By Will Miles
Napier hired
It didn’t take long and former Louisiana head coach Billy Napier is now coach of the Gators. Napier is going to coach the Ragin’ Cajuns one more time in the Sun Belt Championship Game and then fully commit himself to Florida and rebuilding the Gators.
My view of this hire is that Napier is essentially a 5-star recruit. His track record (OC at Clemson, multiple years on Saban’s staff, building up Louisiana) all suggest he is ready to succeed at Florida. But we’ve said that before with Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen.
The difference here is that Napier seems to have hand-selected Florida rather than just jumping at the first job available. That says a lot about how he makes decisions, particularly if reports of his turning down the Auburn job last year are true.
The reality is that there are only 14 (soon to be 16) SEC jobs in the country. Even Vanderbilt can be an attractive hire if conditions are right (just ask James Franklin). So to turn down one (or more) of those jobs because it doesn’t fit your criteria for a head coaching gig is not only impressive, it shows a vision and planning that should have Gators fans salivating.
But at the end of the day, Napier is just a prospect. Like when any 5-star recruit commits, we get really excited. But whether he turns out to be Percy Harvin or Andre Debose is where the rubber meets the road.
Hiring process
Reports out of Florida are that Scott Stricklin targeted Napier, went after him and got the job done. That means Napier was the only person interviewed for the job.
Perhaps that’s what was necessary to land Napier. And that probably means that Stricklin has been watching Napier for a while, had identified him as an upcoming star and resolved to go get him if he ever had the chance. That chance arrived this year and so Napier is the Gators head coach.
But it’s interesting to me that while the NFL has the “Rooney Rule” that requires teams to interview minority candidates, college football does not have any such stipulation. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Regardless of whether you make the rule race-based or experience-based, there are a lot of good assistants out there who are missing out on chances to hone their interview skills and meet higher-ups at major institutions because Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley are negotiating deals at LSU and USC under cover.
Perhaps that’s just the way college football is going to be, but I do wonder whether this is a place where the NCAA could be useful, not to eliminate the jumping of Kelly and Riley, but making sure that young coaches get the opportunity to learn and grow when an opening occurs.
Louisiana model
Napier is going to bring the Louisiana model to Florida, and that is perhaps what excites me most about this hire. Saban has called building and maintaining his program at Alabama “The Process”. Napier has called the same thing at Louisiana “The Journey”.
It reminds me of six-sigma optimization training that engineers get in the world of my day-job. One of the biggest things that these trainings emphasize is having a feedback look to ensure that plans are not just mapped out, but sustained throughout the organization.
And if you think about it, that’s really some of the main criticism that has come Dan Mullen’s way during his time at Florida. His first two years gave Gators fans hope that he was the guy to turn things around. He was able to bring his talk of the Gator Standard and Relentless Effort and get buy-in from guys who never wanted to go through a season like the 2017 one they’d just gone through.
But as the majority of the players coming in had not experienced that 2017 season, the message didn’t land the same. Even Mullen – who was so energized at the start – seemed to have lost a bunch of that during the 2020 season, carrying over into 2021 as well.
So whatever Napier decides to call what he’s bringing to Gainesville, I’m interested in understanding what systems he has in place to sustain those changes. Because anyone can clean up a mess. Keeping the mess from coming back requires a different set of skills.
Strengths
Napier has some serious strengths when you look at his time at Louisiana.
He took over a team coming off of probation and three consecutive seasons ranked 105th or worse in the ESPN Football Power Index (FPI) and proceeded to have them finish 102nd, 44th, 36th and 48th (thus far) in the FPI in his four seasons.
That big jump in year two is what you want to see. It looks like he was able to get his guys in there in his second year and his processes were starting to take hold.
You can see that on the recruiting trail too, where Napier took over a team that averaged a conference recruiting ranking of 3.9 over former coach Mark Hudspeth’s 7-year tenure and placed 5th in the Sun Belt his first year, but then followed that up with three first place finishes the next three years.
