Everyone knew that Florida football had a lot of issues after the end of the Dan Mullen era.
Call Billy Napier the Fireman, as he and his staff have successfully put out a lot of the fires. There are more to go, but it’s remarkable how many issues they’ve successfully addressed. Some of them are still provisional extinguishments, but here’s a rundown of some of the fires they’ve had to fight and what their status is now.
Recruiting
It’s no secret that underperformance on the trail is the main reason Mullen is now on halftime shows instead of sidelines. Napier finished strong at the December signing day despite a number of decommitments, though the February signing day was quiet.
For the first half of this calendar year, Napier and staff got more highly rated recruits interested and/or visiting than the prior coaches did. Florida was ending up in a lot more top tens, fives, and threes than it used to. However for a variety of reasons, the increased foot traffic didn’t result in many commitments.
By mid-June, UF was 40th in the 247 Sports Composite with just seven commits. If memory serves there were three 4-stars and four 3-stars, and none were among the top 100 players. In other words, it was looking like a Mullen class for that time of year.
Napier published an open letter to fans that reportedly had been planned a while, but the timing was unfortunate. It went live just before quarterback Jaden Rashada committed to Miami after he supposedly was leaning towards UF. It made it seem like Napier was trying to get out ahead of bad recruiting news, regardless of the intent.
Shortly after, however, Florida got a strong run of commitments. A total of 15 players committed, all of them 4-stars, between that letter’s publish date and the end of August. The Gators rocketed up the team rankings and currently sit in the top ten.
The midsummer recruiting fire was extinguished for good. UF still has just three top 100 players at present, and getting outspent NIL-wise on top recruits like Rashada and Cormani McClain is still an issue. It’s not one the coaches can address directly however, as by NCAA rule, schools cannot be a party to NIL deals. In terms of what they can control, the staff has more than sufficiently addressed recruiting.
Return Game
Perhaps the highest emotional point for Gator Nation this year was the aftermath of the Utah game. Those who follow recruiting were basking in the afterglow of that big run of commitments, and everyone was thrilled by an exciting win over a preseason top ten team.
If there was one nagging issue from the game, it was returns. UF kept returning kickoffs with little to show for it. None of the returns went far, and two drives started inside the team’s own 11-yard-line due to holds. The Gators had a penalty on kickoff returns in each of the following three games, and they had no returns of note in the next four.
But then Xzavier Henderson managed to break off a 48-yard punt return against Missouri to set up a field goal. It gave UF a chance to get some points while its offense struggled early in an eventual seven-point win. Trevor Etienne then had a 47-yard kickoff return to start the LSU game to set up Justin Shorter’s 51-yard touchdown catch on the second play from scrimmage.
The return game flopped against Georgia, with two more penalties and merely a 33-yard Etienne kickoff return that amounted into nothing. However they went back to no flags against Texas A&M, and a 28-yard Henderson punt return put Florida on the Aggies’ 40-yard-line early in the 3rd quarter. The Gators found the end zone two plays later.
It’s unreasonable to expect clearly positive results from the return game every week, especially when going up against a superior opponent. However, the return game has avoided flags in four of the past five games and sparked scoring drives in those same four contests. Fire extinguished.
Anthony Richardson’s Games 2 and 3
After the high of the Utah win, everything came crashing down against Kentucky. There’s no delicate way of putting it: AR cost Florida the game. It was probably the defense’s best performance to date, and even a merely below average outing from the quarterback should’ve been enough to win. Instead Richardson had his worst game of the year, and the Wildcats won.
Things got better, barely, the next week. Florida avoided disaster by eking out a win against USF, but another terrible day from Richardson nearly cost them another game. If the Bulls weren’t so bad to begin with, that one easily could’ve been an L.
With Jack Miller still out from preseason thumb surgery and nothing but raw freshmen behind him, Richardson was the only viable option behind center. But after two awful showings, Richardson came out and had his best game by far against Tennessee. He threw for 453 yards and added another 66 non-sack rushing yards. He had four touchdowns, two rushing and two passing.
There were reports at the time of the signal caller having a crisis of confidence. Napier and analyst Ryan O’Hara, Florida’s two quarterbacks coaches, managed to get Richardson out of the tailspin and back on track. AR has been up-and-down since as you’d expect from an inexperienced player, but he’s never come close to replicating his performances from Games 2 and 3.
Turnovers
Florida hasn’t been truly good at avoiding turnovers since 2018. It continued to be true six games into this season.
