Billy Napier never promised a quick fix at Florida, and the Gators never demanded one.
It’s important to remember both points as Napier enters a career-defining stretch starting Saturday when the 4-3 Gators meet No. 2 Georgia. His 15-17 overall record is, in part, a reflection of a deliberate approach to everything — recruiting, evaluating, roster construction and staffing decisions — that makes sense only through a long-term lens.
“You guys are probably going to get frustrated with me,” Napier said in his introductory news conference three years ago. “We’re going to be very patient and calculated about everything we do.”
At some point, patience has to pay off. Now would be a great time to start.
After Saturday’s showdown in Jacksonville, Napier’s make-or-break third season ends with three more ranked opponents (at No. 6 Texas, home vs. No. 16 LSU and No. 19 Ole Miss) and a trip to rival Florida State. He’ll need to win two to clinch bowl eligibility and avoid becoming the first coach in almost 90 years to start his Florida career with three losing seasons (Josh Cody, 1936-38).
Napier’s job and a buyout north of $26 million likely hang in the balance. So, too, does the answer to a fascinating question that resonates far beyond Gainesville.
Can a slow build still work?
Though program-wide patience seems anachronistic in the win-now transfer portal era, there was, and perhaps still is, a valid case for it at Florida.
When Napier was hired after the 2021 regular season, he was the Gators’ fourth coach in the dozen years since Urban Meyer left. None of the previous three (Dan Mullen, Jim McElwain or Will Muschamp) lasted four full seasons.
Yet all three had positive spurts: Muschamp won 11 regular-season games in 2012. McElwain became the first coach to make the SEC title game in both of his first two seasons. Mullen won 29 of his first 35 games and went to three consecutive New Year’s Six bowls.
That means Florida’s issue wasn’t success. It was, athletic director Scott Stricklin said the day he fired Mullen, sustained success.
“You’ve got to put really good structure, culture in place in order to sustain at a high, high level over a long period of time,” Stricklin said then.
If it took time to create the structure and culture necessary for a consistent, championship-level program, so be it; hitting reset every 3-4 years wasn’t working.
Florida would be patient.
Most of Napier’s initial moves fit best with that end goal in mind. He spent much of his first two offseasons filling out an org chart with one of the country’s largest support staffs and revamping Florida’s NIL process — systemic fixes more than short-term patches.
He approached his first recruiting class with a “very conservative, very patient” plan. He admitted circumstances where his staff “needed a little bit more time to make a decision and evaluate the situation” with only a week and a half before early signing day. It was worth losing out on an Isaiah Bond (Alabama’s Iron Bowl hero who’s now the top receiver at Texas) if it meant avoiding recruiting misses and roster deadweight.
Napier chose not to microwave his roster rebuild in other ways, too. The player exodus that follows many coaching hires happened after his first season, not before it, delaying his replenishment timeline. He preferred high school recruits to portal pickups, postponing on-field triumphs in favor of long-term chemistry and development. When he did scout transfers, he wouldn’t stray from his thorough evaluations, even if his process didn’t fit the portal’s speed-dating timeline.
Some of Napier’s earliest, tangible changes focused on the player experience more than X’s and O’s. He expanded parking. He upgraded food (players appreciated the omelet bar and French toast every Friday). He established GatorMade, a life-skills program that includes everything from etiquette lessons to corporate visits to prepare players for life after football. His attention to detail went down to making sure everyone wore the same color socks.
Admirable culture changes that made him well-liked by his players. Just not necessarily applicable to winning games immediately.
Napier acknowledged as much after a 6-7 first season that included the program’s first loss at Vanderbilt in three decades and a 0-4 mark against rivals Tennessee, LSU, Georgia and Florida State. The Gators, Napier said, had started establishing their on-field systems but without the level of detail and discipline Napier was used to. With everything he had to do, from modernizing the staff to adapting his old blueprint to the NIL/portal era, there wasn’t enough time.
“I’d just left a place that was a well-oiled machine to some degree, but it didn’t get there overnight,” Napier said in the spring of 2023. “Reality is first year — I’d say even two years — you’re giving away two years of your life to some degree.”
That may be true for Napier and his philosophy, but it has not been true for other coaches who were hired in that same 2021-22 cycle.
Sonny Dykes and Kalen DeBoer were hired within days of Napier; they took TCU and Washington to the national title game. Miami’s Mario Cristobal, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, LSU’s Brian Kelly, SMU’s Rhett Lashlee and Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman all have viable paths to the College Football Playoff in their third seasons. Lincoln Riley and Brent Venables are struggling at USC and Oklahoma, but both have a season with 10 or more wins.
