Billy Napier’s method to prepare his team for for road games isn’t working

A quote from Shemar James after Kentucky’s dominant win over Florida caught my eye. When asked about UK’s success in the run game, he said: “I think the early morning game played a factor in it, to be honest with you guys. We came out very flat defensively. We kind of got to get together in the second half. You have to start fast and finish fast in order to win in the SEC.”

It was evident to anyone watching that the Gators had a poor start against the Wildcats. Ray Davis ran through the defense as though it wasn’t there, and UF looked small and slow in all phases of the game. Florida plays a ton of underclassmen plus a couple of Mullen-era tweeners that don’t have ideal size, so small is somewhat understandable.

Slow is unacceptable however, as it’s not a slow team in general and getting faster was literally the top priority of the offseason conditioning program. They haven’t looked slow in any other game in the way they did in Lexington either.

Noon games can be tough to get up for, particularly in the SEC. Other leagues have more of a tradition for playing big games during the midday window, but 3:30 Eastern has been the big game slot for a couple decades now thanks to the SEC on CBS package. Plus, most schools have made night environments a priority for much longer.

That leaves midday as the sleepy time window when the conference’s heavyweights occasionally slumber. Few are immune. Remember the 2008 loss to Ole Miss that ended with Tim Tebow’s famed promise? It was a 12:30 kick. Or remember when Georgia inexplicably lost to an eventual 4-8 South Carolina in 2019? Noon kick. The famous App State win over Michigan in 2007 was a noon game too, so it’s not just an SEC phenomenon.

That said, you know what else was a midday game? Florida’s 31-24 loss to Vanderbilt just last season. The Gators went on the road to play a noon kick. They didn’t get dominated, because this year’s Kentucky is far better than last year’s Vandy, but they lost. They failed to take control early, trailed at halftime, and lost.

Billy Napier is now 8-2 at home but just 1-7 in road and neutral site games. The home record isn’t even quite as good as it looks on the surface since it includes last week’s snoozer against Charlotte, last year’s near death experience against a dreadful USF team, and a pair of tune ups against FCS opponents.

However it does include easily the two best wins of Napier’s tenure: over eventual Pac-12 champ Utah in 2022 and over Tennessee two weeks ago. It also counts a shellacking of a pretty good South Carolina in ’22, and those Gamecocks went on to blow out a better Volunteer squad than exists this season and edge out Clemson. Napier’s sole road win was over Texas A&M last year, but the Aggies were in the middle of a flu outbreak at the time that sidelined a lot of players.

Now that we’re almost halfway through the 2023 regular season, UF has repeated a few opponents from last year. It would be reductive to just look at the home/road splits because the 2022 and 2023 teams are very different and the ’23 staff has a new DC as well as a few new position coaches. But, for a couple minutes, let’s allow ourselves to be reductive.

In Napier’s first game as UF head coach, he managed to pull off that huge victory over Utah. This year on the road against the Utes, the team had major problems just functioning. They had a huge defensive bust on the first play, two illegal formation flags, a case of multiple players wearing the same number on special teams, and no offensive drives without a penalty, sack, drop, and/or turnover.

In Neyland last year, Florida fell behind by three scores midway through the fourth quarter 38-21 before a pair of late touchdowns made a nicer-looking 38-33 final. This year in the Swamp, UF shook off a rough start to bulldoze the Vols through the first half and ride the lead to a 29-16 win.

Last year at home, UF struggled through a terrible performance from Anthony Richardson against Kentucky a week after he dazzled against Utah. Despite the QB being a strong net-negative, the Gators led at halftime and held UK to only six offensive points after the half. This year on the road, the team was listless well into the third quarter. They did gesture at the idea of a comeback with a touchdown drive in the third, but that was it for scoring on the day.

That’s three opponents with completed home-and-homes, and three instances where the home performace was better than the road performance. Sometimes, drastically so.

I don’t know what Napier will do to address the lacking results away from the Swamp. He said in the postgame presser that, “I think for me, personally, as a leader, I have to do a better job for our team… we’ve got to take a good look in the mirror from an overall operation here and do a better job for the players.”

It’s nice to hear him say that and all, but it could easily be a bunch of coachspeak. As much as that sounds like a guy trying to give off the impression of a promise of accountability, plenty of other things he said could be interpreted as deflections and defensiveness.

Florida is not going to suddenly stop having at least five games away from home every season. If Napier can’t solve how to get the Gators ready for the starts of road games, then he won’t have to worry about that problem for too many more years.