And then all of a sudden, the giveaways stopped. It doesn’t feel like a breakthrough since UF is 1-2 in the span, but they haven’t turned the ball over in the last three games.
Not fumbling once in those games is a big part of it. Luck is also at play, since some of the early season interceptions were somewhat fluky. Richardson has still sailed some throws or had passes tipped downfield, but none of them has been picked off. Notably, he hasn’t thrown any passes directly to defenders.
You’d better believe that Napier and staff have preached ball security all along; every coach in America does it. It has gotten through, however, and Florida has turned off the turnover spigot.
Third quarters
Here’s where things start to get provisional, as I put it in the intro.
It took until Game 4 against Tennessee for UF to score its first third quarter points. Even then, they allowed 14 in the period to the Vols. The Gators were outscored 38-7 in the third quarter in those first four contests.
They stopped the bleeding against Missouri, outscoring the Tigers 7-0. They still missed a field goal and needed an interception in the end zone to pull it off, though. The following week they let LSU use the third quarter to take a 28-21 game at the half and turn it into a 42-21 contest, taking away any thought of a comeback that wasn’t a miracle.
But then against Georgia, the third quarter was by far their best. They ran off 17 straight points to pull within 28-20, although UGA took control back with a touchdown late in the period. Then against A&M they scored 14 points, drove down to set up a field goal attempt early in the fourth quarter, and forced four punts.
Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. We’re not at a true pattern yet, as the LSU game is breaking up the three good showings. However, the end of halftime should no longer induce a feeling of dread.
Third downs?
Florida famously was dead last in the country in third down conversions allowed at the open date. I even wrote a whole article about it.
UF allowed 6-of-12 (50%) third down conversions against Georgia. No, that’s not good. However, it was below the rate the Gators had been allowing at the time. It was also below the 52% rate at which UGA had been converting third downs at the time as well.
I know this sounds like damning with faint praise. Yet, if Florida had a definitively bad day on third down, you’d expect Georgia to have converted above, maybe well above, its season-long average. It didn’t. Barely, but it didn’t. And some of the stops were the result of the Gators doing things well and having guys in the correct places to make plays and not just mistakes on UGA’s part.
The Bulldogs did convert on 4th down twice: once was after a 3rd & 1 stuff on 4th & 1, and the other was the long Brock Bowers catch on 4th & 7. The former was a case of the downs being lost after a nine-yard run on 2nd & 10, and the latter usually would be a stop since it was 4th & 7. All in all, the third down defense specifically was an improvement. One that requires some squinting and referring to context, but an improvement nonetheless.
Then UF tied its season best by allowing just 4-of-13 (30.8%) conversions to Texas A&M. It matches the 4-of-13 they allowed to Kentucky.
Of course, UF was helped in the effort by some poor passing from Haynes King and by Jimbo Fisher forgetting to run the ball with Devon Achane in the second half. Even so, the Gators changed up their leverage to force more outside throws after the break, and King was much worse on those than he was on the throws to the middle he loaded up on in the first half. Point, Florida.
Two positive results in a row, one barely crossing into positive and the other having help from offensive ineptitude, is not proof of a trend. South Carolina is converting 39% of third downs on the season, and 36% on the road. But if Florida lets them convert on something like 10-of-16 third downs, would you be surprised? Of course not.
Maybe this fire is in the process of being put out. Maybe UF got a little fortunate two weeks in a row. It’s something to watch for this weekend.
Work to be done
Napier and staff have done a good job of putting out some fires this year. There have been so many fires to put out that they sometimes don’t get the credit for it. Once one is extinguished, all attention moves to the next one. It’s a natural human reaction to do that, so it’s not that fans are being actively malicious in that regard.
That said, the Gators haven’t put out all the fires. Scarcely a week goes by without some kind of controversy about clock management and timeouts right before the half. They don’t have any elite 5-star prospects committed, though they are still trying. The roster isn’t up to the Gator Standard, and it will take a lot of portal work in December to try to get it there expeditiously.
A lot goes into time management decisions. For instance, Mullen’s first team in 2018 didn’t have a hurry-up offense, and maybe this one doesn’t either. NIL has prevented Napier from getting one or two 5-stars that they almost certainly would’ve landed two years ago. There is no trade deadline or waiver wire to get roster help midseason.
There is no guarantee that transitional years will go well, or even obviously improve from start to finish. Nick Saban’s famous 2007 loss to Louisiana-Monroe came in mid-November.
Napier has put out some of the fires plaguing the program, so there is actual progress to point to no matter how the season ends. Compounding that progress into next year is the task from here on out.