If an OC doesn't occur, this most likely will happen; and maybe it will regardless! Billy Napier cannot survive another losing season at Florida Football
I agree he would have already made the move. He we go again with the Model T offense while the rest of the SEC are running wide open offenses like the newest Chevrolet Stingray. I hope Lagway doesn’t get frustrated….
Personally, I’m not that enamored with O’Brien but credit Ryan Day for trying something new and being willing (though he was probably told) to give up play calling duties to someone with superior experience.
With Mertz I thought our offense was pretty good. Not great, and I would love to see us hire an OC, but it wasn't that bad. What was bad was our special teams and our defense. IMO if we can 1) Improve the special teams- esp the kicker- we'd have enough offense. 2) Get the defense to just be half way decent... The Utah game is instructive... Someone said they "pummeled us" on another thread. They really didn't. We actually outgained them. But what did happen was that we... 1) Missed a 31 yard FG that would have made 7-6. 2) We committed the dumbest penalty of the year on the punt return w/ duplicate numbers. Which led to their TD #2. So 10 points lost to VERY PREVENTABLE special teams mistakes. Take away those, and the whole game changes and we score more points. Now- if someone said CBN is responsible for those mistakes. I 100% agree. But they don't have anything to do with getting a new OC.
I hear Shane Matthew’s and a few posters crying every day “the offense isn’t the problem the defense is” Or “Texas only scored 2 more TD’s than us” Which is ridiculous. Texas wasn’t playing from behind and lost a QB mid season. And we went down in almost every offensive category: The scheme isn’t bad… not great. But it’s the PLAY CALLING that is bad. And Billy came in saying “talent acquisition “ then it doesn’t matter what scheme you run… ala Georgia. But we aren’t getting dogs every where and we won’t. He has to see that now… the ONLY way to accommodate for talent gaps is a wide open offense… that’s it. There’s not another answer. You try to score 50 and hope the d lets up 49.
Agreed with all of this. The last couple years, I defended Napier's playcalling and said the problem was the execution. And while that may be true, it became apparent that we can't overcome missed blocks, bad penalties, etc. that kill a drive. If we get "behind schedule"....we're punting. And it's frustrating how we don't adapt as the game goes on (look no further than the FSU game for instance). All season we would typically come out firing on all cylinders, cool off a bit, and wouldn't get aggressive again until we absolutely had to. And that's 100% on Napier. I know Rob Sale is technically the OC, but I wonder if that's just more of a title than actually handling the typical responsibilities of a coordinator. Yeah, Napier calls the plays, but it would be nice if Sale (or someone else) with an offensive mind would collaborate with Billy throughout the game.
So you said, "The scheme isn’t bad… not great. But it’s the PLAY CALLING that is bad" I suggest that you go look up the definitions for both scheme and plays. You will find out the scheme is made of of plays. In other words if you call bad/good plays, then you are going to have a bad/good scheme. The real problem for the UF Offense was not the play calling (or scheme). It was the execution of the plays. Especially with the Gator Offensive line. The calling or scheming offensive plays will not generate the intended results if offensive like is not executing as a unit on the line of scrimmage. The following item is from Sports Illustrated "The Florida offensive line underwent a makeover following the 2022 season and is still in the process of finding its footing. The Gators lost four of five starters from the 2022 season including 2nd round NFL draft pick O'Cyrus Torrence and tackle Richard Gouraige. The results thus far this season have been mixed. The run game has been inconsistent and the pass protection has largely been poor all season. Florida totaled 183 yards rushing against Tennessee and 215 against Vanderbilt but has otherwise struggled to run the football against Power 5 competition. The Gators rushed for under 71 yards or fewer and under 2.5 yards per rush against Utah, Kentucky, and South Carolina. While those struggles cannot be attributed entirely to the Florida offensive line, it certainly bears a large portion of the responsibility. Protecting Mertz has been especially troublesome for the Gators as they have allowed 19 sacks on the season, which ranks 10th in the SEC and 99th nationally." https://www.si.com/college/georgia/...se-get-to-know-the-gators-vs-georgia-football This write up was published before the Florida Georgia game of 2023. In the last five games, Florida scored 30 or more points in 3 of those games. Please note that the defenses in those 3 games were not stellar defense. The type of play calling you are looking for, is more likely the plays that require time for them to develop (the pass routes for one). If you are looking for better running plays, the Gators did not have the blocking for those to happen. Mertz took has share of hits this past season. He rarely had time to set up like many QB's do. Including the Missouri game when a broken collar bone ended his season. In that game and the FSU game, our replacement QB did a great job considering the lack of game experience and the poor O-line play.
Billy has terrible timing with gadget plays. The correct time for gadget plays with our OL is ... never.
I don't know why people are still fixated on whether or not we're hiring an OC when WE DON'T HAVE ANY OPENINGS FOR ANOTHER COACH!! You can have 10 assistant (on-field) coaches and all 10 spots are filled. There was a glimmer of hope if AA took on the LB duties, but once RR came on board, someone has to leave. It's similar to the stupid question of "why can't the atheletic dept spend more on NIL?"
I think it came down to getting rid of at least one of our two ineffective OL coaches to potentially make room for an OC.