When Billy Napier got to Florida, his top task was to restock the roster with talent. A fading talent level under Dan Mullen had the program headed in the wrong direction, and Napier’s past work as a talent evaluator as an assistant at Alabama and head coach at Louisiana was among his best traits. He helped land more big names at the former than the latter, but he quickly had his Ragin’ Cajuns among the most talented teams in the Sun Belt.
We can see with hindsight now that the talent evaluation aspect of Napier remains his best skill. He was very uneven, to put it politely, at hiring assistants. He was mediocre at designing and running an offense, which still might’ve been better than his game-day coaching. His stubborn unwillingness to change tactics in the face of unacceptable records was maddening. And even his slow pace of decision making cost UF the chance at getting more talent out of the transfer portal than it did.
But the one thing you do have to hand it to Napier for is that he did improve the program’s talent level well above where Mullen had it at the end of his tenure.
The downward spiral under Mullen didn’t necessarily show up in the 2023 NFL Draft, the one after Napier’s first season. The Gators had six players drafted, four of which were guys who signed with or transferred in during Mullen’s time. The other two were O’Cyrus Torrence, one of the true gems Napier found at Louisiana, and Jim McElwain holdover Ventrell Miller. Only four Mullen players drafted is not great, but it’s not a disaster either.
The revelation really came in the 2024 draft. That was when Florida had only a single guy drafted, albeit a first rounder in Ricky Pearsall. He, of course, was a Napier find in the transfer portal. Not only were no Mullen players drafted from Florida, but no Gators cracked the “notable undrafted players” list either. Only four more Mullen players would be drafted out of UF, two in each of the subsequent drafts. And one of those four was punter Jeremy Crawshaw. That’s not a good showing for a program such as Florida’s.
But hang on, it’s the transfer portal era, right? Well, among the many Mullen guys who left as NCAA transfer rules liberalized, I believe only three players who signed for Mullen were drafted elsewhere: Ty’Ron Hopper, Antwaun Powell-Ryland, and Princely Umanmielen. Hopper was drafted in 2024, and the latter two were selections the following year.
The 2026 NFL Draft from last week shows a similar kind of story. There were seven Gators drafted instead of six, and another two were not strictly Napier players. Both Austin Barber and Jake Slaughter signed with Mullen. The rest were either Napier signees or transfers. Among them were a couple of Napier’s best finds, an unheralded defensive tackle from Louisville in Caleb Banks and a former wide receiver walk on at Northern Illinois in edge rusher George Gumbs. Injuries kept Banks from becoming a Gator great, but he did as much as any single other player with stellar efforts to engineer the season-ending win streak that saved Napier’s job in 2024.
Of course, the 2026 Draft for the Napier era would map to the 2022 Draft for the Mullen era. To do a real apples-to-apples comparison, we’d need to be looking ahead to the next two drafts to compare to Mullen’s results from the 2023 and 2024 draft. So let’s do that, with all of the following based on the idea that these guys won’t have serious injuries that derail their timelines.
I can already tell you that UF has three guys who are looking like real NFL prospects for 2027’s draft in Jayden Woods, Vernell Brown III, and Dallas Wilson. That’d be the equivalent of the 2024 Draft for the Mullen era when only Hopper, drafted from another school, heard his name called among Mullen signees and inward transfers. I could also imagine Myles Graham sticking around that long given how much he loves UF and how inside linebackers aren’t as prized by the NFL as they used to be.
Jadan Baugh seems a shoo-in for next year, and Graham is eligible to go pro if he wants to. There are a collection of veteran players who could play their way into later rounds like Brendan Bett, Dijon Johnson, and Knijeah Harris.
Then you have some others like LJ McCray, Aaron Chiles, and Cormani McClain who are NFL-caliber athletes who easily could be drafted if they turn that potential into real football production. We’ll also have to see what Phil Trautwein can do with O-linemen like Roderick Kearney, Bryce Lovett, and Caden Jones over the next year or two. Plus some of the younger guys like Ben Hanks III, Duke Clark, J’Vari Flowers, Jeremiah McCloud, and Joseph Mbatchou have received enough praise from both the outgoing and incoming staffs that they are on the radar for later down the line.
Napier also has a few others who left who could be drafted. Tre Wilson and Michai Boireau are the best bets. I could see KD Daniels getting there if he blossoms as the feature back at P4 program Wake Forest. DJ Lagway is a big question mark, as he has the physical traits of a pro player but has big question marks mentally and health-wise.
Jon Sumrall simply inherited a roster with more mature and promising talent than Napier did from Mullen. Given how different the environment is from four years ago, you have to give some significant credit to Sumrall, new GM Dave Caldwell, and Florida Victorious for retaining nearly all the highest priority talent. New head coaching regimes now have to re-recruit their schools’ rosters much harder than they used to.
But no matter how many of Napier’s finds stay or go the rest of their careers, he did accomplish the top item of his to-do list upon arriving in Gainesville of replenishing the roster’s talent. Unfortunately for him, he’s at James Madison now because that’s the only item on the list he checked.