For all you naysayers, who berated our coaching staff most of the year:

I strongly disagree football doesn't work that way. Coaching does, football does, and life does.
All are nuanced. People are nuanced and complicated. I can't believe I have to explain this, but I guess I do.
just smh at your reasoning. The world isn't so black and white.

But first- let me correct you on a huge factual error in the above post.
Zook was a terrible DC. He was our DC in 93 and Spurrier actually said something like our best defensive play is when the other team drops the ball.
Zook got demoted and was only a Special Teams coach in 94. So no- not an excellent DC. Not even decent.
Excellent recruiter and special teams though.

But to the larger point- coaches can be bad at some things, and good at others. (Like Zook.)
Napier has clearly fallen short in off season prep.
But he's clearly pretty good at other things.
Getting our players to continue playing hard despite the season goals being lost is frankly extraordinary.
I'm trying to think of any Gator coach who has done that as well as Napier..
Mullen, no. Muschamp- no. Mac- no. Zook- no.
Meyer- maybe, maybe not.

So Napier has done some things really well.
Will that be enough?
Can he learn to overcome his deficiencies and build on what he does well.
I don't know. I hope so.

But to not acknowledge the clear improvement smacks to me of tunnel vision and confirmation bias.

 

Oh I agree, but the main reason for keeping him is the lack of a quality coach to replace him. There are none, most of who were on our radar after the Tennessee game showed major cracks by the end of the season. Couple that with a high buyout, then more $$$ to bring in a new coach, and nothing left over to buy 100 players from the portal, we have no choice. This is the NIL-Portal world we live in today and losing a coach who is popular with his team means the entire team could bolt and would have leaving the new coach no time to recruit an entire team and no money to buy a team from the portal.

 

Lane Kiffin has consistently been overrated, and has consistently been a douche.

That is all

 

I wouldn't call Zook a "terrible DC." Yes, Spurrier did demote him. Spurrier didn't accept anything other than dominance and rarely held back blunt criticism of his assistants. As far as Zook being a "terrible DC," perspective sure is everything. Allow me to throw some data at you:

1991: Florida total defense ranked 20th in the nation; scoring defense ranked 13th
1992: Florida total defense ranked 44th in the nation; scoring defense ranked 57th
1993: Florida total defense ranked 30th in the nation; scoring defense ranked 33th

And mind you this was with Spurrier's passing offense which gave the ball back to the opponent more often than most teams did, just by virtue of Spurrier's offenses scoring so quickly and often. Not great numbers for Zook's defenses, but not bad considering.

Now... what was that you were saying about "Napier has done some things really well?" Because Napier's offenses have never done as well as Zook's defenses did from '91 to 93, nor have his defenses. But Zook was a terrible DC? It's interesting that many of the posters complaining about negativity have no issue with harshly criticizing former Gator coaches who actually performed better at their jobs, but take issue when others point out the obvious about the current head coach.

 

Well, you are consistent, I will say that. Maybe one day you can find the peace to move on as this stale pejorative is long past its Prime.

Maybe not a championship coach (time will tell as he is still young) but certainly he has turned around a losing Ole Miss program and he kicked Georgia's ass this year so I will give him that credit.

Carry on.

 

Just having a little fun with you - although I will likely never be a fan of Lane and definitely don’t want that face associated with the Florida Gators.

Peace

 

Got his ass kicked by Billy and

 

7 point loss is an ass kicking in your world?
Funny tho, Kiffin living large in your heads.

 

You see what you want or you are just being smug. Or maybe you never were in a live game thread. Or maybe you are blocked by some. Or maybe you just don’t give a crap. We’ve actually had threads dedicated to denigration including imploring the rules be changed so we can attack players viciously and directly now that they are millionaires. As I said before, there are fewer and fewer of us who started on here from the beginning because of it. That is all you really need to know to see that the environment in here has changed for the worse. Once upon a time, This community would never have allowed the behavior that was prominent this season before the team turned things around- even when Bio-Rad was a moderator.

 

Lol, nothing smug about your post at all.

 

Lots of sniping here, but none of my business I guess. My personal position is that I was not in favor of the Napier hire from the beginning and I stated it on these boards at the time. However, I have always pulled for him as I do all Gator coaches and players and wanted him to succeed. He seems like a great guy, a hard worker and his players seem to love him. At least those who didn't transfer out. But he has not been a great recruiter, has not been a great in-game coach and is not a very good play caller/offensive coordinator, IMO. We started this season very poorly, but then the defense came around and played extremely well down the stretch. With D J Lagway at the helm, the offense spread the field and it opened things up. Going 7-5 with this year's schedule and the way they started was a solid achievement, which led to a pretty good signing day. Now if he can add several high quality players at key positions from the portal, we could win 8 or 9 games next year in spite of another brutal schedule with even more difficult road games. While I don't want to go through another coaching change and don't know who out there we could get who is better, I remain skeptical about Napier's ability to bring Florida back into prominence in the SEC and on a national level. Hoping he can do it, though, and will continue supporting our coaches and teams. Goooo Gators!

