When a head coaching position turns over, so does the lingo surrounding the program. Gone are the Gator Standard, the spread option, and relentless effort. In are some different terms that are new to the football offices in Gainesville.
I’ve picked out five concepts, on-field and off, that are fresh with the Napier regime. They aren’t all Billy Napier-isms, but they are all things that he has brought with him to the Gator football program.
12 personnel
An old standard way short handing the group of players that an offense is employing is by using a two-digit number.
You can ignore offensive line and quarterback, because nearly all plays have five and one of those, respectively. That then leaves backs, tight ends, and receivers. Because those players will always add up to five after the six players we’ve already set aside, you only have to designate the counts of two of them. Five minus those two numbers will give you the third.
The two that are enumerated are backs and tight ends, in that order. For example, Dan Mullen almost always used 11 personnel, with the 11 pronounced as “eleven”, which was one running back, one tight end, and three receivers.
Napier likes to use a lot of 12 personnel, which is one back, two tight ends, and two receivers. As long as one of the tight ends is both a good blocker and pass catcher, it makes the offense hard to stop because it can both do smashmouth running and spread out passing. The upshot on the power rushing is similar to the old scheme, since Mullen’s option obviated the need for the extra blocker by having the quarterback a threat to run.
Napier isn’t afraid to have his signal caller tote the rock sometimes, but it’s not part of the base offense anymore. Instead, by actually having the extra blocker in the form of the second tight end, the offense can induce defenses to go heavier themselves. At that point, the offense can lock that in with tempo that prevents substitution and take advantage with spread passing sets.
So, if you’ve heard people talking about 12 personnel, that’s what it is and what it’s for. Get ready to hear it plenty more.
Creeper
Patrick Toney’s scheme is at the forefront of defense, and to that end it uses simulated pressure and creepers.
You’ve probably heard “simulated pressure” by now. You’ve certainly seen it plenty even if you haven’t heard it identified as such on broadcasts.
Imagine a defense putting six defenders right up on the offensive line before the snap, but then two drop back while only four rush. It’s not a blitz per se, since only four guys actually go after the quarterback. The trick is that the offensive line shouldn’t know ahead of time which four are coming, so the defense may get some blitz-like advantages from guys coming free when the O-line guesses wrong.
Related to that is a “creeper” package. It will look like a standard defensive set before the snap. Someone who looks like a normal rusher will drop back like in a simulated pressure. The difference is that a “creeper” player will rush without tipping his hand ahead of time. Think about a nickel corner looking like he’s going to cover the slot but rushing the passer instead. This is in contrast to a traditional corner blitz where the DB will edge up towards the middle of the formation before the snap.
Toney won’t use a creeper on every play, but he will use one far more than the 0% of the time that previous UF defensive coordinators have.
Winter/spring portal period
Napier wasn’t the first to recognize that in the one-time transfer era, there will be a lot of portal activity both after the regular season and after spring practice. He might be the first to coin a term for those stretches, though.
On the February National Signing Day, Napier referred to the “winter portal period” and “spring portal period”. The former saw plenty of action in Gainesville. Gerald Mincey, Khris Bogle, Jacob Copeland, Mohamoud Diabate, Kemore Gamble, and Ty’Ron Hopper left, while Jack Miller, Kamryn Waites, Montrell Johnson, Jalen Kimber, and O’Cyrus Torrence came in.
Carlos Del Rio-Wilson is the first domino to fall in the spring portal period proper, as Emory Jones and Lamar Goods chose to enter the portal while spring practice was still in progress. If Napier is to be believed, there is plenty more action to come.
Begin with the end in mind
If Napier wasn’t a football coach, he could be a heck of a management consultant. He drops compliment sandwiches like they’re second nature, and he seems to know his Steven Covey.
On several occasions, including his introductory press conference, Napier has talked about needing to “begin with the end in mind”. This is word-for-word the second of Covey’s 7 Habits for Highly Effective People.
In a football context, it means he’s got a clear vision of what he thinks a championship program looks like, and he’s working to reach that vision. He will adapt to immediate realities as needed, but that vision is his north star.
It’s a contrast to a pair of former UF head coaches, Mullen and Mike White. Both are gifted Xs and Os guys, to the point that they didn’t always seem to be building to a specific end. They more or less took the best they could find and trusted that they’d be able to mold it into something good. It worked when it worked, but it also led to rudderless drifting in aspects when it didn’t.
Napier knows exactly what he wants. Getting there is hard, but the goal is clear.
It takes what it takes
While listening to an interview with Napier earlier this month, my ears perked up when I heard him drop the line “it takes what it takes”. It’s the title of a book by the late Trevor Moawad, co-written by Andy Staples. If you’ve heard the phrase before, it’s probably either because you’ve read the book or you remember that I used this concept in my eulogy of the Mullen era. I happened to read the book not long before Mullen’s firing, and it was apt to the situation.
Moawad was a mental conditioning coach who sadly passed away from cancer last year at the young age of 48. In the football world he most notably worked with Russell Wilson and the Alabama and Georgia programs. He worked at Bama during the time when Napier was an assistant there, so there’s no mystery where the new head Gator got this from.
I can’t explain it better or more concisely than Nick Saban did, so I’ll quote him again: “[T]he fact of the matter is, is if you want to be good, you really don’t have a lot of choices, because it takes what it takes. You have to do what you have to do to be successful.”
There is more than one way to do what it takes. You could have a small staff that all works 18-hour days. They’ll probably burn out eventually, but it might get the job done before they exhaust themselves. You could also build an army to keep the workloads lighter and avoid burnout, though the tradeoff is that you have more people to manage and more hiring and staffing decisions to make.
What you can’t do is understaff compared to the elite and also work less than they do. Winning a championship takes what it takes, and that is less than what it takes. Napier knows this, and he is moving the Gators down one of the paths that qualifies for doing what it takes. The devil is always in the details of execution, but the effort is there.
I’m somewhat surprised that we haven’t heard this one much yet, but I expect we will get it a few more times before the current coach’s tenure ends.