Billy Napier boo'd off the field at halftime of Texas A&M-Florida game
Billy Napier and Florida are having another nightmare afternoon in Gainesville.
Two weeks after the Gators were blown out by Miami to open the 2024 season, it appears to be happening again. Texas A&M has a 20-0 lead over Florida at halftime.
As Florida was exiting the field en route to the locker room, Gator fans at The Swamp showed their displeasure the effort in the first half. Here’s video of Napier sprinting to the locker room while boos poured in from the Florida faithful:
https://twitter.com/agentshep/status/1835079365442650242
Florida was a small underdog in this matchup, but the Gators have been largely uncompetitive through 30 minutes of football. Texas A&M has been able to build a 3-score lead over the Gators despite being forced to start backup quarterback Marcel Reed on Saturday.
Florida has some quarterback uncertainty of its own. Graham Mertz got the start and completed 4-of-6 passes for 54 yards in the first half. Freshman DJ Lagway also played, but he threw an interception during his short stint on the field.
Florida is still searching for its first FBS win of the season.
I believe CBN is a good man who works his tail off. I believe he is giving his all to UF. I still believe his approach is good (build a foundation rather than transfer mercenaries like FSU). At the same time, we are being boat raced at home by a first year coach playing a backup QB.
I believe a change is needed and it really pains me to say it.
Everything you said is true. He just isn’t getting it done. Every advantage we get have we don’t take advantage of. Losing at home to a new coach with a back up quarterback. It actually turns into an advantage for the opponent with Napier.
He can’t scheme and the players are still undisciplined and out of position.
Never like to see anyone lose their job. But he was never qualified to be in that position anyway.
NGRG8R,
What your seeing is a team that hasn’t been coached. I don’t mean a team that hasn’t been coached well. I mean a team that hasn’t been coached at all. Beta Billy should have to pay all the money he has been paid back. He hasn’t earned a dime of it.
Good post.
Good post, but don’t feel bad for Billy. When someone is in over his head, getting booed off the field, sending him on his way is an act of kindness, especially when it comes with a 20 million dollar golden parachute.
You can’t feel sorry for the guy. He has broken records you don’t want your name associated with and has brought Gator football to rock bottom and the day he is fired he will be headed to the bank smiling and be 26 million dollars richer.
About 15 years ago I took an admin position (I’m a teacher) that I thought was my dream job. I was horrible….getting fired was the best thing for my career, but it was still the hardest thing for me and my family to walk through. So in that way, I feel for him.
Napier understands what needs to be done at UF. But he doesn’t understand that he can’t be HC and OC. He’s not an offense genius. He needed to give up play calling and focus on leading. That would have put him in a better position to handle the mistakes.
That, my friend, perfectly encapsulates the hidden-yet- essential dynamic in play here. To be sure, everyone has an element of narcissism in their make-up, no escaping it, and it exists on a continuum ranging from benign to profound, from oblivious to fragile. Mullin is an example of the profound-fragile variety and imploded when confronted. Napier, sadly, is more the benign-oblivious type: Just not getting it. Had he, perhaps the results themselves might have been anything but benign.
There were signs along the way that pointed to the personality trait you describe Neal. They were subtle, but there.
Napier was fired by Swinney as an inept OC, which fueled his drive to prove that was a mistake. He’s still obsessed with it, even though he has MUCH bigger fish to fry as HC at UF.
He surrounded himself with toadies at ULL and brought most of them along with him to UF. Sale, Toney, Armstrong, Roberts and Hocke all followed him to UF. He stubbornly hung onto as many as he could for as long as he could, in spite of their repeated and obvious failures.
Now, we’re at rock bottom and he has no idea how we got here. I guarantee you he’s spent all night working through complex analytics to try to find the flaws in his master plan that don’t involve replacing toadies with competent assistants.
The sooner he goes now, the better off Gator Football will be.
Emilio, often neglected is the fact that good-to-great leaders are so because they’re constantly adapting to feedback both internal and external, correctly interpreting and applying dynamic change in small or large ways. We see it everywhere from the cockpit to leaders of any type of formation, and the difference is in the shift from Situational Awareness to Situational Understanding. Absent that, at best you have chaos and at the worst you lose. The ability to do that in fact demarcates the difference between a Leader and a Manager.
1-11 Florida football record in 2024 including losses to central Florida and FSU
Insanity is definition of doing rather same things over and over
Fire Billy Napier now
Good man does not mean a good coach
Good man? This guy has been ripping off the university for millions for over 3 years now and has given nothing in return. Good people don’t do that.
The only questions worth asking is who will come in and how far does the house cleaning go, will DJ stay or go back to atm, and will Stricklin survive this?
Striklame needs to go. In addition, they need to send Foley packing. It’s never good to have the former AD hanging around meddling. Too many cooks.
Amen.
Stricklin is primarily responsible for this. He should go first.
Double amen.