Some Gems from My Guy Coach Billy Napier

Its 5 am sunday morning, im sipping a cup of coffee. Then i see this... I may be cross eyed the rest of the day.....

 

Mullet got lucky that franks got hurt or he would’ve been 6-6 in year two.

 

Bozo the clown could recruit , it’s just the cash.

 

You are spinning hard for Mullen. Mullen won with almost exclusively Mac's guys his first few years. He brought in portal guys that made a difference like Jefferson, Grimes and Greenard but his recruiting classes didn't even make it on campus.

Doesn't take excuses to acknowledge Napier is trying to build a roster that Mullen left behind. Mullen left a qb room of Jones, an undeveloped AR and nothing else.

You're pretty heavy on the Mullen excuses. I know... "Maximum strain"...SMH.

 

Unfortunately, we needed depth. This rail-thin class is great, but we need more players. The portal must be hit extra hard. If Napier closes with a half-dozen good portal players, color me impressed. It'll be tough!

 

We were average with AR, because AR was playing average. He would pick and choose where he gave 100 percent. Go back and look at the film. The kid has talent but had zero drive to win in many games. You can’t blame that on Napier. Things aren’t great but it’s not all on Napier. The guys that left the class were long gone way before signing day. They were just trying to hold a spot, or drive up the NIL of the school they actually wanted to go to. The guys that report on recruiting aren’t good at laying out facts. They cherry pick what they want to push to fit their agenda. I say to those fans and recruits just what Napier did. Get to stepping. If you don’t want to be here find another team. GO Gators.

 

Mullen was a good offensive play designer or caller to attack weaknesses in a defense. Not a head coach as did not focus on defensive side of ball and did not care about recruiting during regular season

 

The money didn’t change

 

Kids have no risk. They can transfer at any time. You take money at 17 and can transfer before playing a down. Look at TX starting QB. Took a million to sign with Ohio State and transferred home to Texas as a redshirt freshman. Portal recruiting means maintaining relationships with families and HS coaches/handlers/ NIL agents after a kid signs, as they will likely be in the portal again soon

 

I compared our top 3 players that signed with The Gators and I would NEVER EVER trade our top 3 recruits for any school's top three above us in the 2024 recruiting class.

I also looked at our entire class and I still think we have one of the top talented teams in the nation..

I would also NEVER EVER trade our entire recruiting class for any other school above us... I laugh at these fictional recruiting rankings.

I love the class Napier got to sign with The Gators. Could have been better, yes, but I still like our class better than anyone else's team. And with the 2024 schedule we have... more freshman would not be ideal to handle the rigors of the toughness it. Therefore we need to add good... big strong transfer players that have top SEC caliber EXPERIENCE to shore up our team... We need more talented contributors to our team and more freshman would not do the trick.

Even though we had more than 12 freshman play meaningful minutes in games last year, this is the year/season that we need a far more EXPERIENCED team overall. IOW, if we can fill this team with good portal players we should be better off than relying on the few freshman we lost at the end of signing day.

 

We need more than 3-4 to be a better team

 

it seems we had a limited amount of money to pay, but we did pay the most important parts.

 

there may or may not be instances where AR or anyone else gave 100%. NO ONE can know for sure. That is an opinion. It is a fact that he had some great and horrible games.

however, the coaches are also to blame for his performance. Napier made the decision to fit a square peg into a round hole in order to establish his offense through his process vs catering to what AR did well and building an offense around his strengths.

And that offense did not fit ARs strengths. All the film review folks stated AR struggled with the play action game when turning his back to the defense under Napier - he struggled to recognize the post snap defensive coverages. He did not have this problem when not turning his back.

In Mullens system (and similar systems) the qb never turned his back to the defense. In one game last year (2022) the coaching staff had AR running no back to the defense play actions - Tennessee. Which was his best game by far. It seemed to me and others It was more important for Napier to establish his offensive system in year 1 even if it hurt AR and potential team productivity that year- I think it even hurt in the number of wins. Same thing with defensive system under Toney. ( How many times did we see AR run play action on third or ten and longer? No other college or pro team in the country did this. Zero.)

There was very little tactical changes to take advantage of player strengths nor from week to week to take advantage of our opponents weaknesses. Instead, we ran Napiers Omand Toney’s D for better for worse. I am guessing this was the plan for long term success down the road but it sure cost potential wins. And yes, I do think Napier wasn’t as concerned in year 1 with Wins and Losses as he was with implementing his systems.

 

Agree. But getting even that many in one year is a big ask. And we've not proven to be masters of the portal to that level (quality and quantity). We usually get 1-2 studs, and then several others that provide depth.

 

Sure, it could be a one-off anomaly. But to act like it wasn't an incredibly rare or concerning thing is folly, IMO. It was an atrocious ending to a strong recruiting year. No other way to spin it, regardless of the ones we "kept". Esp because the "huge season ahead of us" could've really used those 8 players on the team.

 

It’s not masters it’s cash. Spend it or make Napiers life hell.

 

And you seem to be pretty hard on the Napier excuses.
That under developed AR was a top 5 draft pick..

What standout player did Mac leave Mullen?

I’ll stand by it Mullen can and did more with less. Our issue was the defense with Mullen as HBC. If we had a half decent defense with Mullen we are sitting in the playoffs.

Napier on the other hand has had numerous starters leave for other programs(rivals even), a class implode and more on field gaffs than you can count in two years.

I guess that’s the process….