Watching Florida lose to USF while hitting all the familiar notes has me feeling like the Arrested Development character Michael Bluth discovering that his dimwitted magician brother was being quite literal with the “DEAD DOVE Do Not Eat!” label on the paper bag in the freezer: I don’t know what I expected. Everything that happened in that game was a variation on a theme we’ve seen before.
Except, I do know what I expected, which is a lot better than that. I’ll say it one more time: the 2025 roster is the best the team has had in a decade, and it should be capable of more than gagging a game away to a G5 conference school. The Bulls are a good team, don’t get me wrong, and their head coach Alex Golesh is probably going to be on a P4 sideline next year.
South Florida largely sat back and played it safe to let UF throw the game away, and it still took a lot of problems for them to win the game by all of two points. The talent differential still almost won out despite a negative turnover margin, more than 100 yards in penalties, a snap over the punter’s head, a couple of bad drops (Livingston’s almost-touchdown and Vernell Brown’s on the last offensive drive), poor game management, and a quarterback missing open players in both possible meanings by not seeing them and with some bad throws.
There were some warning signs that I didn’t take seriously enough. DJ Lagway’s lack of practice time over the offseason is the biggest one. I didn’t take it seriously enough because there have been signal callers who miss time due to injury who come back without too many ill effects or who only need a handful of games to get back into their old form.
…except that taking a handful of games to get back to good form means Lagway playing below his historic and projected levels for maybe up to a month. Even though his completion percentage is now up to a rather Mertz-like 74.5% through two contests, his yards per attempt is also at a rather Mertz-like 6.7 per toss. Last year he was at an even 10.0 yards per attempt.
The other big one was Caleb Banks’s health. Granted there was incomplete information on this one because the coaching staff doesn’t describe injuries in detail, but that’s a huge one.
The defense did improve after the famous players’ request to simplify the scheme in late September of last year. However the unit didn’t hit its greatest level until after right after the Texas game when Banks suddenly went supernova.
There still should’ve been enough quality players around to beat USF, and there really were enough had Florida merely given a C- performance or better. Yet, in painting a picture of the Gators’ highest potential peak on occasion this offseason, my comparison point was 2010 Auburn. That team, yes, was largely carried by Cam Newton on offense. However, the defense was carried to a similar degree by DT Nick Fairley. He, more than Newton, was the reason why Chip Kelly and Oregon didn’t win the national championship that year given how he was blowing up plays in the backfield in the title game. You need both the star quarterback and the star defensive tackle.
If Banks was healthy, then I think the Gators probably would beat South Florida while still doing all of the stupid stuff they did last Saturday. He’s just that good, and no one else in the interior has shown himself to be capable of doing what Banks did last November.
And finally, the lack of an OC hire was the oldest of these red flags. I saw the rumors at the time about getting a new play caller being a condition for Napier’s return, and Andy Staples has reported that it was indeed a condition until it wasn’t after the LSU and Ole Miss wins.
If there’s one thing I overestimate the most about Billy Napier, it’s his willingness to learn from mistakes. He apparently doesn’t have any interest in it. He thinks he knows the best path to winning, and nothing anyone says to him and not a single thing that’s happened in games can convince him otherwise.
Okay, so it’s not literally nothing; last year he did break down and buy mats with 11 circles on them for the benefit of special teams. However, not a whole lot looks different about the way the program is structured now or what it does compared to 2022. It’s the same schemes on both sides of the ball. It’s the same slow procedures. It’s the same everything, no matter how many faces change.
Where do we go from here? We’ll find out soon. I don’t expect a win in Baton Rouge because Napier’s next road win over a team that finishes the season above .500 will be his first at Florida. However, Banks is off the injury report for this week, and this collection of players will play hard for each other. We saw it in how they never quit last year, even after being made to look like a Sun Belt team (ahem) in Austin. And hey, the loss to USF critically was not a conference loss.
I can’t keep a straight face on that last one, but there is some hope that this season will be more interesting than a complete derailing with a 1-5 start that leads to Napier’s ouster before Halloween. There at least would be clarity with that scenario, though. The more “interesting” things are between now and the open date, the less certainty there will be.
It’s time to just do what I said in my season prologue piece and actually take it one week at a time without any expectations longer than that. For as predictable as things in the Napier era seem to appear in hindsight, they actually can be quite inconsistent as they happen. The inconsistency will be one of the big themes of Napier’s UF coaching obituary whether it comes next month or next year or next decade, and that’s an expectation that won’t go unfulfilled.