Following the Orange and Blue Game, Napier said, “We worked our way through Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 and now we get to regroup and access where we’re at. Our players will get ready to move into what we call ‘reload period,’ or ‘discretionary period.’ We’ll have exit meetings. We’ll talk about strengths and weaknesses, things to work on, and there will be a very specific plan for our team to improve.”

What that means is the fun and games are over. Four months on the job and Billy Napier knows who’s going to cut it and who isn’t. Exit meetings for some are painful since they’ll be hearing words they really don’t wish to hear – “Son, if you choose to stay here at Florida there is zero chance you will ever see the field except in mop-up duty, if then, and you’ll spend your practices on the meat squad where you’ll get beat up every day by the guys who play.” For others, the exit meetings are a mere formality since they’ve already determined their future will be at St. Somewhere Else, wearing another uniform and playing for a new coach.

So for the next couple of weeks and probably well into May, attrition and Florida football will be synonymous.

“We need players,” Napier said after a few practices in the spring, pointing out that he had been forced to commandeer Dante Zanders and Griffin McDowell from the defensive line and Noah Keeter from linebacker just to have enough tight ends to practice due to injuries at the position. Zanders and Keeter performed so well the rest of the spring and during the Orange and Blue Game that they figure to be fixtures at the position in the fall. Keeter is a former scholarship linebacker at UCLA and a Gainesville native who walked on after returning home.

Zanders, Keeter and McDowell leaving one position to patchwork another, however, is a sure sign that recruiting by the previous staff left holes in the roster that Napier is going to have to fill in the transfer portal.

There are 87 scholarship players currently on the Florida roster. Napier stated during a spring practice press conference that he’s going to be giving out five scholarships to walk-ons. That’s 92 on scholarship and the NCAA limit is 85.

This is before any transfers are added to the roster.

“Now, I think the approach is going to be, you know, acquire as many good players as we can at any position, right?” Napier said. “So, you know, we're thin and we need help in a lot of different spots. So, I think we have, we're approaching double digits if that makes sense.”

Double digits means at least 10 so for the Gators to sign 10 transfers when they’re already seven over the limit with the walk-on scholarships, that means 17 on the current roster will have to leave, either by their own volition or nudged out the door by the cold hard reality that they have no hope whatsoever of seeing the playing field.

Nineteen sounds like a lot and it is, but Billy Napier was not brought here to do a gradual restructuring of the roster. If you simply go by the players he has on hand, the roster is inadequate. Sure, with the personnel he has right now the Gators could quite possibly earn a trip to a garden spot like Shreveport for a bowl game where if you lose you’re required to stay an extra week, but that isn’t going to cut it. Napier wasn’t given a 7-year, $7.4 million contract to go to the Weedwacker or Cheez-It bowls. He was hired to elbow the Gators back into the mix for Southeastern Conference championships which means making tough personnel decisions.

“Certainly the transfer portal is a part of college football now, and certainly a lot different dynamic because they can go play immediately,” Napier said. “I think you're going to see this is just part of the game now, and certainly what we need to do is build a really good culture here where players want to be as part of our organization and play for the University of Florida, and hopefully we don't have to deal with those issues unless we're wanting to deal with them.

“But in the meantime, there's going to be some attrition. I think that's reality … That creates opportunity, and we'll go to work. It's another way to acquire a player much like NFL free agency. The problem is we don't have a salary cap and we don't have schedule parity, so it's a little bit different dynamic.”

Napier has the perfect model for a roster rebuild in his good friend and former coaching colleague at Alabama Mel Tucker. All he did was gut his Michigan State roster the 2020 season, bring in 21 guns for hire from the transfer portal and win 11 games. With rules in place that have essentially given players free agency, a coach can load up on mercenaries who are looking for a new place to play after saying adios to the program that recruited them in the first place.

So expect Billy Napier to follow the Michigan State model by bringing in players who can either start or at least be rotational players who see the field early and often. The roster you see today probably won't bear any resemblance to the one you'll see in the fall.

So where does Florida need help in this roster rebuild? Here is a position by position look at the scholarship players on the roster as it stands on April 21, 2022:

QUARTERBACKS (4)

Anthony Richardson (6-4, 235, SO); Jack Miller III (6-4, 210, SO/Transfer from Ohio State); Jalen Kitna (6-4, 210, RFR); Max Brown (6-2, 200, FR)

The situation: Emory Jones and Carlos Del Rio-Wilson are in the portal. If anyone else goes, then expect the Gators to add one from the portal.

RUNNING BACKS (5)

NayQuan Wright (5-9, 196, JR); Lorenzo Lingard (6-0, 203, RJR); Demarkcus Bowman (5-10, 193, SO); Montrell Johnson (5-11, 210, SO/Transfer from Louisiana); Trevor Etienne (5-9, 217, FR)

The situation: This is one of the stronger positions on the team and maybe one of the better units in the SEC.

