Hindsight is 20/20: 3 candidates who would’ve been better for Florida than Billy Napier
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I’m not gonna do the thing where I pretend that I knew better than Florida when it hired Billy Napier at the end of the 2021 season. Nope. I was a believer that Napier would work. His roots told me that he could handle the chaos that often follows the Florida job.
Four years and 1 USF home loss later, I’ll admit I was wrong. Whether Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin can admit that remains to be seen.
But instead of breaking down whether or not Stricklin will make that decision and discuss who’ll replace Napier, I thought it’d be more fun to pretend that we could have a do-over. After all, hindsight is 20/20.
Who should Stricklin have hired if he had a crystal ball? And what would’ve actually been realistic?
Let’s break down 3 candidates:
Before we do that, hindsight tells us these guys are excellent coaches, but timing wouldn’t have justified it
As in, we know 4 years later that they’re great coaches, but they would’ve been considered incredibly under-qualified for the job and they would’ve been fighting an uphill alignment battle from the jump.
Kenny Dillingham
He was a 31-year-old coach who was coming off a somewhat disappointing season as Florida State’s offensive coordinator in 2021. Somebody who didn’t have full autonomy as an FBS offensive play-caller wasn’t getting a job as good as Florida at that stage of his career. Obviously, Dillingham is one of the rising stars of the sport and already looking like a monumental Arizona State hire. Even his native Sun Devils got to see him run the Oregon offense with full autonomy before they hired him after the 2022 season.
Jonathan Smith
Again, Smith has done impressive things in the last 4 years that would make us say “that’s a darn good football coach.” In fact, you could argue that in a post-2017 cycle that included Dan Mullen, Jimbo Fisher and Scott Frost, Smith ended up being the best coach of them at all after he led his alma mater, Oregon State, to 3 consecutive winning seasons from 2021-23, which he parlayed into the Michigan State job. That’s a key timestamp because an Oregon State coach without any Southeastern ties who had never done anything better than win 7 games wasn’t getting the Florida job.
Lance Leipold
Extremely similar to Smith. As in, the 2020s have told us that he’s an excellent coach based on the success he’s had at Kansas. But as remarkable as it is that Leipold has turned Kansas into a respectable Big 12 program after it was arguably the worst Power Conference football school of the 21st century, a first-year Kansas coach riding a 2-10 start isn’t getting hired at Florida.
Jedd Fisch
Unlike the others named, Fisch is a Florida graduate who was a GA on Steve Spurrier’s staff. There’s no denying that he would’ve had a ringing endorsement from the Head Ball Coach and plenty of others who wanted to see someone with Florida roots take that job. But timing wouldn’t have been on Fisch’s side in 2021. He was coming off a 1-11 Year 1 at Arizona in what was his first college head coaching gig. Even Spurrier couldn’t have spun that to the fanbase.
And a thought on Lane Kiffin …
I don’t think that Kiffin would’ve left Ole Miss after 2 years to take the Florida job. The guy spent 3 years at FAU. I find it hard to believe that Kiffin, who is in Year 6 in Oxford, would’ve bolted after he spent all of his post-tarmac time trying to prove that he was a respected coach, and not just someone looking for the next big thing. Also, are we sure that Florida would’ve rolled out the red carpet for Kiffin at the time? He was still trying to get his SEC reputation back. At the very least, there would’ve been internal resistance. Combined with the inevitable resistance on Kiffin’s side with the timing, I don’t think it’s fair to say he would’ve been a true fit for the post-2021 vacancy.
But these 3 guys? Hindsight says they would’ve made all sorts of sense
It would’ve been a 2-way street both with enough fan/booster support and a realistic chance that the candidate would’ve pounced on the opportunity:
Dan Lanning
Lanning is at the start of his 4th season as an FBS head coach, and he’s already a star. He’s 37-6 at Oregon with all of his losses coming to teams that won at least 10 games, and 4 of them were against teams who played in a national championship that season. High floor? You bet. And while the knock on Lanning is that he hasn’t gotten over the hump to get Oregon to a semifinal yet, the guy still has more wins vs. top-15 teams (7) than he has total losses (6). All signs point to Lanning already being so entrenched at Oregon that he’s the wild, fantasy hire for Florida fans if Napier is fired.