Napier has also outperformed his FPI rankings, as he has finished at least 2nd in the Sun Belt every year at Louisiana, even during his first year. To have a team go 7-7 while ranking 102nd in the FPI is actually a really impressive feat. Of course, it also relies on quite a bit of luck.
Questions
That luck is my biggest question about the Napier era at Louisiana. Both Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen started off their Florida careers with excellent records in one-score games. McElwain – in particular – started 9-1 in such games.
But then the bottom fell out for McElwain in one-score losses to Texas A&M and LSU, followed by the death threats fiasco and separation after a crushing loss to Georgia. Similarly, Mullen saw his luck change as well, losing 7 straight one-score games at Florida after starting his career 6-1 in such contests.
Over time, one-score games tend to even out, at least at big-time programs. Napier was fine in those categories in 2018 and 2019, going 3-2 in such games. But over the past two seasons, he has gone 12-1 in those sorts of games. That just isn’t sustainable.
Moreover, it suggests that, at least somewhat, his 11-1 records at Louisiana the past two seasons are somewhat of a mirage. That doesn’t mean they haven’t been good teams (you don’t end up with an FPI at 36 and 48 without being a good team). But it does suggest that anyone just pointing towards Napier’s win/loss record needs to be honest that it could very easily be 9-3 or 8-4 had things fallen more 50/50 in those close games.
That means you have to ask yourself if you’re still okay with Napier if he “real” record is more like 35-17 rather than the 39-12 it is now. I think you should be, but it’s at least something we’ll need to watch when he gets to Gainesville.
What will his staff look like?
The other thing to watch will be what does his staff look like? Reports indicated that it was the attention to detail and reasoning behind who he wanted as assistants that sold Florida on Napier being the guy.
Names like Tom Herman, Jim Knowles and Doug Belk have already started to float around the internet, and I have to admit that I have no idea what Napier is going to want to do. Is his strategy to hire people who know Florida’s landscape and can recruit it effectively? Is his strategy to find seasoned recruiters and let them learn the landscape? Is his strategy to rely on his own recruiting prowess and bring in more X’s and O’s type guys.
The interesting thing is that Belk’s name was floated when it looked like Dan Mullen would be doing the hiring of a new defensive coordinator. I think most Gators fans would have been happy with him as an assistant under Mullen, so I expect they’d feel the same way under Napier.
But clearly, Napier will be sending a message with the staff that he brings in. We’ll know where his priorities lie and how he plans to build based on those names pretty quickly.
Vision casting
I spoke at the Gainesville QB Club this week and the prevailing theme amongst the people I spoke to about Mullen was that he just seemed to struggle to read the room.
What I think they were saying was that they didn’t understand Mullen’s vision for the program, which meant that when he said or did something out of alignment with their vision of how a program should be run, it upset portions of the fan base.
I could see that last year with the “pack the Swamp” comments and the Darth Gator stuff after the game. Mostly I thought those incidents were harmless, but there were lots of people who didn’t feel that way.
My bigger concerns actually came with the outspokenness of former players like Chauncey Gardner-Johnson about how he felt he was treated and some of the backhanded comments made about Jachai Polite and Kamar Wilcoxson when Polite flamed out with the Jets and Wilcoxson flipped commitments multiple times.
But it doesn’t really matter what got under your skin, the point is that I think the reason for it being that way is without a vision, there isn’t any way to get everyone in alignment.
So that’s the challenge – and the opportunity – for Napier right away. Casting a vision that is compelling for Gators fans, and in a way that they feel like they can gauge whether the decisions you’re making and the results you’re posting are in alignment with that vision.
Because in every relationship, you make deposits and you make withdrawls. If people trust you and your vision, you don’t have to make nearly as many deposits when you have to make a withdrawl. But if they don’t trust your vision, then you’d better have a ton of deposits made when you lose to Kentucky, Missouri and South Carolina.
Priority #1A
Perhaps the best part of my day today was seeing quarterback Anthony Richardson tweet out a picture of himself doing the Gator Chomp with the heading “Scared money don’t make money.”
