The Week That Was: Five thoughts on the beginning of the Napier era

In some ways, it feels like Billy Napier’s introductory press conference was two days ago. In other ways, it feels like that happened two months ago.

Napier’s first week as the Gators’ head coach was action-packed, from exciting staff hires to disappointing decommitments to a somewhat confusing recruiting strategy to a hope-filled first weekend of official visits.

Here are my five thoughts on the week that was.

1. The coaching staff looks very promising so far.

Napier has hired one of the best recruiters and cornerbacks coaches in America in Corey Raymond away from his alma mater, LSU. He’s brought running backs coach Jabbar Juluke, co-defensive coordinator/safeties coach Patrick Toney and offensive line coach Darnell Stapleton with him from Louisiana.

Juluke worked with Leonard Fournette and Derrius Guice at LSU, and he coached a record-breaking player named Kenneth Dixon at Louisiana Tech. I have no idea how Napier was able to keep Juluke for four years at Louisiana; I don’t know what more Power Five schools could’ve wanted out of him.

Stapleton won a Super Bowl and helped Julien Davenport become a First Team All-American at Bucknell.

While he’s not expected to call the defensive plays at Florida, Toney is considered one of the top up-and-coming defensive minds in college football, and his Louisiana defenses consistently ranked near the top of the country in numerous statistical categories.

That’s a whole lot of star power, and more than half of the assistant coaching positions are still vacant. Jacksonville Jaguars defensive line coach Tosh Lupoi has basically admitted that he’s interested in joining Napier’s staff, and Penn State running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider is rumored to be a possibility. Both of them are considered elite recruiters.

That sure beats the heck out of Dan Mullen and Jim McElwain’s initial staffs where you had to Google most of the coaches because you’d never even heard of them before.

Napier still has work to do, but he’s definitely on the right track.

2. Napier didn’t lie when he said that he was going to build an unprecedented army of support staffers.

He has officially hired four analysts as well as a handful of people who will work in the recruiting department, and he’s not close to being done yet.

As Napier mentioned in his introductory press conference, hiring a huge number of people and building something similar to an NFL front office will keep everyone from getting overwhelmed by everything that goes into building a successful college football program. Instead of having to try to do 20 things at once and maybe doing an average job at each of them, they can devote all of their energy and focus into doing one or two things at an extremely high level.

It also should help with attention to detail. It’s going to be much harder for something to slip through the cracks when there are 50 people involved versus 25.

Gone are the days of Florida trying to beat programs like Alabama and Georgia with about half as many people on the staff. The Gators will finally catch up to them, at least in quantity. Now Napier needs to make sure that the quality is there as well.

3. While you never want to see a run of decommitments like the Gators have experienced over the last week, there is absolutely no need to freak out.

In my opinion, there are two types of decommitments. You’ve got the recruits that a coaching staff really wanted and made every effort to keep in the class, and you’ve got the players that the coaching staff didn’t seem to want that badly and were basically allowed to walk.

From what I’ve read, every one of the Gators’ decommitments since Napier took over other than quarterback Nick Evers falls into the latter category.

Now, you can debate whether letting some of those players go was the correct call, but you can’t argue that Napier has everything under control. He knew what he was doing when he decided not to contact some of these guys. It’s not like he’s sitting in his office scrolling through Twitter and saying, “Oh, no, C.J. Smith decommitted? What are we going to do now?”

This is a tough situation. Napier and his staff are basically trying to do two years’ worth of recruiting in two weeks. They’re not going to just tear up the recruiting trail right away.

Now, if the Gators are still having an issue with decommitments and winning their fair share of battles for top-100 players by the time signing day comes around for the 2023 and 2024 classes, then, yes, by all means, you can be concerned. But don’t be angry at Napier for trying to be diligent about getting the right players for his transition class instead of just filling scholarships for the sake of filling scholarships.

4. I like Napier’s decision to be patient with recruiting and only sign a few recruits in December.

First, he needs to make sure that he’s signing guys that genuinely want to be Gators and didn’t just commit because they liked the old coaching staff. Otherwise, you’re looking at the possibility of mass transfers over the next couple of years and a divided locker room between “Mullen guys” and “Napier guys.” That latter dynamic is already tricky enough to navigate without adding a freshmen class that isn’t all-in on the program.

Second, the 2022 class isn’t going to be very good regardless of what Napier does. He simply doesn’t have enough time to salvage this class. However, Napier should have a chance to sign a really special 2023 class, and there are always impact players waiting to be snagged in the transfer portal.

So, why not save as many scholarships as possible for a class that could actually amount to something instead of wasting them on players that you’re not crazy about?

Finally, because this coaching carousel has been even wilder than usual, there are probably going to be more high school players who decide to wait until February to sign and more players in the transfer portal than usual.

It’s in Napier’s best interest to save as much room as possible for transfers. While he’s been tasked with rebuilding this program long term, fielding a respectable team in 2022 is important for fan morale and recruiting momentum. Then those transfers will leave after a year or two and hopefully turn things over to the five-star recruits that Napier will have waiting in the wings by that point.

5. If Napier’s first recruiting weekend is any indication, things might be about to get really fun around here.

Five-star defensive back Kamari Wilson, four-star defensive back Devin Moore and Georgia defensive tackle commit Shone Washington all took official visits to UF.

Wilson has been considered a Georgia lean for a while now, while Moore recently decommitted from Notre Dame following their coaching change.

I don’t know whether the Gators will land any of these three or not, but the fact that everybody will be sweating bullets while watching Wilson’s announcement on Wednesday is an impressive feat by itself. Georgia has been one of the most dominant programs on the recruiting trail in recent years, and the possibility that Napier could snatch Wilson away from Georgia in one week on the job is an encouraging sign for the future.

If Napier is at least in the running for one of the best players in America after one week, what’s going to happen once we get to the point where he’s been recruiting guys for two or three years?