Napier's plan to fix Florida is now bust, but the Gators aren't quite ready to fire him

Published Sep. 18, 2024 9:50 a.m. ET

Associated Press

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Florida coach Billy Napier was supposed to have answers. Or at least some new ideas.

Napier was hired in Gainesville in 2021 partly because he had a detailed plan for the Gators to close the gap on Alabama and Georgia in the powerhouse Southeastern Conference and become a legit national championship contender after being mostly an afterthought over the previous decade.

Napier’s proposal included bringing in more people, spending more money and getting more time than usual to pull it all together.

It’s a generally worthless project now, the latest and least effective rebuild in program history.

Napier is on the verge of being fired for the first time since Clemson’s Dabo Swinney sent him packing in 2010. It’s not a matter of if; it’s when.

The Gators (1-2, 0-1 SEC) play at Mississippi State (1-2) on Saturday, one of the few soft spots remaining on what many consider the toughest schedule in the country. With a bye week ahead, a loss to the struggling Bulldogs could mean the end of Napier’s tenure after 29 games.

Florida, though, appears to be in no hurry to part with its fourth head coach since two-time national champion Urban Meyer resigned at the end of the 2010 season.

The Gators have never fired a football coach before October and have reasons for keeping Napier despite embarrassing home losses to Miami (41-17) and Texas A&M (33-20), setbacks that stretched the team’s skid against power-conference opponents to seven.

Some considerations while deciding Napier's fate:

— Ten assistants and more than 50 support staffers would immediately start looking for new jobs.

— Every player on Florida’s roster would have a 30-day window to enter the transfer portal, creating the possibility of a mass exodus.

— Dozens of other teams could (and would) try to make backdoor contact with players who don't enter the portal immediately.

— Anyone who hasn’t played in more than four games could opt to redshirt and preserve a year of eligibility, another roster-management issue.

— And does Florida even have a viable candidate to promote to interim head coach, someone who might be able to carry the torch for several months and keep a team, a staff and a recruiting class together?

So it makes sense to keep Napier in place as long as possible, even while knowing he’s no longer the long-term solution in Gainesville and will get booed endlessly during upcoming home games against UCF and Kentucky.

It helps that Napier has handled himself with poise and professionalism while getting peppered with questions about his job security.

“Responsibility, accountability is the only option here,” Napier said. “The most important thing, and I told the players after the game Saturday, is that they stick together. … We can’t control what is said on the outside or done on the outside. We can control what is said within the walls.”

Firing Napier surely would appease a large segment of Florida fans, a short-term sense of relief after three years of frustration. And making the move might help the program’s third-party collective continue to raise money and avoid missing monthly payments to players.

But the negatives to blowing up the program in September seemingly outweigh the positives.

“We all know there’s going to be a lot of noise, and it’s up to us players what we pay attention to,” said Florida quarterback Graham Mertz, who was part of a Wisconsin team in 2021 that started 1-3 before winning seven in a row and making the Las Vegas Bowl. “Is it each other or is it what’s going on externally? Is it doing our job or is it something else?”

Napier insists there’s still time to turn things around. But no one who has watched the Gators play this season could honestly say they’re close to being anything more than one of the worst teams in the league.

There’s a clear lack of talent, especially on both lines of scrimmage. And Napier continues to whiff on defenders in the transfer portal. Throw in losing his best two players to SEC foes — edge rusher Princely Umanmielen to Mississippi and running back Trevor Etienne to Georgia — and having to replace eight of his original 11 staff hires, and Napier’s once-promising plan is now a bust.

“We can’t live in the should have, could have, would have, if, then, all that,” Napier said. “I think ultimately we got an obligation to the players and our leadership at the university to do our best to play well this week.

“That’s all we can control. Anything else is a waste of time. … It's critical that we don’t point fingers and we accept some responsibility and point out where there needs to be accountability. That's the key, especially with young people in a world that they live in currently.”

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