WIDE RECEIVERS (10) Justin Shorter (6-5, 228, SR); Trent Whittemore (6-4, 211, RSO); Ja’Markis Weston (6-3, 215, RSO); Xzavier Henderson (6-3, 195, SO); Ja’Quavion Fraziars (6-3, 220, SO); Fenley Graham Jr. (5-9, 171, SO); Marcus Burke (6-4, 187, RFR); Daejon Reynolds (6-2, 205, RFR); Caleb Douglas (6-3, 191, FR); Arlis Boardingham (6-4, 225, FR) The situation: This is a young group with only one senior. Expect one or two with stretch the field speed will be added from the portal. That could lead to one or two departing.

TIGHT ENDS (7)

Dante Zanders (6-5, 261, RJR); Griffin McDowell (6-4, 283, RJR); Keon Zipperer (6-3, 234, JR); Jonathan Odom (6-5, 240, RFR); Nick Elksnis (6-6, 243, RFR); Tony Livingston (6-5, 225, FR); Hayden Hansen (6-6, 256, FR)

The situation: Attrition expected here. There were too few due to injuries in the spring, and too many once everyone is healthy. At the most six tight ends will be on the roster, but more than likely five. Expect Noah Keeter (6-5, 220, RSO) to be on scholarship soon.

OFFENSIVE LINEMEN (16)

Richard Gouraige (6-5, 310, RJR); O’Cyrus Torrence (6-5, 335, JR/Transfer from Louisiana); Ethan White (6-5, 334, JR); Kingsley Eguakun (6-4, 305, RSO); Josh Braun (6-6, 357, SO); Michael Tarquin (6-5, 301, RSO); Riley Simonds (6-3, 301, RSO); Will Harrod (6-5, 333, RSO); Richie Leonard (6-2, 315, SO); Austin Barber (6-6, 311, RFR); Yousef Mugharbil (6-4, 311, RFR); Jake Slaughter (6-5, 302, RFR); Kamryn Waites (6-8, 358, RFR/Transfer from Louisiana); David Conner (6-5, 295, FR); Christian Williams (6-4, 319, FR); Jalen Farmer (6-5, 334, FR)

The situation: This is a position of need and also a position where at least two or three could transfer out. There are six very good linemen, seven based on experience. Napier needs nine or ten with experience. Expect two or three from the portal. Expect walk-ons Kaleb Boateng (6-4, 287, RJR) and Mark Pitts (6-6, 322, So) to be awarded scholarships.

DEFENSIVE LINEMEN (12)

Gervon Dexter (6-6, 303, SO); Princely Umanmeielen (6-4, 259, SO); Jaelin Humphries (6-3, 328, RSO); Desmond Watson (6-5, 415, SO); Jalen Lee (6-2, 305, SO); Justus Boone (6-4, 245, RFR); Chris Thomas Jr. (6-5, 309, RFR); Tyreak Sapp (6-2, 264, RFR); Chris McClellan (6-3, 305, FR); Jamari Lyons (6-4, 298, FR); Jack Pyburn (6-3, 263, FR); Andrew Savaiinaea (6-3, 261, FR)

The situation: This is another need position as well as a position where it wouldn’t be a shock to see three leaving. The Gators are good on the outside, but help needed at tackle.

LINEBACKERS/EDGE (11)

Ventrell Miller (6-1, 228, SR); Amari Burney (6-2, 236, SR); Brenton Cox Jr. (6-4, 253, RJR); David Reese (6-2, 236, RJR); Diwun Black (6-3, 221, JR); Lloyd Summerall III (6-5, 236, RSO); Derek Wingo (6-1, 225, SO); Antwaun Powell-Ryland Jr. (6-2, 245, SO); Chief Borders (6-4, 241, RFR); Scooby Williams (6-2, 232, RFR); Shemar James (6-1, 210, FR) The situation: Based on what we saw in the spring, this is a position of strength. Still, there are at least one or two who wouldn’t shock the world by transferring out. If there is an edge rusher of repute who wants to be a Gator, he will be welcomed.

SECONDARY (18)

Trey Dean III (6-3, 201, RSR); Jadarrius Perkins (6-1, 185, JR); Jaydon Hill (6-0, 193, RSO); Jalen Kimber (6-0, 170, RFR/Transfer from Georgia); Avery Helm (6-1, 174, SO); Jason Marshall Jr. (6-0, 192, SO); Rashad Torrence II (6-0, 197, SO); Tre’Vez Johnson (5-11, 192, SO); Kamar Wilcoxson (6-1, 183, SO); Donovan McMillon (6-1, 197, SO); Mordecai McDaniel (6-1, 194, SO); Ethan Pouncey (6-1, 166, SO); Jordan Young (6-0, 188, RFR); Corey Collier Jr. (6-1, 179, RFR); Dakota Mitchell (5-11, 171, RFR); Kamari Wilson (6-0, 201, FR); Devin Moore (6-3, 190, FR); Miguel Mitchell (6-1, 205, FR) The situation: Despite so many young guys, it’s a position of depth and experience. If another safety or another corner with experience and speed were to be available, Napier would probably take him. Expect at least three to be leaving.

SPECIAL TEAMS (4)

Long snappers (2): Marco Ortiz (6-4, 235, RJR); Rocco Underwood (6-3, 227, RFR)

Punter (1): Jeremy Crawshaw (6-4, 188, SO)

Kicker (1): Trey Smack (6-1, 200)

The situation: It would be a surprise if anyone leaves or is added.