Billy Napier’s Florida staff is starting to come together. On Monday, the Gators announced perhaps one of their most important hires: the team’s strength coach.

One of the criticisms of the previous regime was Florida’s physicality, or lack thereof. In November, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported that other SEC coaches felt Florida was a “finesse” team, one that “just (doesn’t) play hard.” Napier is tasked with fixing that.

So, in comes Mark Hocke. The program announced his hire as associate head coach and director of football strength and conditioning on Monday.

Looks just like a strength coach, doesn’t he? It’s the beard.

Hocke has the résumé that speaks for itself, though. He’s been at Louisiana with Napier for the last 4 seasons. Before that, he spent 6 seasons at Alabama on Nick Saban’s staff (from 2009 to 2014), served as the head strength coach at Georgia in 2015, and worked on strength staffs at Florida State (2016) and Texas A&M (2017).

At Louisiana, the Ragin’ Cajuns won 4 straight Sun Belt West Division titles, a share of the Sun Belt title in 2020, and the outright conference title in 2021.