Article: Florida’s 2024 Season Will Be Defined By A Coach and A Quarterback

Are you giving Napier credit for three losing seasons in two years?

 

Offensive line play and defense win the games you are supposed to win. Special teams and coaching win the toss ups or pull you to win the games you are not supposed to win.

For BN to show he has the program on the right path, we must have the former. I am hoping he also shows the later.

 

In your reply you were puting/implying the weight of three losing seasons was more on Napier than Mullen. Mullen owns one losing season and Napier owns two.

Based on the bad situation that Napier walked into, it is no surprised that the 2022 and 2023 seasons resulted in a losing records. This reason for this saga has been rehashed many time in the past two years. Lets leave this item alone and move on.

Where in the hell did you get that requirement? Many rebuild projects in college football did not get that type of result in the second season. Mark Stoops of Kentucy got 2 wins in his first season. The prior season under Joker Phillips, Kentucky got 2 wins. Also, it took Stoops 4 seasons to end up with a winning record.
Also, take a look at FSU. Mike Norval in his first season when 3-6 compared to Taggarts 6-7.

You set the bar higher for Napier than you do for Mullen.
Mullen had 4 seasons and Napier has had 2 seasons.
Mullen had two prior coaches that recuited well before he came to UF
At the end of Mullen's run, he left Napier a total dumpster fire to put out.
The prior coach (Mc Elwain) had a total record of 23 wins and 12 loses and some decent recruiting years.
In other words he left Mullen a better team than Mullen left Napier.

You failed to considered that Mc Elwain left the Gators in better shape than the way Mullen left Napier. It is very hard to coach a competitive SEC team when most of your players have only one or two seasons of playing together and a good majority of the team are Freshmen and Sophamores. Mullen did not have this handicap when he started at UF. As far as Napier coaching QB's Mertz's progress is not a pile of chop liver.

Please put the crack pipe down and walk away from the ledge. I do admit that Mullen did not have the recruting budget that the other teams in the SEC and the rest of the NCAA had. However, you failed to notice the infrastructure improvements that UF did put into the football/sports program. I am referring to the new Heavener facility center that cost $85 million. This project was in the works a few years before Mullen got fired.

Thankfully in the past year the recruiting budget got a big boost. However, Napier delivered an outstanding recruiting class this past year. He was operating on the similar budget that Mullen was on. Thankfully, those purse strings got cut and the recruiting budget recently got a $2 millon boost. Imagine the class he will land at the end of this season.

As for expecting a winning season in year two of a complete rebuilding project, that was wishful thinking. As for season 3, a winning season is expected. If that does not happen, Napier can be on the hot seat.

You lost all creditablity with me at this point. Mullen never took over from Muschamp. Go do a Google to find out who the prior Gator coach was, and what really went on in the past ten years. Also, I am ignoring the rest of your rant.

 

Yup. Be not blind to the past but don't be staring at the rear view mirror. Every year and every team is thankfully its own thing. Hopefully with some continuity of good people and good intentions.

 

If... if... if... If you were the head coach, you'd probably think that giving players water during practice is a sign of weakness, too.

Just sit back and enjoy the ride... and stop blubbering about the last year.

 

The ride's getting a little bumpy . . .

Is it time to start blubbering about this year yet?

 

We're looking good so far this year! I take back everything I ever said about Napier! Now I just need to figure out how to buy tickets to the championship game.

I was not referring to any official requirement. It is just an observation that our best coaches improved on their predecessor's record in their first season. Spurrier and Meyer both got two more wins in their first year than the previous season. Kentucky would be a long-term project for any coach. F$U was nearly destroyed by Taggart's incompetence, plus the kind of players they recruit in the first place (discipline problems, etc.). It was going to take a few years to re-build that team.

Mullen built the offense. True, Mac recruited the players, but Mullen took a QB that never started a game (high school or college) and turned him into a Heisman contender. If you aren't smart enough to recognize what an accomplishment that was, you don't know anything about football. Who has Napier developed?

How do you know Mullen left a worse team than Mac did? Maybe Mullen did a better job of developing what he had, and Napier did not.

Mertz did pretty well against Miami, almost breaking the 100-yard barrier and a QB-rating over 19! No chopped liver here . . .

Heaven help us if the Heavener Facility has been adding any wins to our record. All a facility can do is help recruiting (a little). Almost every team in the SEC has nice facilities. We won a lot of games before this facility was built, and we'll eventually win more games. The money might have been better spent on providing enough help to our head coach so he can recruit better and keep up with all of the player's development.

I get nauseous thinking about what Mac did to our program, so I try to block him out from my memory whenever I can.

 

Napier sort of did the opposite. He took a top five draft pick that plays on Sunday and made him look pedestrian. With Napier’s tutelage he could have turned Kyle Pitts into a UFA.

 

Mertz wasn’t a Top 5 draft pick. You can blame him for not attracting top talent, but he got Pearsall into a first round draft pick.

 

Both sucked this week.

 

We don’t have the lines of scrimmage on either side to win games and you just can’t fake that part. Our defensive tackles were still on our side of the ball after every pass play. They are just too damn slow and get zero disruption. Ward looked like he was grocery shopping back there.our right side of our offe line couldn’t pick up that guy off the edge all night. Looks yo me, we just don’t have the guys.

 

Perhaps. Whomever follows Napier’s 3 losing seasons gets what kind of team?

Good coaches show at least good progress by year 3. Arguing that a guy with 2 losing seasons, and no visible improvement, as the coach of the gators was dealt a bad hand was dubious at the end of last year. It is crystallized now. For any coach, they need to show objective progress inyears 1-3, and BN never did. Hope our AD can negotiate a contract on that theory (reward success, not lock a guy up).

I will also argue that their records show that Mullens teams would beat Napier teams hands down.

 

In the era of the portal turnarounds can happen quickly.

I know Napier is traditional and wants to be process-oriented but right now the evidence presented by that is regression and the program getting worse year after year.

 

Very true on turnarounds happening quickly.

Traditional is fine. poorly taught, unorganized, and dumb aren’t necessary components of being traditional.

 

Yesterday's debacle of an opening game has me backing away from Napier. I am not a Mullen fan. However, I believe that he would of had this team better preparded and more competitive than Napier did.