Reasons for Optimism in 2025?

Lots of reasons to be optimistic IF Napier gets out of his own way and hires a coach that can recruit OL. Much much much better season than anticipated and a pretty solid class considering the portal allows us to fill holes at a few spots on our roster.

 

Try coming out of the gate looking like it's not the first scrimmage of the Spring.

 

I was firmly in the "he's got to go camp," despite my admiration for BN as an individual. He clearly never lost the team and finally may have the good fortune of enough players around an all-star QB. I hope so and will be cheering for him to win.
My concerns linger about his "feel for the game," his apparent fear of counters and misdirection, and his awful clock management. That said...with the simplified D and Lagway at the helm BN may just be able to ride the wave. Dang I hope so!!!

 

Not making the playoffs next year would be a real downer. We need at least one appearance before we can be expected to make a real run. Receiver, offensive and defensive linemen in the portal are going to be critical obviously.

 

I think reasonable expectations are

A. defend the Swamp and win the home games
B. Win in Jacksonville
C. Win at least half the road games
D. Get Atlanta

 

If we get to Atlanta, we should be in the playoffs so that would be great. I’m not sure I agree though that we will finish 1 or 2 in the SEC…so many good teams.

 

Linebackers

 

Yes we do, along with a thousand posts on the subject, in various other threads.

That dead horse has been beaten so savagely it's no longer even useful as glue.

Enough already. It's BORING.

 

We will be better next year. Good enough to stay in the rankings all season. Maybe good enough to be in the playoff hunt.

But I still think Napier has a hard ceiling that is lower than we would like.

 

Not Gus.

 

Maybe if he says "yeah, no" more often next season, we'll win even more games than we did this season.

 

Well it will take a 10-2 season to make playoffs, maybe 9-3 sneaks in if no bad losses, but doubtful. Long way off but it's hard to see 10 wins with that schedule.

 

Even if we don't make the playoffs, i want to see improvement and for the momentum to continue
Beat who we are supposed to and spring an upset or three.

 

We need to keep innovating, or we will get caught... and left behind, because the best teams in the nation and many in the SEC will have very talented play-callers behind center that are also dual threat QBs that can make all the plays that DJ can make. What do you people think will separate us from them? The same old offense that Miami told the world how to strategize for and defeat?

Will we take our five or six best plays and keep them the same (no tweaks) so that we get stuffed again? Are we going to ditch the plays that never really work? Or are we going to use them, hoping that somehow they work this time around?

D.J Lagway is a gifted QB that will make any offense look ten times better, but even he cannot hide the built-in deficiencies that some of our play designs have. And he cannot avoid the predictability in play-calling.

We cannot waste this opportunity with a once in a generation QB without adding to our base offense... and getting a natural OC/play-caller at the very least, and even better, adding many more proven play designs that work well for other teams in college football. Yes, we need to "borrow" some of the better plays out there. Where is the quick slant pass play? Where is the wheel route? We might have those plays in our play-book, but we seldom seem to call them... Why is that?

I like what Lagway bing to our offense, but if you guys think we should just run the same old plays... and use the same in house OC that has not been very creative in the last 3 years... expecting big changes... then you're not preparing to evolve into an even batter offense. An offense that DJ and the Gators deserve to have.

Keep what works, ditch what doesn't... and "borrow" what is working for other teams in college football.

Add some Emory & Henry... That's a way to either score easily, or force other teams to take valuable time-outs late in the second half of games... strategy.

 

We need O linemen. We need a couple from the portal and we absolutely need to recruit Oline better. Of course we have needs in other places, like DT, but Napiers desire is a physical run game. The offense is built on play action.
DJ needs time to throw deep. He also needs to be protected. If he goes down, the team goes down. Oline is critical imo.

 

I like this.

 

For the first time since being in Gainesville Napier will get to have a couple warm-up games. This should be extremely beneficial.

 

Hopefully but they didn't change much until the bye week this year. Simplifying plays AND limting player rotations might have been it but it seems like it took his back up against the wall to try something different. The issues were there even in our win against miss state. Hopefully they can identify the best lineups before we start the season instead of evaluating several weeks in before settling i.e. Waites over BCD...

 

After the Texas game, I observed that the most frustrating aspect of DJ's absence, as well as that of several key D players, was that it made it difficult to draw any firm conclusions regarding where we truly stood team/roster-wise - in that moment. It seemed to me that we wouldn't see what was what, until we got DJ back and maybe a few others too. So, I decided to refrain from jumping on or off anymore more bandwagons until we saw some more of this team and its true character. Once is embarrassing enough. Here are my current thoughts on where we stand on the fight or flight scale:

Optimism that things are headed in a much better direction in light of recent trends/developments - 8/10

Concern that we will substantially fail to add meaningful talent at essential positions in the portal or that this HS class will disappoint- 1/10

Concern that BN will refuse to bring in a strong OC, resulting in more avoidable dysfunction on the O - 6/10

Outlook for positive momentum carrying forward in '25 and '26 - 9/10

Confidence level in team culture/character/cohesion - 10/10

Chance at making POs in either '25 or '26, based on the above - 7/10

I can't describe myself as worry free about the near future of UF FB, but I'm greatly encouraged by the way things have unfolded over the last several weeks. I am also chastened by how wrong I was about this team and this HC after the ATM fiasco. It now appears that character and courage actually do count for something in modern CFB - despite every indication to the contrary. Mea culpa. GG!