NASHVILLE — It’s one of those unique southern soliloquies, a reality check that leaves no doubt.

“I have enough grass to mow right now,” Billy Napier says.

Translation: The Florida job is a heavy lift, and it won’t be fixed in 2 or 3 years.

So the question is: Are Gators fans — notoriously short on patience, and even shorter on memory — willing to wait it out?

“We’ve got to be intentional about building all parts of our team,” Napier said Wednesday at SEC Media Days. “A big-picture plan relative to purpose.”

Because the rebuild at Florida won’t get better in 2023, and more than likely, won’t be where it needs to be in 2024.

But if Napier can get to 2025, if he can continue to string together top 5-10 recruiting classes and develop a quarterback, Florida may just have its coach well into the 2030s.

The big-picture plan, of course, is winning. It’s finding a way back to the Halcyon days of Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer, despite dealing with a drastically different college football environment.

When Napier arrived in Gainesville last season, the program had just dusted off its 3rd iteration post-Meyer. Will Muschamp didn’t take, nor did Jim McElwain.

Dan Mullen won early, then couldn’t get out of his own way off the field, which eventually bled into recruiting and results on the field — and 1 disastrous season doomed his attempt to return Florida to the top of the SEC.

Along the way, the Gators dealt with losing at home to an FCS school for the first time in school history. For starters.

There was the shark story, which may or may not have been real, fake death threats to a head coach, probation for the first time in 3 decades, and a coach urging fans to fill the stadium in the middle of a global pandemic.

That and an overall record of 93-59 (57-41 SEC) over 12 years since Meyer resigned after the 2010 season.

So yeah, the grass was knee-high when Napier drove by the joint before taking the job because of what was — and what could be. It wasn’t until 9 months later, before he coached his first game for the Gators, that Florida moved into a palatial football-only facility — a standard in the SEC for years.

Kentucky, which snapped a 31-game losing streak to Florida in 2018, already had a football-only facility — a crucial tool in the cutthroat world of recruiting. Mississippi State, where both Mullen and athletic director Scott Stricklin worked before Florida — which hasn’t won the SEC since its 1 and only time in 1941 — had a football-only facility.

So did Ole Miss. And South Carolina. And Arkansas. And … do I need to go further?

So when Napier said Wednesday that he spent his entire 1st season completely building the framework and guts of the program, he’s not making excuses for a 6-7 season that ended with a brutal loss to Oregon State in the Las Vegas Bowl — he’s explaining just how badly the grass needed to be mowed.

From facilities, to locker room culture, to building an SEC roster. That doesn’t happen overnight.

And he may as well have started with a hand trimmer.

Mullen’s deficiencies in recruiting left the program thin at critical areas (defensive line, linebackers, wide receiver), and quarterback Anthony Richardson’s elite physical ability (and inexperienced and uneven play) poured unreasonable expectations on top of those deficiencies.

There have been self-inflicted wounds, too, at the most important position on the field. From Richardson’s development and erratic play under Napier, to Jalen Kitna’s arrest, to 5-star recruit Jaden Rashada’s botched NIL deal, to Michael Pratt’s 11th-hour decision to stay at Tulane, to Austin Simmons’ late flip to Ole Miss, and finally, to a whirlwind offseason that left Florida with another enigmatic player at the most important position on the field.

After all of that, the Gators are left with former Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz — who has a career TD/INT ratio of 38/26 — and 2022 backups Jack Miller and Max Brown. Napier says the job is wide open but also expects a quick resolution in fall camp.

In other words, unless Miller and/or Brown have made significant strides over the summer, Florida is riding with Mertz — who threw 7 of those 38 career TDs in the first 2 games of his career, and it went downhill from there.

You know there’s a problem at the most important position on the field when Napier spoke of Mertz in terms of hard work and leadership and dependability since he arrived in Gainesville, and of availability.

“Very impressed with Graham. Graham is a 32-start player,” Napier said. “He’s played over 2,000 snaps at a really established program in Wisconsin.”

If there’s hesitation in the fan base about Napier after only 1 season, it is born here. He’s the quarterbacks coach. He’s the play-caller and the offensive coordinator.

There are assistant coaches on staff with those titles, but Napier is the architect of the offense and the position. It’s who and what he has been since his time as a quarterback at Furman, and his numerous assistant coaching jobs and only other head coaching job at Louisiana.

So when Napier says Florida evaluated “2 dozen” quarterbacks in the transfer portal, there had to be something more than Mertz — even after losing Pratt. Napier was asked if he would consider giving up play-calling — like Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M, Hugh Freeze at Auburn and Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss will this fall.

“I do think it’s part of the evaluation process to some degree,” Napier said. “But I feel confident in our process. We’ve done it before.”

Long after Napier’s rounds at the Media Days circus, after the 3rd day of the carnival show eased into its final minutes, I asked Napier about the idea of being overlooked.

No one here is talking about the Gators. Florida is here, and no one cares.

They may be the most overlooked team in the conference, especially since Vanderbilt is the de facto host program.

“I can promise you this,” he said, while pausing for effect. “We’re not going to allow anyone’s narrative to dictate our reality.”

Now that’s a soliloquy that leaves no doubt.