Hello and welcome to the first Stadium Road Audibles of 2026. Better late than never, but hey, it’s still technically January.
There are a lot of things that strike me as different between Jon Sumrall and Billy Napier. For one thing, Sumrall always looks like he’s about to go perform at a WWE event while Napier often seemed like he was about to doze off. Okay, that’s a bit unfair to Napier, but Sumrall really has that pro wrestler kind of aura about him. It’s something about the persistent 110% intensity of his eyes, plus his haircut.
Anyway, another big distinguishing characteristic for me is the way the two handled their staffs. Napier brought a bunch of guys with him from Louisiana, hired a few more who he’d worked with in the past, and supplemented with four guys he hadn’t worked with before.
The new-to-him coaches weren’t in the biggest roles in the assistant ranks, however, and he ended up firing two of them (Sean Spencer and Corey Raymond) after two years.
All of Napier’s coordinators and co-coordinators had either worked for him before, coached along side him at a prior stop, or worked with someone he’d worked with before. Spencer was new to Napier, but he’d worked with OL coach/Napier mafia founding member Rob Sale at the New York Giants. Barely remembered 2025 co-DC Robert Bala also was new to Napier, but he’d worked for Nick Saban at Alabama in 2023.
Sumrall has brought over plenty of people from Tulane, including assistants. Notably, however, both his Green Wave coordinators came to Gainesville as position coaches rather than coordinators. Joe Craddock is the quarterbacks coach rather than the offensive coordinator, and Greg Gasparato will be inside linebackers coach instead of defensive coordinator.
Now, it’s not automatically bad for a head coach to bring his coordinators up with him through the levels. Most notably, Curt Cignetti’s offensive and defensive coordinators worked with him at DII Indiana University of Pennsylvania, FCS Elon, and FCS-to-Sun Belt climber James Madison. Bother were position coaches at first for Cignetti that later became coordinators at JMU.
And, if you’re curious, both were in their early 30s (OC Mike Shanahan, no relation to the former Gator OC Mike Shanahan) or mid 30s (DC Bryant Haines) when Cignetti elevated them to play-calling coordinator positions. Napier’s choices of Patrick Toney and Austin Armstrong as DC, both very young and having only coordinated in the lower G5 level, weren’t doomed by definition. They were doomed because they weren’t ready for the size of the role (if they ever will be).
Anyway, Sumrall went with the familiar on defense with former coworker Brad White. I don’t have a lot to say there yet, other than that it would be unreasonable and probably unwise to build a staff with no one he’s worked with before in a key role.
Offense is really where the big difference lies.
Buster Faulkner appeared on the Gator Tales podcast with Sean Kelly, and there were a few interesting nuggets in there. It’s not a hard-hitting exposé, because it’s a UAA production with one UAA employee interviewing another, but that’s fine once you adjust your expectations knowing that.
Notably, Faulker said he’d had a relationship from a distance with Sumrall for five or six years from having mutual friends in the profession. That’s called “networking”, and people in every industry do it. It’s I guess worth knowing that the two are going into this completely cold, and it’s not surprising given that five or six years ago each was working in the SEC. Sumrall was an assistant at Kentucky, while Faulkner was an analyst at Georgia. That’s long enough ago that both were in the same East division, even.
Much more notable for me is that Faulker said he didn’t know Phil Trautwein at all personally before both joined up with Sumrall. Coaching circles are small, but they do tend to be regional. Trautwein was at Penn State from 2020 to 2025, and his coaching credits before that were all at Boston College and FCS Davidson College in North Carolina. They didn’t have much reason to cross paths or run in the same circles.
Trautwein being an alum and his impressive track record at PSU I’m sure made the move an easy sell for Faulkner, but it takes a lot of trust to hire an OC and OL coach who don’t know each other at all much less have never worked together. I still remember how Will Muschamp hired OL coach Tim Davis before hiring OC Brent Pease after the 2011 season. Davis and Pease didn’t see eye-to-eye on scheme and didn’t get along personally, and that relationship blew up during the 2013 season with both getting fired shortly after.
Yet, Faulkner and Trautwein are both highly respected at their respective jobs, and Sumrall is trusting that they will work together well. I’m sure he worked out their compatibility through the interview process with each. He didn’t hire anyone on a whim, and Faulkner’s hire came well ahead of Trautwein’s. Still, it’s a leap of faith to do that.
And also, Sumrall has trusted those guys in major portal moves. The most visible is that Faulkner’s protege from Georgia Tech Aaron Philo will be following his OC to Florida. UF is still one of the highest profile places for quarterbacks to play, so with the potential to go get anyone who wasn’t also following a coach, Sumrall went with Faulkner’s pick. Again it was not without doing some vetting himself, as Sumrall has spoken about, but he’s trusting his OC’s evaluation.
Sumrall is doing the same thing with offensive tackle, eschewing a pricey portal OT for Eagan Boyer. Boyer played for Trautwein at Penn State, though only in 12 total games with one start across two seasons. It would’ve been easy for Coach Win Now to tell Trautwein that sorry, we’re not going with your guy because we’ve got to get someone with proven production. Instead, he trusted his OL coach’s evaluation.
Napier never seemed to put a lot of trust in his assistants, other than completely letting his play-calling DCs have strangely free reign over the defense. He wanted to do his own evals on every player on both sides of the ball. He never hired anyone on his side, in the offensive assistant ranks, who he then gave a title and standing to challenge him. Nearly everything ran through Billy and flowed from Billy’s judgment.
Everything is running through Sumrall, but he hired outstanding guys like Faulkner and Trautwein who there was legitimate competition for nationally. He is empowering them by taking their recommendations on key spots like quarterback and tackle. A lot of how the 2026 season will go depends on how Philo and Boyer pan out.
I like to see this from Sumrall. A smart CEO hires good people and then lets them do what they do best. So far, it looks like Sumrall is doing that in Gainesville. It’s a long way to Week 1, but the vibes remain quite good.