But go back to the 2021 season when Lanning was in the midst of being Georgia‘s play-caller for one of the best defenses of the 21st century, which was the backbone of the Dawgs’ first national title since 1980. Perhaps the coveted Lanning could’ve still picked Oregon over staying in the SEC and crossing enemy lines for the Florida job.
It’s worth noting, though, that Lanning’s starting annual salary at Oregon was $4.6 million, while Florida paid Napier $7.1 million. There’s no denying that Lanning could’ve had a bigger payday at Florida than the one he got as a first-time head coach at Oregon. It’s possible that the Will Muschamp experience scared the Gators off the “Nick Saban-Kirby Smart assistant” school of thought, but we have the benefit of hindsight to say that Lanning would’ve checked a ton of boxes even as a 35-year-old.
One of the most impressive things about the defensive-minded Lanning is that he nailed his all-important OC hires. The aforementioned Dillingham was a star for Bo Nix in his first season at Oregon in 2022, and Will Stein has been the mastermind behind a pair of Heisman Trophy invitees in Nix and Dillon Gabriel. Compare that to Napier, who has insisted on calling his own plays on offense, despite the inconsistencies shown in 3-plus seasons.
Lanning is the clear leader of the Napier redo.
Rhett Lashlee
I know what you’re thinking. Why wouldn’t Lashlee have been in the previous group of coaches? Didn’t he only get the SMU job, which at the time was a Group of 5 job? Yes, but Lashlee was considered a candidate at Power Conference vacancies. He was a year removed from leading a prolific, revamped Miami (FL) offense during his 2 years in the Sunshine State. Given his ties to the SEC both having played (Arkansas) and coached (Gus Malzahn’s OC in 2013-16) in it, nobody would’ve viewed Lashlee as an outsider in the way that others would’ve been viewed.
Lashlee led a pair of 11-win seasons in Year 2 and Year 3 SMU, the second of which resulted in an ACC Championship Game appearance and a Playoff berth. SMU still hasn’t lost a conference game under Lashlee since 2022. That’s in 2 different conferences.
You can say that Lashlee wouldn’t have had the same level of success in the SEC because of the competition level, but he also would’ve had more talent to work with at Florida. Also, ask yourself this. With hindsight, would you want Lashlee or Napier calling plays? Before you answer, remember that one guy has 3 consecutive top-12 offenses and another is just trying to crack the top 50 for the first time in that stretch.
Yeah, you get what I’m saying. Lashlee would’ve taken the play-calling duties. And if it didn’t work? He sounds more likely to have pivoted than Napier, who needed to pivot after Year 1 of that failed experience.
Like Napier, Lashlee wouldn’t have been considered a splashy hire, but his strengths at SMU would’ve translated well at Florida.
Matt Campbell
If Florida really was set on hiring an established FBS head coach, Campbell would’ve knocked it out of the park. I’m convinced of that. Some might scoff at an Iowa State coach being good enough for the Florida job, but that program has 2 top-15 finishes in the AP Poll, and both of them belong to Campbell. He’s off to a 3-0 start and back in the top 15. Besides having the most wins in program history, he’s had 7 winning seasons (and soon to be 8) at a place that had 5 such seasons from 1990-2015.
And no, he wouldn’t have had any regional ties to the area as an Ohio native who also spent 9 pre-Iowa State seasons at Ohio programs. But last I checked, Urban Meyer was once an Ohio native without any regional ties to the Florida area. Why did he got hired? He led a program to new heights. The same could be said of Campbell.
Would he have jumped at the opportunity? It would’ve been awfully difficult to turn down after a ton of talent from that Brock Purdy-led 2021 squad left for the NFL. Campbell reportedly turned down the Detroit Lions, but that was after 2020. Campbell stayed to see that 2021 group through. That might’ve been the best window to lure him away from Ames. He could become a popular a candidate if the Florida job opens up again, especially if he continues a push to a Big 12 title.
Either way, Campbell would’ve been what Florida thought it was getting in Napier.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
