Article: Napier two years in

Lol....I thought you meant "24 seasons". Talk about being thorough.

 

Would you retain a coach who went 15-22?

 

Interesting article.

I ran the same exercise for Napier's four years at Louisiana. If you were the AD at UF, what - if anything - would you have made of this?

Percentage of 1-score games: 28.8% (15 of 52). Would have been 4th on the list, just behind Urban Meyer.

Winning percentage in 1-score games: 80.0% (12-3, including an astounding 6-0 in 2021). Would have easily been tops on the list. The next highest was 71%, by Gene Stallings.

Winning percentage in all other games: 64.9% (24-13). Would have been the third lowest on the list, ahead of only Mike Dubose and Gene Chizik.

 

Rest assured, he won’t be retaining or firing any D1 coaches. Neither will I if you were curious.

 

That’s why his question was would you retain, not will you retain. An obvious hypothetical.

 

Y

ou writing the parting check? I’m not sure anyone will be willing to fork over that cash.

 

Lucky for us, we don’t have to worry about such things, nor do we have to entertain such hypotheticals. We can just try to support who we have and let the folks who actually make those decisions make them.

 

Well, here’s hoping we don’t have to find out.

 

I’ve got a good guess. There’s no 27 mil check getting written no matter what.

 

A 4-5 win season will sink the gator brand far more than $6m a year. Losing superstar talent and the negative recruiting by other schools against us with another non bowl year will also force our hand. His contract per year is a pittance compared to the vaporization of our brand per year. Lord knows we all want him to succeed but this season better be a big improvement.

 

With the amount of money being thrown around out there, nothing would surprise me. Did you see the check TAMU just cut?

 

It took them many years to write that check and they are loaded.

 

Sepukoo

 

I think he's on the hot seat. If the season didn't do that, signing day and the transfers did.

That said, I don't think he needs to win 8 games or anything next year to keep his job. But he needs to have something to show for the 3 years he's been here at that point.

 

This is exactly why I don't understand the Stricklin heat at least with respect to football.

Both Mullen and Napier looked like great hires at the time they were made and jury's still out on Napier. Hiring a great head coach has a pretty low rate of success, and that number only goes down the worse shape your program is in. All you can do is try and forecast based on past success. But past success by no means guarantees future success.

 

I have always voiced support for BN. But I have never shied away from his shortcomings. He does not have to be perfect.
That said.
No elite coach can have the kind of repeated coaching gaffes that BN has exhibited. His upside just does not overcome them. If he does not hire an offensive coordinator he is toast.
The University of Florida deserves an elite coach.

 

Probably are some who think a coach needs 24 seasons to really show if he's the guy

 

I took away something completely different: 1) CBN's UL teams played a relatively high number of close games, which indicates a conservative offense, 2) his UL teams won an unsustainably high percentage of those games in 2021, which would indicate 2021's record was probably 2-4 wins better one should reasonably expect, year to year, (although, in fairness, one might also conclude that it indicated he was really good at the critical decisions in close games which gave his team an advantage), and 3) their W-L percentage (65%) in games decided by more than one score was probably more indicative of what one should expect from his teams.

As you say, it is difficult to forecast. But, there was enough there to give pause, especially in respect to the amount of compensation he was given.

 

1) I don't see why you're getting that. He played in less close games than LSU Saban.
2) That's a fair point, but you can only hold "winning close games" against somebody so much. But I am a big believer in the mantra: "good coaches win close games, but great coaches don't have close games."
3) I'll take your word for that number, but I think you need to take this with the context of his record in his seasons there. He never lost more than one game in a season after year 1. To be fair, that also jogs the numbers in the "close games" department. But there was a lot to like about Billy Napier at Louisiana. He turned a bad program around fairly quickly, he recruited greatly for both his school and his conference, he won close games, and he had less close games than Saban while he was at LSU. If all you knew about him was those things, you'd think he had national championship potential.

 

Couldashouldawoulda U... good luck selling that to our "patient" fan base.