 

The vibe Im picking up here is a "Told you we shouldn't have fired Napier"
Like, what? Im in NO WAY convinced that Napier is the "solution". Yet. He HAS to show he has fixed the fatal flaws in his coaching philosophy and early season prep next year. If the SAME issues pop up again for the FOURTH year: he's still calling the offense (which 100% cost us the Tennessee game - we should have had a 3-4 score lead by the time Mertz went down), we look like we didn't prepare at all for the first 2-3 games of the season and are playing catch up in the meat/toughest part of our schedule, etc, I'll be right back on the "out" side and more convinced than ever.
I still stand by what said in the coaching thread: Lagway balling out and raising us to another level just proves he's an elite talent on the level of Grier, Burrow, Winston, etc all of which made their coaches look A-tier elite coaches that we now know are fools gold.
The caveat I'll add now is this: Napier got those boys motivated to play when 99% of coaches probably would have failed. That and his knack for pulling out great recruiting classes with circumstances gives him a chance to be an elite coach because of an exceptionally rare talent and blend of talents on the more human side than the scheme side. If he can GET OUT OF HIS OWN WAY, I have ZERO doubt he can be an elite coach.
He HAS to step back and stop trying to live this redemption arc he's trying to live as OC (Which is my guess as to why he is running such an unconventional staff - he's still bitter about being canned at Clemson for having the same serviceable but not much more offense) where he proves his offense can work on the highest levels and hand it off to an elite OC. If he can embrace the recruiter, motivator, team "dad", program CEO, and staff recruiter (getting elite OCs and DCs to come) then he can 100% be a top 3 coach in the nation IMO with the level that he's able to connect with players and get them to play that even Saban would be envious of in this era.

 

And there is no guarantee that this level of play will continue through the bowl game and into next year. It's going to take a lot more work. The team may be one injury to Lagway away from falling apart again. It took Napier three seasons to improve the team to the level of play and results that Ron Zook mastered in all three of his seasons at UF (and which, incidentally, got him fired). The difference is that the fanbase and admin lowered their expectations after Mullen's last season (and the coaching circus since Urban left), vs. the high expectations following Spurrier's last season.

 

I disagree somewhat with what you posted. The main difference is Zook took over the HBC's team which was loaded, continued to bring in good players, but obviously was not what was needed at Florida. Aslo, don't forget the frat house.. which magnified the problem. CBN took over a program with a basement dwelling D, a head coach who had checked out, and needing a total rebuild top to bottom. Of course expectations come into play, but the record and results since Urban left was nothing like the record and results the HBC blessed us with.
Who and what a new coach follows has a lot to do not only with expectations but also roster and performance. Case in point is the current situation at Bama. I've posted it a few times.. Deboer is taking Saban's Ferrari and driving it off a cliff. CBN got something closer to a Ford Falcon, which you aren't going to win any races with right away.

 

Napier has handled everything perfectly. Okay.

 

Did i say that, or do you have a reading comprehension problem?

 

Spurrier took over a team that won 6-7 games in each of the previous four seasons, and one that had the star running back (Emmitt) give up his last year of eligibility to go pro, which was a rarity in those days. He immediately started having 9- and 10-win seasons. An excellent coach can win quickly. Urban took over a team that had won 7-8 games each of the previous three seasons, and started by winning nine games in season #1, and a title in season #2. And he did it after running off 11 players before the first game, including multiple 4-star players (from H.S. rankings).

Zook was a failure because he didn't understand discipline or offense. He was too close to the players, and not close enough to the playbook.

 

The original post a ways back was comparing Zook to CBN. We all know what SOS did.. SOS 2001 team was NC caliber. He left Zook with a great history and great team. CBN was left with Mullin's abortion. I'm not making excuses for CBN, but to compare him and Zook record wise, IMO, is irrelevant due to who they followed.

 

I disagree, somewhat. While it is great to have players that knew how to win returning for the next coach, there is a downside to bringing in a new coach who does things differently. Zook noticed that in his first season when Rex started calling audibles away from the bubble screens to go downfield, often without success. If the players don't buy in to what the new coaches are selling, it can be a disaster, regardless of how much talent there is and how good the new coach is. Alabama might be experiencing that adjustment this year. However, if the old coach was not that great, the players should be willing to pick up the terminology and tactics of a new coach to have a better chance of winning. A lot comes down to the salesmanship and discipline of the new coach. When Urban arrived, he sold the team on his vision, kicking off 11 players who did not buy into it, and even the players recognized that they were heading for a championship. And remember, it was generally not Zook's great recruiting that produced the 2006 championship, it was Meyer's coaching. Only nine players from Zook's vaunted (and large) 2003 class were there to see the trophy in January of 2007.

I will admit that recruiting dropped off under Mullen, which was likely due to the A.D. trying to save money and thinking that showing recruits the fancy new building would reel in the 5-star players (which it didn't--almost every SEC school has nice facilities). Other schools had fancy customized meal programs for each group of athletes--linemen, WR's, LB's, DB's, etc. Relatively speaking, Florida was feeding its players greasy prison food. Other schools had all kinds of analysts, advisors, and recruiting specialists, while Florida pinched its pennies. We had a backwards, underfunded program--something FAU or FIU (the schools we were "stealing" recruits from) might be proud of. That is a fact.