The last article I wrote for the main site was about how the 2024 season is, unfortunately, about getting all the ducks in a row for a possible breakout season in 2025. Put that way, the sentiment is a bit gloomy.
However, I chose to write the piece as I did because I was actually overcome with a moment of optimism about 2025. The team won’t have the depth of a Georgia or Saban-era Alabama team, but if key players progress as I expect they will, the top line or two of the depth chart should be about as good as it’s been in a long time. Probably, from a total-team standpoint, since 2012. And maybe earlier?
Billy Napier, for the very winding and bumpy road he’s been taking, really is upgrading the overall talent on the team. And yes, while there was some mismanagement last year, a lot of problems stemmed from the large number of snaps being accumulated by very young players. It turned out to be the take-your-lumps kind of year that some fans wanted out of a upperclassman-heavy 2022 team, just a season later.
Therein lies the rub. Napier didn’t do the big roster flip right away, so the take-your-lumps campaign came in his second season, not first. And when fans don’t want to wait on a very long rebuild, they certainly don’t want to see that kind of season any time after the first.
I get that, and I acknowledged it in the piece. However I didn’t realize just how much of a Rorschach test the article was going to be until I read through a few pages of comments on the message board thread about it.
To be clear, I am not judging anyone’s opinions here. You feel what you feel, and those feelings are real. It’s not my place to tell someone their emotions are wrong. Also as I’ve said before, every season is someone’s first and someone’s last. Every year is important in and of itself.
Now, there were some predictably polarized responses of the kind of either, “this is exactly right” or “this is depressing to think about, I hate this”. All well and good.
The replies in the middle were more interesting. They too ran a gamut, from “I hate this but it’s right” to “this is not what Gator football should be”. I do sympathize with the latter sentiment. I, too, think it’s not what it should be. It also shouldn’t be sitting on three straight losing seasons and burning through badly fitting coach after badly fitting coach, but here we are.
The main point I was trying to get across — besides the optimism, which was as strong as it’s been in anything I’ve written since last summer — is that it has to be this way in 2024. You can’t go from last year’s team to a real contender in one year unless you import a 2010 Cam Newton-like figure, and so far they’ve only made one of those.
If you can’t abide ’24 being a year to consolidate the gains of two straight cycles of pretty intense roster flipping to set up a leap in ’25, then you should have bought FireBillyNapier.com right after the Arkansas loss. Someone has helpfully parked the domain and I’m sure would’ve parted with it for a reasonable price.
The defense has been an abject disaster for three of the last four seasons. The ’21 defense isn’t much better statistically, but they basically checked out after the Georgia loss and racked up a lot of yards and points afterwards. It was just bad, not awful. However the worst part of the run is how helpless the defense has looked a lot of the time, last year especially.
I do think that the hire of Ron Roberts should improve a lot, but he doesn’t possess a magic wand. The defense has to get well under 20 points a game allowed for the team to be a true contender given how Napier likes to call offense and manage a game. The Gators allowed 27.6 a game last year. It’s going to take more than one season to get there.
I also think fairly highly of Graham Mertz. Yet, you and I both know he’s not the starter on a championship contender without a merciless defense backing him up. Which again, that ain’t gonna happen this year.
DJ Lagway absolutely looks like he could be the starter on a title worthy team, but he’s a true freshman. He won’t fit that description from Day 1, especially not behind an offensive line that is like the defense in that it needs more than one year to get shipshape. And especially not without a real array of skill position weapons. Andy Jean and Aidan Mizell might turn out to be great, but in 2024 they need to flash like Tre Wilson did last year so that in 2025 they can try to approach what Wilson will be this year in terms of experience and polish.
I said in that article that the theme of 2022 was “you can’t get there from here” because there was no path to contending from the ’22 foundation. It had to be well and truly rebuilt.
The theme of 2024 should be, “you can’t get there in one year”. I am optimistic about how I see the team being built. Really, I am! But it can’t get there a mere nine or ten months after how the 2023 season ended. It just doesn’t work that way.
Napier’s task is to, by hook or by crook, get enough wins to survive another year.
It’ll require a shift from him. He’s managed the past two seasons like a coach who believes without a doubt that his job wasn’t in jeopardy, and he was right. He’s got to be more tactical this year and do whatever it takes to get the win count high enough and not just trust in the longterm system even as it leads to bad losses to Vandy or Arkansas in the short term.
If he can just get to 2025, I think there is a reward in store for everyone if he can do so.