The Florida Gators had a chaotic offseason, which included five on-field coaching hires, two promotions, and the strength and conditioning coach leaving five weeks into his stint in Gainesville.
Craig Fitzgerald, who Florida hired on December 30th as their new director of football performance, took a job with his longtime friend Bill O’Brien at Boston College on February 11th, 2024. This left Billy Napier in a tough spot as Fitzgerald and his staff had already set the foundation of Florida’s new strength and conditioning program and were right in the middle of offseason workouts.
Not wanting to turn the strength and conditioning program on its head and start all over, Napier promoted Tyler Miles to run the ship, who had been working alongside Fitzgerald this offseason.
“I think we were fortunate that we had built our staff in a way where there was collaboration,” Napier said on Miles’ promotion. “Coach (Tyler) Miles had done a phenomenal job with the programming part. Really, he and the rest of his staff giving Fitz insight into maybe where we were at as a program and what we needed. Tyler Miles was at the core of everything that we were doing. I think our players knew that. Our staff knew that. We didn’t want to blow it up and start over but more importantly we felt confident in Tyler relative to being able to do the job. He was, essentially, a huge part of what we were doing. Tyler’s got a strength and conditioning background and he’s got a performance science role. We promoted him and we’ve been able to surround him with really good people.”
Miles and Fitzgerald go way back; Miles even considers Fitzgerald one of his mentors after helping him land his first paying job at Tennessee.
“I’m standing here because of it, Craig Fitzgerald. I love that man,” Miles told the media.
On the outside, the promotion of Miles seemed chaotic to say the least, but the collaboration between the two strength coaches led to a seamless transition for Florida’s new director of football strength & conditioning.
“It was much more seamless from what it might seem from the outside,” Miles said after the Gators’ first spring practice. “I was the interim in December. Coach Napier asked me to be the interim, kind of handle things and kind of help with the process … just handling the players and their time off and everything like that. I know Coach Fitz. I’ve coached for him and that process, and then when Coach Fitz got here, we did everything together. It was myself and Coach Fitz together. We programed together, ‘what it takes to operate, what do we need to change, how we can get better in areas?’ We did all that together, so when he decided to leave, which was best for him, it honestly was like seamless.”
Change is never easy on a roster full of 18–23-year-olds, but the message didn’t change, only the voice in charge.
“For the players, it was just a different face and a different voice, but it was all the same because we had already done it together. We had established everything together,” Miles said. “The nice thing for them was that it was just that it was a voice and a face that they were familiar with. It was honestly much more seamless than what it might looked from the outside.”
“[The players] were truly extremely receptive of the changes,” Miles added. “We’re healthy because these guys have taken to these changes and they were very, very open to it. It was tough at first, it’s a big change, it’s a big change for them. Just a whole new way of doing things but they were open to it accepted it and took to it and ran with it. It doesn’t work if the players don’t take to it and they’re taking to it.”
Not only did the players welcome the change, but they advocated for Miles throughout this process. The players’ overwhelming support played a large factor in Miles’ promotion this offseason.
“I mean first and foremost I love everybody on this team and for them to do that, to help with this monumental change in my life, I owe them the best that I can give them every day, and I’ll never, ever forget that, so having them do that means the world to me, and it shows as much as I might be hard on them or stern with them that they love me for it, and they love us for it, the rest of the staff, it’s helping me do it so I can’t say enough great things and say thank you to those guys for doing that, and I had no idea they were doing that, so when coach told me that, I was grateful,” Miles said on the support from the Gators’ roster.
WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT MILES
QB Graham Mertz
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Like it was rolling. Why would you stop that,” Mertz said on why he lobbied for Miles.
LB Shemar James
“I love Coach Miles. He came in with a different mindset. It was unacceptable what we had last year. We just came in ready to work. We have days where we’re kind of like, oof, glad that’s over. That’s going to help us go from the weight room to the field.”
TE Arlis Boardingham
“It was good. It’s cool. Honestly, for comparison wise, I can’t really compare. I’m just taking it as we’re moving in a different direction, but I’m definitely glad he’s here.”
LB Derek Wingo
“I think coach Miles and his crew has done an amazing job. We’ve been able to add a ton of different things when it comes to like injury prevention and all these things that are really important to be able to have a long-lasting season and have these healthy guys, able to have the depth that we need, so I think they’re doing a really good job.”
“When I think about coach Miles I think about a family-oriented guy, a guy who really cares about his players, wants the best for you, and at the end of the day he also understands your perspective. He’s a young guy, he gets after it, he’ll want to hear what you have to say for your opinion. At the end of the day, we listen to what he has to say, and he knows what’s best. To have a younger guy with a lot of passion, family oriented, I feel like that was the best guy to have around.”