The fact that Richardson is parroting a Napier saying says something about where his head is at, and hopefully that’s having an excitement about Napier’s arrival and what it means for his playing time.
Because let’s face it, Richardson is the path to relevance for the 2022 and 2023 Gators.
The 2021 Gators were better than the 6-6 record suggests, but inconsistency, especially at the QB position, is what led to that record. Against FBS opponents, Jones had 13 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. That’s pretty similar to the 9 touchdowns and 8 interceptions for Feleipe Franks in 2017.
The difference is that Franks was a redshirt freshman when he started in 2017 and Emory Jones was a redshirt junior in 2021. Richardson turned the ball over too (6 TDs, 5 INTs), but like Franks, he was a redshirt freshman. Add to that the inconsistent playing time he received and the injuries he sustained, and there are reasons to expect a turnaround.
The biggest reason though is Richardson’s explosivity. Despite only having 51 carries, Richardson is still the fourth highest rusher on the team by total yards and the best on a yards per carry basis. His explosive plays were the only thing that made the Gators offense watchable for much of the year.
To win in the SEC with an imperfect team, you need elite QB play. If Napier wants to get off to a head start, his first priority is making sure Richardson is on board. I have that as priority 1A in the title here, but full Richardson buy-in is going to build into the vision with the fans that I have a priority 1.
Reasonable expectations
Calls are going to be made by various media folks for Gators fans to tamper down expectations. Don’t let them convince you of that.
Recruiting at Florida should be better than it has been. The transition (i.e. 2022) recruiting class is going to be cobbled together. But the bump class (2023) needs to be top-5. With early signing day in December, most classes are essentially complete by the time the season starts. That means that a coach has built the class without ever showing something on the field.
Typical bump classes of future SEC Championship coaches since 2005 have been top-5 and have averaged more than two 5-star recruits. Perhaps not coincidently, neither McElwain nor Mullen were able to sign a single 5-star recruit in their bump classes, and both hovered around the top-10 rather than the top-5.
That might be good enough in the ACC, but it isn’t in the SEC. And it means that we’ll know whether Napier’s process has taken hold before he ever takes the field.
Win over FSU
I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the actual game this past weekend.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been more frustrated by a Gators game in my life. The interceptions by Emory Jones and the Gators’ inability to get out of their own way, especially in the first half, was just excruciating.
But after one last errant throw, Anthony Richardson was inserted into the lineup for Emory Jones and the offense all of a sudden was able to finish drives. Combined with Dameon Pierce finally getting significant carries and it was hard to watch the game and not think about “what if”, particularly given the number of close games the Gators have dropped this season.
The Gators seniors should be lauded. Those guys went to three straight New Year’s Six bowl games and while this season hasn’t been the finish they wanted, the program is definitely in a better place now than when they arrived.
You can actually say the same about Dan Mullen. While I’m excited for the Napier era to begin at Florida – and I think he has the ability to help Florida take the next step – I don’t think there will be any doubt that Mullen’s ability to stabilize the program coming off of Jim McEwain will eventually be looked upon somewhat favorably.
But the biggest takeaway out of this game is that Florida State is in trouble. Coming into the game, they thought they might have turned a corner. But an extremely flawed Gators team was clearly the superior team. The scoreboard says three points, but anybody who watched the game knows the difference between these two was much more significant than that.
Mike Norvell had the 22nd ranked recruiting class in 2021. He has the 12th ranked recruiting class in 2022. Those are McElwain/Mullen recruiting numbers as opposed to Urban Meyer/Jimbo Fisher recruiting numbers. That may be good enough for FSU to make noise every once in a while, but it also means there’s an opening for Napier in the state.
And let’s be honest, if I were a recruit who watched that game, I would have seen that Florida is much closer to winning big than FSU. And if Napier is as good a salesman as some seem to think he is, that means that 2022 may be the last time FSU outrecruits Florida for a really long time.