Napier hasn’t come close. He’s 8-12 in SEC play and 1-8 against Florida’s annual rivals (including a pair of three-score losses to Georgia). Only three of his 15 victories have been against FBS teams with a winning record.
Florida’s optimism about a Year 3 Napier breakthrough peaked just before kickoff. In a memorable, potentially infamous appearance on “The Paul Finebaum Show,” Stricklin said Florida has been patient and that its patience would soon pay off.
“He’s not going to cut a corner, he’s not going to take a shortcut,” Stricklin said of Napier. “He’s going to build a really, really solid foundation, and he’s going to get this thing going to be at the level that all Gators want it to be at, which is competing for championships, playing in meaningful postseason games. Once he gets it to that point, it’s going to stay at that point.”
“I really believe Billy Napier is going to be the coach at Florida for a long, long time.”
Scott Stricklin says patience with the Gators under Billy Napier will be rewarded: pic.twitter.com/c8trlykrOR
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) August 30, 2024
And that brings us back to the $26 million question in Gainesville. Will it ever get there?
A day after Stricklin’s interview, the answer appeared to be no. Napier lost at home to Miami by 24. Two weeks later, he lost at home to Texas A&M by 13 in a game that wasn’t as close as the score suggested. The frustration Napier expected on Day 1 was boiling over.
But since then, the Gators have done enough to make a turnaround look possible. They beat Mississippi State and UCF by double digits. After a heartbreaking overtime loss at No. 7 Tennessee, Florida rebounded with a 28-point win over Kentucky.
“We could have easily splintered at that point,” Napier said, “but we didn’t.”
Perhaps that’s evidence of improved intangibles Napier has spent two-plus years trying to instill. Look closer, and you’ll see other signs that Napier’s steady-as-she-goes approach might be paying off.
The Gators enter their toughest stretch ranked 16th in yards per play margin, according to TruMedia, up from 92nd in 2023 and 42nd in 2022. Though Napier’s first two defenses were among Florida’s worst on record, he tripled down on his system. The Gators have held their past three opponents under 315 total yards, and three of their top four tacklers against Kentucky were from Napier’s conservatively built first recruiting class: Jack Pyburn, Shemar James and Devin Moore.
Napier’s thorough portal process produced his top two receivers, Elijhah Badger (Arizona State) and Chimere Dike (Wisconsin). His evaluation and recruiting philosophies landed freshman running back Jadan Baugh, who tied Florida’s record with five rushing touchdowns against Kentucky.
The biggest reason for optimism is quarterback DJ Lagway, the No. 7 overall recruit in the Class of 2024 in the 247Sports Composite. With Graham Mertz (knee) out for the season, Lagway is starring. In two starts, Lagway has thrown 10 completions of 40-plus yards; only five quarterbacks in the country have more. Do the Gators want to risk losing a potential superstar at the game’s most important position by firing the coach who signed him?
There are other, less-obvious factors to consider with Napier’s future. The power dynamics with an interim president and embattled athletic director aren’t ideal for a coaching change. As schools prepare to share upward of $20 million directly with players as soon as next year, does Florida have the appetite to pay what it’s believed would be the second-largest buyout in college football history?
That depends on what happens over the final five games.
Florida’s goal is to compete for national championships. Every national championship coach in the past three decades had at least one season with nine or more wins in the first three years.
With a daunting finish ahead and three losses already, that bar seems unrealistic for Napier to clear. But six or seven wins, an upset or two and Napier’s first win over the Seminoles? That’s conceivable.
So, too, is a proof-of-concept finish that earns Napier another year — and shows that patience, perhaps, can still pay off.
| Date | Team | Current rank | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Aug. 31
|
 Miami |
5
|
L, 41-17
|
|
Sept. 7
|
|
W, 45-7
|
|
|
Sept. 14
|
 Texas A&M |
10
|
L, 33-20
|
|
Sept. 21
|
 at Mississippi State |
|
W, 45-28
|
|
Oct. 5
|
 UCF |
|
W, 2413
|
|
Oct. 12
|
 at Tennessee |
7
|
L, 23-17
|
|
Oct. 19
|
 Kentucky |
|
W, 48-20
|
|
Nov. 2
|
 Georgia (at Jacksonville) |
2
|
|
|
Nov. 9
|
 at Texas |
6
|
|
|
Nov. 16
|
 LSU |
16
|
|
|
Nov. 23
|
 Ole Miss |
19
|
|
|
Nov. 30
|
 at Florida State |
|
|
(Top photo: James Gilbert / Getty Images)
