Last Friday, I wrote a piece that circuitously asked everyone to please calm down about Billy Napier losing three assistants to the NFL. At various times during the week I saw Gator fans alternately despairing or complaining, rival fans alternately laughing or sneering, and the occasional media piece trying to make it sound like Napier maybe has lost control of the program.
I stand by all of that, especially the bit about how it “doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than that the coaches were ready to make that career step”.
According to Napier, Patrick Toney always wanted to go to the NFL. Things didn’t immediately work for him with last year’s being the worst UF defense of my lifetime, so taking this opportunity makes a lot of sense.
Colbert played in the NFL, including for the Denver franchise he’s going to, and will get to work for Sean Payton. If he has aspirations to be a coordinator or head coach, it’s still gold to have Payton as a reference. William Peagler is, well, I’m not sure. He wasn’t known as a great recruiter and his unit didn’t really impress, so I can’t get too worked up about him leaving.
But since you are a Gator Country subscriber and therefore smarter and more attractive than the average fan, I’ll tell you what my opinions are on the staff situation here in this subscribers newsletter. It easily could be wrong for those reasons about it being early yet in Napier’s tenure, but that’s enough with the caveats.
I’m not that enthusiastic about reported incoming DC Austin Armstrong, given that he’s 29-years-old. Toney was a few years older and was not up to the job. I get why there has been a trend in both college and the pro level of seeing younger and younger coordinators and head coaches — each level is in a transitional period, college into the post-spread-revolution* era and the NFL into a more-spread-and-passing era — and so there can be value in finding fresh minds with fresh perspectives. Plus every administrator/executive loves the idea of finding the next hall of famer at a young age and riding that guy’s success for decades, even if that basically never happens.
*Note: spread offenses and concepts are going nowhere anytime soon, as they’re still useful and effective. However, a lot of the innovation we’re seeing lately is not in spread-first concepts, and even spread option pioneer Dan Mullen was mixing in bunch sets that were no one’s definition of “spread” during his time at UF.
Armstrong is at least a different story than his predecessor. Toney was a grinder, working his way up from high school and JUCO coach to FCS assistant at two stops to Napier’s Louisiana staff and on to Florida. It’s admirable that he worked his way up the ladder like that.
The story for Armstrong is night-and-day different. He got a position coaching job under Will Hall at West Georgia in 2016 immediately after his playing career was over. A year later, Napier hired Hall to be his OC at Louisiana, and Armstrong came over as a GA in the deal. He worked the Greater Saban Tree Network two years later to get an analyst gig at Georgia for a season in 2019 before Napier brought him back as linebackers coach. Hall then hired him to run the Southern Miss’s entire defense in 2021. After two years of that, Saban lured him away for a couple weeks until Napier called him up a third time.
According to a podcast from another site that rhymes with Maters Ontime, Armstrong would’ve been hired as UGA’s co-defensive coordinator had Will Muschamp taken a job elsewhere this winter. I don’t know what Muschamp would’ve been in line for, but you can imagine that if the UAB administration hadn’t lost their minds and hired Trent Dilfer that they could’ve gone for Coach Boom. That is, if Coach Boom was so set on being in charge of a program again that he’d take what I’m sure would be a pay cut to do it.
Co-DC at Georgia would’ve meant still being under the watch of Kirby Smart, so it’s not as big a deal as being DC opposite an offense-oriented head coach. The other co-DC Glenn Schumann also would’ve been the senior partner among the two, though he himself is the same age as Toney. Regardless, getting a coordinator title from the two-time defending national champs would’ve been a huge stamp of approval from one of the nation’s best. And, of course, Saban did hired him, even if that didn’t last long.
Toney had nothing like these things to recommend him, just Napier’s positive opinion of him. If you’re skeptical about Napier’s coordinator hiring process, and after two hires I can say that I am, at least this one has some outside endorsements.
I can’t comment on receivers and tight ends since, as of this writing, no one’s been hired yet. I hope they get those guys in place for spring practice, since that’s a real team-building time of the year.
I also wouldn’t feel comfortable having analysts or GAs who aren’t going to be the long-term solution trying to coach position groups. The players need to hear the real voice and experience the real teaching techniques from the start. It’s a hard time to be trying to hire guys, but that’s why Napier gets paid the big bucks. I would consider it a red flag if UF goes through spring without a permanent coach at any position.
To sum it up, we don’t know when things will click for this staff. They may never, or it may be next season. Things didn’t really click for Urban Meyer’s offensive crew until the 2006 SEC Championship Game, and even then plenty of fans complained about Mullen well into 2007.
You may remember a famous graphic of a spinner for offensive decision making that at one point actually made a CBS broadcast if memory serves. It implied that Mullen only had six basic plays: three Tim Tebow runs, two passes to Percy Harvin, and a Harvin run. It was emblematic of fan discontent with how the ’07 attack felt like a two-man scheme a lot of the time. That offense, of course, produced a Heisman winner and is one of two (along with 2008) to have broken the 40 PPG barrier since Steve Spurrier left.
All of this is to say that you just don’t know until you know, and even when you think you know, you could still be wrong. I am skeptical of Napier in some respects because he’s trying to win in a way that hasn’t worked around here previously, and it’s not simply like how Spurrier or Meyer were ahead of the curve in offensive theory when each arrived. I do think he could get it done eventually, but the burden of proof is still on him to make it all work.