*** The end is near, for Billy Napier at Florida ***

According to this article, it sounds like some were trying to analyze if there was a fix to this mess. The fix is to fire and hire, but maybe it's more about timing?
Florida football legend Chris Doering does’t see Billy Napier lasting

 

It WILL however, effect the team.

X > Billy

PS: As someone once famously said: "scared money don't make money".

Billy = scared money.

(Damn, the irony...).

 

Given the volatile circumstances with his professional butt on the line, Billy had no choice but to start Mertz and feed Lagway into the game.

* If he believed Mertz gave him a better chance to win, and stayed with him in a loss, Gator Nation would have howled that DJ wasn't in the game. Billy would have been accused of stubborn favoritism.

* If Billy gave in to the Gator Nation's demand that Lagway needed to start due to his explosive start versus Samford Middle School, and lost this game, the second guessers would have come out of the woodwork, saying Billy threw DJ to the wolves and simply didn't care about his future development.

Like every Florida coach that was hated, they perpetually find themselves in no win situations. Beloved coaches can do the exact same things, but the fans would say the situations were not equivalent, blame the coordinators, or throw the least beloved quarterback under the bus every time he overthrew a receiver, threw an INT or caused a fumble.

Billy is in an impossible position now, and letting him go would actually be a merciful move for him and his family...

 

I know you like to paint UF fans in a bad light, but in this situation there is no one to blame but BN himself.

 

I don’t see how the players can respond to a coach, they know it’s on the way out. He has to have lost the locker room at this point. I just have a hard time seeing the players giving 100% this week in practice.

 

I agree with eightiesgator about the no-win situation and being best to cut ties, even for Napier. And that a winning coach could do roughly the same thing and not be criticized. But I also agree with you that he's the one at fault in this situation.

I'll just add as a reminder to the context of UF fans being somehow uniquely unreasonable that just within the past decade, FSU and Auburn both fired coaches in less than two seasons, LSU fired two coaches with national titles, and there's a long list of high profile programs who have cycled through coach after coach, looking for the right one.

 

Chris Doering? "This team is going to surprise some people" Chris Doering?

Did not click on link.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with him on fan issues and he knows that. I've always said UF has an ego problem.

 

There's a video where Chris talks about how he was high on the Gators in 2024 and, like others, he realizes he was wrong! I apologize, as I read and listen to so much, I cannot remember the source now.

 

Of this I strongly agree. Like a ship's captain, the captain is responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen. If his ship grounds on a sandbar, requiring a pull, the captain gets relieved -- even if he is fast asleep in his rack.

Billy gets the big bucks, and as such, Billy is responsible. Fully responsible, because while one can delegate authority, one can never delegate responsibility...

 

Technically, Chris Doering was right!

 

I mean maybe I'm some cases, but the QB situation here wasn't exemplary. The reason is, Billy chose to somehow make a worse decision then either of the options you posited. He alternated QBs "regardless of outcome" (his words). I don't think I've ever seen a coach handle multiple QBs in such an inflexible, braindead way.

 

Yes but we are talking about the end of the game, down by 13 with almost 4 mins left and Mertz just led a scoring drive. If you really want to win and I'm sure Billy had the analytics showing Mertz was clearly the better option he would have kept him in the game and tried to win. Maybe we lose by 10 or 6 or get a miracle onside kick and win. But he said in his presser he put DJ in because that was the plan. He had given DJ plenty of playing time in the game and was just too stubborn to change "the plan" and try to win. I just find it wild that he said what he said in his presser, that he refused to change the plan regardless of outcome. That's just crazy and shows why we are in the situation we are in and why people say we don't make halftime adjustments.

 

It's even worse when you remove the cupcakes and look at the P5 opponents:

Pell/Hall (80-89): 37-12-2 (.745)
Spurrier...............50-4-0 (.926)
Zook:....................7-5-0 (.583)
Meyer:.................23-2-0 (.920)
Muschamp:....:.......9-7-0 (.563)
McElwain:...............8-4-0 (.666)
Mullen:.................14-4-0 (.777)
Napier:...................5-7-0 (.416)

 

Florida-Florida State 1997. Not saying SOS's actions weren't flexible and certainly not braindead. It was the greatest coaching job of his career. But Noah and Dougie came in nearly on alternate downs.

 

The classic example of Spurrier using Doug and Noah to beat FSU by alternating them nearly every snap also gave way to game situations. There were times Doug was kept in because it made more sense to let him keep pushing than to maintain any strict rotation.

 

I knew Mac was was the Debil!

 

I'm with you. What was the process for alternating Mertz and Lagway? I could not figure out the rationale!

 

Why hasn't a P4 program called him before now?