By Will Miles
UF/FSU on Friday?
Maybe I’m a traditionalist. Maybe I’m set in my ways. Maybe I’m just old. But having Florida play Florida State the day after Thanksgiving just seems wrong.
FSU decided to guarantee itself a night game by locking in the Sunshine Showdown to Friday, November 25 this season. The game will revert back to Saturdays thereafter, making it an odd outlier in the rivalry.
I see why FSU wants to do this. After all, when you lose to Jacksonville State to start the year 0-2, prime time games are few and far between. Add to that the current 20th rated recruiting class and the Seminoles clearly want (and feel like they need) to get some shine.
I also know that Florida didn’t have much of a say in the matter. This change was related to the ACC TV contract and since it was an out of conference game, the Gators probably were informed but not consulted. I mean, what was Scott Stricklin going to do? Pull out of the inter-state rivalry?
Yet with Florida State wallowing in mediocrity or worse recently, I do think it’s worth wondering if that’s exactly what the Gators should do. Or perhaps Stricklin should ask the ‘Noles for a two-for-one the same way he did from UCF.
Perkins commits to LSU
We probably should have known that the LSU ties were going to be too strong to overcome in the recruitment of Harold Perkins.
Still, Billy Napier made me believe when he convinced Kamari Wilson to come from IMG and when he flipped Shemar James back to the Gators in just a couple weeks time.
The fact that Perkins didn’t come to Gainesville hurts. He would have been the prize of this class, and it would have really announced Billy Napier as a threat in the conference. Instead, we’re left to wonder what could have been and face Perkins every single year when the Gators continue their rivalry with the Tigers.
But all is not lost. You never want to put all your eggs in one recruits’ basket and Perkins is no exception. The fact that Florida was in for a Louisiana recruit who has dreamed of going to LSU says something about Napier. It also says something about where Napier needs to focus: Florida.
I have no doubt that Napier will do that in 2023. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out with Perkins this cycle.
Mathews commits Texas A&M
This is actually the recruiting miss I’m most bummed about.
It feels like Napier put a lot of effort into building this relationship to a point where Jacoby Mathews would consider Florida. Mathews certainly had a strong relationship with Corey Raymond, which I thought might carry the day. Add in that there was uncertainty around the LSU program, and this one seemed to be trending Florida’s way over the last month or so.
The fact that Mathews chose Texas A&M and to help bolster what is an unbelievable class for Jimbo Fisher and the Aggies is disappointing. You would’ve hoped that he would want to start something in Gainesville rather than join something in College Station, but the reality is that Florida already had multiple players at safety in the fold.
This wasn’t a position of need, but when you have the ability to stockpile talent at Mathews level, you do it. Again, you don’t want to rate a class on missing one player, but the combination of not getting Perkins, Mathews and Trevonte’ Citizen does take some of the glimmer off of Billy Napier’s first few months as Gators head coach.
Overall class analysis
There are lots of ways to slice and dice this class, but the reality is that no matter what stats you look at, this transition class lies somewhere between Jim McElwain’s 2015 class and Dan Mullen’s 2018 class.
Neither of those guys are seen as great recruiters, so it’s not exactly the company you want to keep. Still, Mullen had such a hard time keeping Florida players in the state that Napier really had a bad hand dealt to him coming in.
Had there been multiple elite prospects from the state still available, he likely would have been able to make some headway. Instead, he was forced to rely on his connections to Texas and Louisiana to try and pull players out of those states.
What that leads to is a class that ranks 19th overall on the 247Sports rankings. It varies depending on what rankings you’re looking at, but the take-home is that Florida recruited at a Kentucky, Missouri and Auburn level this cycle, meaning just like those teams, they fell further behind Georgia, Alabama and A&M.
That’s non-ideal but acceptable this cycle given some of the constraints. It’s not acceptable moving forward, as Napier is going to need top-3 classes to succeed.
He came to Gainesville talking about this being a talent acquisition business. We’ll see if he can back that up in 2023.
At least we’re not Florida State
Mike Norvell now has three recruiting classes at FSU. They have ranked 22nd, 23rd and 20th. Yikes!
I get that Willie Taggart left Norvell in a tough situation. But everything that’s been said about Florida and its coaches applies to Florida State and its coaches as well.
Florida is a talent-rich state. Florida State has a significant history. And aside from being in the SEC, the ACC is the second best conference in the country. It just baffles me that the Seminoles can’t get better recruiting than this.
With the Brian Flores situation going on in the NFL, it brings into stark contrast the treatment of Taggart vs. Norvell. I thought Taggart’s firing was quick, but also justifiable not because of the performance on the field, but because there wasn’t any hope for the program given his struggles recruiting.
But I don’t know how you can come to that conclusion about Taggart and not come to that conclusion about Norvell too. I think sticking with him probably has more to do with money than it does with race, but it is striking to see him struggling so much while not getting near the criticism that Taggart got.
Maybe that’s just because the FSU rivalry is starting to fade like the Tennessee one did as the Seminoles become less relevant. But man, under Jimbo Fisher the Seminoles were consistently a top-10, and even top-5, recruiting team.
Whatever it is that Novell and Taggart have turned FSU into is a just a shell of its former self. The me who grew up watching this great rivalry is a little bit saddened by this. The me who hates Florida State with every fiber of my being is enjoying it quite a bit.
All I know is I’m glad we have who we have rather than who they have.
2023 is the year
Urban Meyer made his recruiting move in 2006. Nick Saban made his in 2008. Kirby Smart made his in 2017. The thing that each of those classes has in common? It was the coaches’ second year at the program.
