Can We Be Positive for Just Nine Months?

Isn’t there a negativity thread? I came hear for argument and this is abuse.

 

Name that tune.

 

Was expecting... or hoping some tops were coming off. Did not happen. What's with those people?

 

I tend to agree with this. The last two years we all lived on hope... with little to any evidence that something major was going on behind the scenes to change/fix our program and probable season outcome. We had some good coaches, but we still had some dead weight that we needed to expel and that cost us 3 or more games.

I don't entirely blame the head coach for that becasue he has bosses that hold the purse-strings and position coaches don't just get up and run the Gainesville becasue we want them to come coach the Gators. That takes time and effort to convince the good position coaches to matriculate down to good ole Gainesville. This is year three...

Now we have the systems in place,and we have substantial upgrades in key position coaching. I see the 3 year Gator players are getting better and more importantly they are getting healthy. We've made so key upgrades to the players on the team and we've even got the UAA and the NIL to up their game too. When you have the UAA committing more money to our football program that instills confidence that something good it about to happen. They don't just toss money around unless they see real tangible progress from their investment into our football program.

Coach Napier is getting things done behind the scenes and now we have the UAA fully vested in his vision too. If we can get the NIL to keep the players we need to keep and bring in the players that we may need then all will be well from the systems stand point. Now all we have to do is WIN.

I have a positive attitude towards where this year is heading, even though we have a difficult schedule we still have 7 home games to make some noise in Gainesville. The defense let us down last year and if we can get them on par with our historical defensive teams of the past then we can compete. That leaves the O-line and the offense.

We need the offense to come up big a be that more open offense that we saw play-out towards the end of the year. Mertz was tossing the long and mid-range passes with more ease, and the offense looked lass predictable towards the end of the year. We need to start where we left off... Can we get the receivers on the same page? Can we get the TE's to block and catch? I think so, but we shall see.

That just leaves the special teams... No comment on that right now. I just have to see it to believe it. We need to get our very best athletes on the special teams to make them special.

This year I can honestly say that I have a rational exuberance of what our football team can be on the field.

 

I think it’s pretty clear CBN has had an unbelievably good off season. He’s already passed the 3M coaches in my book by getting rid of coaches that weren’t cutting it and bringing in better coordinators. And if you think Raymond wasn’t a problem- go look at LSU spring game. The guy is mailing it In. The addition of Roberts brings experience and cohesion, Chapman brings energy and urgency. Harris brings youth and fundamentals and you could see it in the spring.
bringing in Safeties Turner and Douglas gets us more experience and a QB of the defense
Pup Howard is going to be a beast. We are finally 2-3 deep with some sec players on the DL. The RB room and QB room are the best we’ve had in years.
Listening to Josh Pate, who has toured every school in the offseason “they are doing things at Florida that only championship programs are doing and they are doing innovative things nobody else is doing that will soon be copied. The noise around the program and the W/L record does NOT match what I’m seeing in that building. This would point to good things downstream”

Now- will that fix our special teams? Clock mgmt? Boring wr rout tree? Knowing how to run tempo on offense? Knowing when to run the FG unit on?
That all remains to be seen.
But he’s made the roster and staff better. The culture is better. And that should translate to winning some of those close games

 

Good post. Staff has all they need. Better OL and a significantly better Defense should be on tap for the season.

 

Easy doc. It was tongue-in-cheek because, instead of actually asking for only positivity, you literally asked a simple yes-or-no question about whether everyone here could think the same way for 9 months. My apologies for offending your sensibilities.

(Oh, BTW: Colin Powell's entire tenure as head of the Joint Chiefs occurred within my 20-year military career; so I'm quite familiar with his military philosophy. He was a DC bureaucrat - a politician in uniform instead of a combat leader. Perpetual optimism is an intellectual fantasyland that ignores objective realities which, in turn, undermines organizational effectiveness instead of enhancing it. Saying otherwise shows just how ineffectual he really was.)

 

Great post! You can clearly see that CBN is learning at a fast pace. His evaluation process is very good. Unfortunately, the question is, "does he run out of time?" Uf is a tough place to learn at.

 

You are a breath of fresh air on this forum.
I am with you! on your opinion.
The Gator program was gifted with Ray Graves, Charlie Pell, Steve Spurrier, and Urban Meyer. I honestly believe that Billy Napier was casted in the same mold as the coaches I just listed.

 

I was thrilled to see Mizell (as well as some of our other speedsters) lining up as KR (PR too?) in O and B game even in our pretend kick returns, he looked dangerous. I would not be shocked to see his biggest impact come on special teams.

 

Not to take this toward Too Hot, but....

After I retired from the military, I hired on to be a contracted flight instructor for the USAF at their helicopter flight school. During my last few years there, before deciding to retire permanently, I saw firsthand this neutering to which you refer. The military that I knew, with its rich (and sometimes coarse testosterone-filled) traditions is long gone, and I'm both sad and worried about what has been done to it.

 

What do you mean by that, specifically?

 

He has an evaluation process that is constantly evaluating all aspect of the program and spotting and correcting deficiencies when possible. Everything from NIL, recruiting, nutrition, off season workouts, players and coaches. He has done three times as much to improve the program in 2 years as Dan Mullins did in 3 years.

He was spot on with regards to the two coaches he let go and replaced, the nutrition and off season workout program, most of the players that transferred in, etc...