The 2022 NFL Combine is going on right now, and Billy Napier has two Louisiana players in attendance. Two may not sound like a lot, but it is a potential good sign for the future of Gator football.
The two Ragin’ Cajuns participating are OT Max Mitchell and CB Percy Butler. Both signed with Napier in the transitional class of 2018.
Butler was a 2-star prospect who had committed to the prior staff, but as we saw last fall, Napier isn’t one to carry forward pre-existing commitments without reevaluating. Butler ended up signing in February. Mitchell was completely unranked, and according to his 247 Sports recruit profile page, Louisiana was his only FBS offer. He committed to Napier in January and signed in February.
According to NFLDraftBuzz.com, Mitchell projects to be about a 3rd Round pick while Butler is a UDFA candidate. I don’t know where these guys will go, but it’s a useful reminder that not everyone who goes to the Combine gets drafted.
Anyway, I used the Pro Football Reference archives of Combine participants — plus the official 2021 invite list since PFR includes pro day results for non-invitees to last year’s virtual Combine — to see how two Ragin’ Cajuns stacks up historically. The artist formerly known as UL-Lafayette has typically been among the worst FBS programs, but it is still in the state of Louisiana. Just by signing local recruits, a place like that could accidentally wind up with some future pro prospects.
I looked at the past decade of Combines, from 2012-21. UL had tight end Ladarius Green in the ’12 Combine, but it was shut out of the next four. FCS Southeastern Louisiana had one player in each of those four, showing that yes, non-LSU schools in that state really can have players at least good enough to go to the Combine regularly. In one of those years, the Patriot League’s Lafayette had a guy make it, but not UL-Lafayette.
The streak broke in 2017 with RB Elijah McGuire, and 2018 safety Trey Walker made it two in a row. No one got an invite after Napier’s first year to the 2019 Combine, but 2020 and 2021 each had two Cajuns attend. And then this year, Louisiana has two more guys in the house.
Florida is having a very down year with only four players at the Combine: Zachary Carter, Kaiir Elam, Jeremiah Moon, and Dameon Pierce. I can’t help but notice that two of them, Carter and Moon, are still holdovers from the Jim McElwain era. Faulkner was right that the past is not even past. That’s not to give full credit for their presence to Mac, though. Those guys spent one year under their signing regime and then four with Dan Mullen and his assistants. The latter did far more to develop them than the former.
It does mean that only four members of Mullen’s 2018 class have earned Combine invitations so far, following early entrants Kyle Pitts and Evan McPherson in last year’s virtual Combine. I say “so far” because Jacob Copeland, Richard Gouraige, and Trey Dean — and maybe Emory Jones, depending on how his career unfolds from here — seem like they have a good chance to be in Indianapolis next year. Getting seven or eight from a class is better than two, and it looks like it’s only going to be two for Napier’s 2018 group. That’s the difference between a class ranked 14th nationally and 105th.
It borders on category error to say that it’s not fair to compare Florida and Louisiana. They’re barely playing the same game when you look at the disparity of resources.
A better comparison would be to look at how McElwain’s arrival at Colorado State elevated the Rams’ Combine attendance. CSU is a rung or two above Louisiana in terms of resources, so it’s still not a level playing field. Those schools are closer to each other, however, than either is to Florida.
I did the same ten-year history leading up to McElwain’s final CSU Combine in 2015, which came after the 2014 regular season. It’s again not a perfect comparison since Mac was in Fort Collins for three years while Napier was in Lafayette for four, but that’s what we have to work with.
At the opening of that decade, Colorado State was in the declining years of the tenure of program legend Sonny Lubick. They put two in the 2005 Combine and one in 2006. The tail-off showed up with zero Combine attendees in 2007-08, though the Rams had two in 2009 and one in 2010. Lubick’s successor Steve Fairchild went 3-9 in three straight seasons leading up to McElain’s hire for the 2012 season, and his futility shows up with no Combine attendees from 2011 to 2013.
Mac and staff developed enough players to put three in the Combine in 2014, and then the 2015 Combine was the high water mark with five. One of the five was a kicker and another was Alabama transfer Dee Hart, so that’s three non-specialists who actually signed with the school.
I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether putting three non-specialist signees into the Combine after Years 2 and 3 at Colorado State is more impressive than putting two of the same into the event after Years 2 and 3 at Louisiana. Only one of the four classes leading up to McElwain’s hire was ranked in the 100s nationally, though a couple were in the 90s, whereas only one of the four leading up to Napier’s hire was ranked better than the 100s.
The Combine pipeline out of CSU waned after McElwain left, dropping to two players in 2016 and one each from 2017-19 before getting shut out in 2020. I can’t disentangle the tailwind McElwain provided with his recruiting and the development of the Mike Bobo staff, but there you go.
Napier meanwhile had three players follow him to UF, while two other UL players transferred to LSU and another to TCU. If even half of those guys make it to the Combine, that’s more than be said for McElwain’s CSU legacy. It still must be noted, though, that the comparison isn’t direct again since some former Cajuns will be coached by Napier at a place with more resources and better assistants and others will get a year or more of different P5 coaching.
NFL success isn’t the sole measuring stick of college success; NFL Combine attendance is even less so. Regardless, putting players into the Combine is a proxy for a coach’s ability to hire a staff that can develop players who could actually go pro in sports. Napier punched above Louisiana’s historical weight in those terms, and it appears to have been in a more durable way than McElwain did at Colorado State. If Napier can do the same at Florida, big things are ahead.