It’s not often I get to crow about being exactly right, or close to it, but now is one of those times.
In my Friday column, I made the case that this year was Florida’s best chance to beat Georgia since 2020 — which happens to be the last time the Gators beat the Bulldogs. And it was. If DJ Lagway hadn’t gone down to a hamstring injury, I think based on what I saw that Florida was more like to have won the game than not.
Things went along with the script I wrote. The Bulldogs weren’t great in their run game. A 33-yard end around by a receiver aside, the Bulldogs struggled to get much going on the ground. Carson Beck threw three more picks. Florida was able to run the ball fairly well, more so with Ja’Kobi Jackson than Jadan Baugh, and Lagway connected on the one deep pass he was able to attempt. Napier also had a good coaching day, lacking any of the problems we saw against Tennessee.
However, UF did a couple of things that I said they really couldn’t afford do. One was to have a big mistake on special teams. The bad snap certainly was that, creating potentially a ten-point swing by likely taking three Gator points off of the board and setting UGA up for a 36-yard touchdown drive.
That brings up the second big thing they couldn’t do, which was give the Bulldogs short-field points. A full 23 of the 30 points that UGA scored on Texas were from short to very short drives.
The 36-yard touchdown drive following the bad snap was but one instance. Georgia got three more in the first half from a 13-yard drive following the Gators getting mired in bad field position and punting, and of course the final touchdown after Aidan Warner’s interception was a seven-yard drive. That’s 17 points off of short fields in a 14-point win.
Now, we’re in a state where Napier’s job status is even more of a Rorschach test: anyone can really see what they want to see.
Napier’s team is 4-4 on the year, and his overall record at Florida is now 15-18. Without Graham Mertz and Lagway — and it seems likely that Lagway will be out a while, and potentially the rest of the year — there isn’t much hope of beating anyone other than a moribund Florida State team. That’d put him at 5-7 in a season again and 16-21 overall.
Is that good enough at Florida? No, obviously not.
But also, Napier has gotten things turned around some this year. As Andy Staples put it in his late Saturday night broadcast/podcast, the Gators’ line play is worlds better now than it has been. The D-line wasn’t as good on Saturday as I was expecting, but it still held its own. By Staples’s reckoning, the job description was to make a UF team that can go toe-to-toe with the likes of teams like Georgia, and he has done that.
My problem with that line of thought is that this is clearly not a vintage 2019-23 Georgia team. The Bulldogs have taken some steps back. Napier’s team was blown off the field by a Miami team that hasn’t been blowing too many other teams out, and it was overmatched against a Texas A&M team that just got demolished by South Carolina. The transitive property doesn’t work in college football, but Shane Beamer’s team looked worlds more prepared for that game.
The main problem going forward for Napier, not having his top two quarterbacks aside, is that he moves too slowly. Anyone who’s been following the program closely can tell you that’s one of his greatest flaws. It’s not even to do with his promise at his opening press conference that he was going to perform a deliberate rebuild.
Napier moves too slowly in the transfer portal. Others pounce quickly on proven talent while he wants to do in-depth film studies. He is so wedded to his master plans that he hasn’t adjusted much to realities on the ground. He has an offense that he runs regardless of personnel and doesn’t change things until forced to by circumstances.
His teams have been completely unprepared for season openers for two years running. This year’s defensive turnaround is reportedly due to players going to him to request the scheme be simplified for them. He and his coordinators couldn’t figure that out for themselves. His offensive line shuffling hurt the team against the Hurricanes and Aggies, and when he did settle in on a lineup, it was the one that everyone prior to the season was predicting.
Therefore: can a coach who moves too slowly salvage a tiny recruiting class and/or add two to three dozen quality players in the portal in the next month to six weeks? The longer UF the institution goes without officially announcing Napier’s return, the harder the task gets and the more than quickness will be required. The leadership vacuum at the university that may help keep him employed is also hampering his ability to succeed should they keep him by leaving him twisting in the wind.
As I said in last week’s newsletter, I think there is a case to be made for keeping Napier because of the leadership vacuum. And with the way key players have been dropping to injury, it’s beginning to feel a lot like 2013. The injury plague of that season was a big reason why Will Muschamp got a fourth year… but he also had an 11-2 season in 2012. Napier doesn’t have anything like that to buoy him.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a lot still left to go. More than anything, I just feel really disappointed for the players. They worked their tails off and were in position to knock off one of the nation’s best teams and a bitter rival. A severely janky turf in Jacksonville and bad luck robbed the team of the chance to do so. There’s no way to get it back for them, and that’s a real shame.