Two things determine the kind of a start a head coach’s tenure gets off to: what he brings in, and what he inherited.
Take Urban Meyer as an example. What he brought in was a stellar coaching staff. To date, five of the nine assistant coaches went on to become head coaches. Not just that, but four of the five had good runs at least one other place: Charlie Strong has the best win percentage of all Louisville coaches since 1913, Dan Mullen has the same for post-1950s coaches at Mississippi State, Steve Addazio has the second-most bowl appearances among Boston College coaches, and Doc Holliday coached the most games of any head man in Marshall history. It wasn’t the 1983 Iowa staff, but that’s still excellent as far as they go.
Meyer also inherited a stacked roster thanks to the work of Ron Zook and his staffs. Meyer didn’t actually have to do a full rebuild; famously 21 of 22 starters on the 2006 title team were Zook era recruits. Though Meyer coached up a Heisman winner in his third season, that team only won nine games. It was Year 4 by the time a team primarily made of Meyer recruits became elite. That was when his legendary 2006 and 2007 classes made up the bulk of the two-deep and also had some experience under their belts.
Billy Napier’s 2022 situation was, shall we say, not a copy of that.
None of the ten assistants have gone on to head coaching jobs, though to be fair none of Meyer’s bunch had ascended as such three years in. None of Napier’s original ten really appear to be on track to get there, however.
Only three of them are still on the staff as of today. Of the seven who’ve gone, only one left for a promotion: Jay Bateman went from linebackers coach to defensive coordinator at Texas A&M. One left for the same job title in the NFL, that being receivers coach Keary Colbert. Three left for job-title demotions in the NFL (Patrick Toney, William Peagler, Darnell Stapleton), and Napier fired the remaining two after 2023 (Sean Spencer, Corey Raymond).
Much has been written about the talent situation that Napier walked into, including by me, so I won’t belabor that point. Though there were a number of good players, including future No. 4 overall pick Anthony Richardson, it wasn’t a core that even Meyer himself would’ve been able to get to the mountaintop within two years.
So while the 2024 season ended on the upswing, the Napier era has always been very much a work in progress. The recent exit of Austin Armstrong to become Houston’s defensive coordinator is a reminder of that fact and is what drew my attention to it for the genesis of this piece.
At the jump, Napier decided to bring the then 32-year-old Patrick Toney over from Louisiana to be co-defensive coordinator. Him getting the title of co-DC from the start with the other co-DC pending for quite some time after hinted that the plan may have been to get someone more experienced to call the plays, but that plan never materialized. Spencer got the co-DC title six weeks later, leaving Toney the play caller.
It went poorly for a year, and Toney decamped for the NFL shortly before 2023 spring practice. Napier then hired Armstrong, who was even younger at just 29. The defense got better on a down-to-down basis but allowed an incredibly high rate of big plays. Napier finally got the godfather of the defensive scheme, and a former assistant at Louisiana, Ron Roberts to join up in 2024 as “executive head coach” and co-DC with Armstrong still holding the full DC title.
Napier played coy all year long, but it eventually came to light that Roberts was the actual play caller. Which meant that Armstrong was getting paid a coordinator’s salary merely to coach safeties, something he did for two years along with the varying duties that went with the DC label. This, despite Armstrong having played linebacker and been a linebackers coach prior to coming to Gainesville.
It’s now the fourth offseason of the Napier era, and he’s still trying to get his assistant coaching staff to make sense.
The ’24 season was itself a major work in progress from start to finish. The schedule didn’t turn out to be quite as difficult as its billing, but it was still quite tough. It was genuinely impossible to see a realistic way to a bowl after three weeks because the Florida team that showed up against Miami and Texas A&M wasn’t good. I’m glad I hedged my post-A&M article predicting Napier’s firing with a “barring some kind of miraculous turnaround” bit at the end because it was a miraculous turnaround that got the Gators to the postseason. And it wasn’t all Napier’s idea, either.
The players reportedly had to ask for the defense to be simplified. After the coaches reportedly relented, the defense played much faster and more confidently. Around the same time, the staff made some reversals on their original plans for playing time. Most visibly, Jack Pyburn went from backup to starting the last eight games.
DJ Douglas, who Napier talked up repeatedly in the offseason, went from starting at safety to primarily a special teams role. By season’s end, and partially due to injuries, the safeties getting the most work were Jordan Castell and Bryce Thornton — exactly the two who were starting by the end of last year. The one of the pair who had the longest road to get back was Thornton, and it was he who came up with a pair of key interceptions in the Ole Miss win.
Speaking of injuries, it took another season-ending one to Graham Mertz to get the higher-potential guy DJ Lagway starting behind center. Units like offensive line and secondary thrived once long early-season rotations tightened up. Arlis Boardingham was a freshman All-American in 2023, but he had 30% fewer catches this year in just one fewer game. Tre Wilson earned the same honors, but even before his injury, his usage didn’t look changed (i.e., expanded) at all. And yet, despite playing in just four games, Wilson was third on the team in both catches (19) and yards (288). With Boardingham and his 18 receptions in the portal, Wilson probably will finish third in both even after the Gasparilla Bowl.
Receiver in particular was a real trip. Elijhah Badger was merely an OR for starting receiver with former walk-on Kahleil Jackson in Week 1, but Badger ended up leading the team in both catches and yards and was fifth nationally in yards per reception. Aidan Mizell had a breakout game against Mississippi State with five catches, plus another long one that was called back on a questionable penalty. He had just one game the rest of the season with more than one catch. Tank Hawkins had seven — seven! — catches against UCF. He had three in all other games combined.
I could go on, but I’ll stop there. Let’s just say the ’24 season was a real voyage of discovery for everyone.
I’m not going to predict how Armstrong will be replaced on the staff, not the least because there could be more staff moves. UF lost coaches in each of the last two Februaries, after all.
The start of the Napier era has been anything but smooth. Some of the rough edges have been sanded down each season, but even this one that just ended on a high note really felt like a true seat-of-the-pants flight throughout. It’s a credit to Napier that the Gators finished strong, but it’s very hard to separate out what was due to skill from the head coach and what was luck that broke to the good side this year that had broken to the bad side last year. The sound you just heard was another Ole Miss receiver dropping a pass.
Napier may have saved his job and closed out the 2025 early signing period well, but he doesn’t sit on a throne of ice. If the path really is being controlled by luck as much as anything, the dice could get fickle again next year and lead UF to yet another leadership change. More than anything, Napier’s task right now is to finally finish getting the house in order and take real control so the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune no longer determine so much of what happens on Saturdays.