That’s why 2023 is so critical to Billy Napier. He needs to start competing wth the big boys on the recruiting trail next year, or it isn’t going to happen.
We’ve already seen that with Jim McElwain (12th) and Dan Mullen (9th) as they just couldn’t get things to move beyond a certain point and each reached a recruiting ceiling. Napier has started out pretty similarly to them, so his task is going to be to raise the ceiling instead of plateauing like his predecessors.
That means drawing a circle around Gainesville and not letting anyone get out of the state. Currently 247Sports has the 4th, 7th, 9th, 16th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 34th players (all 5-stars) hailing from Florida. Yes, a couple of those guys are from IMG, but Napier has already shown an ability to make inroads there.
The average SEC Championship coach has brought in 2.3 5-stars in his second class. Napier has 8 targets to choose from just in his state alone. There’s no reason he can’t reach that milestone in his second class.
And the way his contemporaries are recruiting, he’s going to have to.
Anthony Richardson on-deck
With recruiting out of the way, the most important item in the offseason is now the development (and health) of Anthony Richardson.
Richardson showed flashes of brilliance in 2021, but he also showed flashes of inconsistency that at least gave us some idea why he wasn’t getting more playing time. But nobody can deny that Florida’s offense moved the ball better when he was in there, and it’s also impossible to deny that the Gators’ ceiling is linked to AR’s development.
Perhaps more than anything though is getting him healthy. He missed multiple games early because of a pulled hamstring. Then he injured his knee dancing prior to a game late in the season. Finally, he missed the bowl game against Central Florida due to knee surgery.
Even in his best game of the year (LSU), he still was knocked out with a hand injury just when he got things going.
I’m not sure whether injuries are completely avoidable. But I just hope Napier and his staff are teaching him to slide. Because as much fun as it is to see AR truck a defensive back, there’s a reason why the Bills and Chiefs ask Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes to slide until they get to the playoffs.
Spring Game
After two years without it, the Gators announced that Florida will host the spring game on April 16 at 1pm in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
This isn’t really for the die-hard fans. Sure, it’ll be nice to see Napier’s scheme and understand what he’s trying to accomplish. It will be interesting to see how AR looks after his surgery and whether Jack Miller has been able to push him. It will even be interesting to speculate what Gators players are going to enter the transfer portal after the game is over.
But the reality is that this event is, and always has been, a family event. After Mullen didn’t take the game seriously in his first try in 2018, I took my then 7-year old son in 2019. I asked him whether he wanted anything to eat for a good hour before the game kicked off. Of course, he told me he had to pee and that he wanted pizza just as the ball was being placed on the tee.
But that’s the thing. That sort of thing would have driven me nuts if we were playing Alabama. Instead, it was a minor nuisance associated with an event that was more about him than it was about me.
Because as I get older, the more I realize that my love of the Gators is more tied in to being able to spend quality time with my family and friends than it is whether the Gators win the game or not. Sure, I want to see Florida do well. And sure, I want to see another banner hanging in the Swamp.
But if I never got to see another championship, it would be worth it if my kids got to see one in their future. Because at the end of the day, football is relatively unimportant.
Unless it reminds them of the afternoon in April when their desire for cotton candy was more important than the game.
Basketball about to go on a run?
In last week’s O&B Musings, I cited point differential and suggested that the Gators basketball team might be about ready to go on a little bit of a run.
After a relatively close loss to Tennessee, a comeback win over Oklahoma State and a squeaker over Missouri, the Gators now sit at 14-8 with a relatively easy schedule coming up. Sure, they have to play Auburn and then Kentucky twice, but they also get Mississippi, Georgia, Texas A&M, Arkansas and Vanderbilt.
If they only lose to the ranked teams, the Gators are going to finish 20-11, or right in line with where they’ve finished most of the time under Mike White. There’s not much margin for error though as a slip-up against one of the lesser teams could end up with Florida missing the tournament.
The good news is that the Gators still have a point differential of 7.3 points per game. That’s significantly higher than it has been in recent years. That suggests that this team is a better team than some of its predecessors, even if the records look very similar.
But this is also a team that lost to Texas Southern, so clearly, anything is possible.
Mike White
I firmly believe that at the end of this season, Scott Stricklin needs to come out and tell us what he expects from the basketball program.
The roller coaster that the players are constantly forced to ride with regards to his job security is unfair to both them and to White. You may think that level of negativity is earned, but I think the negativity only exists because Stricklin refuses to define the metrics by which he’d make a change.
Think of it this way. If you’re at work and someone is constantly not meeting expectations, that is frustrating. But it’s also frustrating to them if nobody is telling them they’re not meeting expectations. They’re walking around thinking they’re doing a good job – or at least trying as hard as they can – and everybody around the office thinks they are an idiot.
That situation happens all too often and it’s not just the person not meeting expectations who’s at fault. The people who walk off assuming that person is an idiot have some fault in the situation as well. Their failure to address the issue directly is causing things to get toxic.
That’s what Stricklin has done to the Gators basketball program. By not allowing us insight to what his expectations are, we’re left to guess. That means that fans project their own expectations onto the program, and while just making the tournament is enough for some, Final Fours and championships are the expectations for others.
Without a definition from Stricklin, we’ll be back where we’ve been the past few years. White defenders suggesting he shouldn’t be held to the Billy Donovan standard and White detractors insisting that the Donovan standard is the only one worth pursuing.
Stricklin has the ability to end that debate. The question is, will he?