Well that was quite the game, wasn’t it? There’s something satisfying when everything comes together according to plan against LSU. It was like that in 2012, and it was like it on Saturday.
I am coming around to the idea that this team, at its best, is pretty good. Not title contender-good, but maybe bottom half of the top 25 good. Whether that’s good enough for a Florida coach in his third season is something I’m going to get into at a later date, but I think that’s where they’re at when they’re playing at their peak.
The problem is, we haven’t see the peak all that often. The peak, as I see it, is the post-Mississippi State defense with DJ Lagway at the helm of the offense.
Sometime during the extra time following the game in Starkville, players reportedly went to the coaches to request the defense be simplified. It was a reasonable request. Too many times over the prior couple of years, nine or ten defenders would be in the right place doing the right thing but one or two weren’t, and it led to a lot of big plays allowed. It was happening again in September, so absent some kind of change, they were going to get the same results.
Thankfully, the coaches listened and did simplify things. It’s made a world of difference on that side of the ball. Witness how UF just became the second team after Alabama to hold LSU to fewer than 20 points in a game.
The offense is just better with Lagway, too. It’s more variable than it was with Graham Mertz, because Lagway is a true freshman and Mertz so consistently threw short. Sometimes, like he did twice on Saturday, Lagway throws it right to defenders in a way Mertz almost never did. And sometimes Lagway tries to fit the ball into too-tight windows because he’s still adjusting to college defenses.
But man, he throws the heck out of deep passes. The wrist-flick near-touchdown to Elijhah Badger in the second half has made waves nationally because of how easy he makes a really difficult play look. That’s the kind of thing that made Andy Staples change his tune from, “fire Napier, there’s always another 5-star quarterback” after the Texas A&M loss to, “keep that guy in the fold, no matter the cost” over the weekend.
And so, just how much time have we seen the simplified defense with Lagway behind center? It’s been the final quarter-and-a-half plus overtime against Tennessee (UT outscored the Gators 16-7), the entire Kentucky game (Florida won 48-20), the first quarter-and-a-half against Georgia (UF led 10-3), and the whole LSU game (good guys win 27-16). That’s a combined 92-46 in Florida’s favor across a quarter short of three full games’ worth of action.
Does that prove anything? Not really, unless your lesson is about how Napier didn’t understand how to get the most of what he had from the start. Don’t forget how he was shuffling offensive linemen a lot early before settling in on the lineup that everyone predicted would be the final five back in late spring/preview magazine season. This issue is not one I’ve heard Napier be asked about or fully address, but it is important for his future in Gainesville. Why did it take him weeks into the season to apparently fall bass ackward into the best form of the team?
I am done doing week-to-week assessments of the head coach and his staff. There are only two weeks to go, and Napier’s probably now coming back regardless. If he gets blown out by Ole Miss and then loses to a 2-9 FSU team, maybe he still gets the axe. But especially if Lagway plays, they’re almost certainly going to beat FSU and get to a bowl. Heck, maybe he even pulls off the funniest thing in years and beats Lane Kiffin this coming weekend. Stranger things have happened.
You may remember how I wrote two weeks ago that Scott Stricklin needed to provide some clarity on Napier’s status to give the program a fighting chance at putting together a recruiting class worth having, including keeping the best among the small number of players who had committed. Napier has since capitalized on that certainty.
He very soon after flipped a kicker from Arkansas, which is nice as far as it goes but isn’t a game-changer (though he is, by program taxonomy, a GameChanger). A bigger flip just happened on Sunday, when FSU decommit QB Trammel Jones out of Jacksonville committed to the Gators. He’s a low 4-star recruit in the 247 Sports Composite, one who might grow into something in a few years.
Where Jones really counts is what he means to the class overall. Firstly, it’s just really good to have a quarterback, period. But beyond that, he’s apparently close with Vernell Brown III, UF’s top-rated commit per the Composite. I haven’t seen anything to suggest the Gator legacy’s pledge is wavering, but having a friend of your best player is always a good thing.
Bigger than that is that Jones is a teammate of No. 48 overall recruit WR Jaime Ffrench. He committed to Texas back in August, but he visited Gainesville over the weekend and was impressed by both the atmosphere and how UF used Elijhah Badger. Landing Ffrench would be quite the turnaround for a class all but left for dead a couple weeks ago.
Napier appears to be running last year’s slump down the stretch in reverse. Beat the Rebels on Saturday, and it really will look like that. I’m not counting on it, nor am I counting on Ffrench to flip, but there actually are some beams of sunlight breaking through the clouds right now. I’ll definitely take it given where we were in late September into October.