Napier’s plan to fix Florida is now a failure, but the Gators aren’t ready to fire him just yet

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida coach Billy Napier was supposed to have answers. Or at least new ideas.

Napier was hired in Gainesville in 2021 in part because he had a detailed plan for the Gators to close the gap on Alabama and Georgia in the powerful Southeastern Conference and become a legitimate national championship contender after being mostly an afterthought over the previous decade.

Napier’s proposal included hiring more people, spending more money and taking longer than usual to get everything set up.

It is now a generally worthless project, the last and least effective reconstruction in the history of the program.

Napier is about to be fired for the first time since Clemson’s Dabo Swinney fired him in 2010. It’s not a question of if; it’s when.

The Gators (1-2, 0-1 SEC) play at Mississippi State (1-2) on Saturday, one of the few remaining weak spots on what many consider the nation’s toughest schedule. With a bye week ahead, a loss to the struggling Bulldogs could mean the end of Napier’s tenure after 29 games.

Florida, however, appears in no rush to part ways with its fourth head coach since two-time national champion Urban Meyer resigned at the end of the 2010 season.

The Gators have never fired a football coach before October and have reason to keep Napier despite embarrassing home losses to Miami (41-17) and Texas A&M (33-20), setbacks that extended the team’s skid against power conference opponents to seven.

Some considerations to take into account when deciding Napier’s fate:

— Ten assistants and more than 50 support staff would immediately begin looking for new jobs.

— Every player on Florida’s roster would have a 30-day window to enter the transfer portal, creating the possibility of a mass exodus.

— Dozens of other teams could (and would) try to make backdoor contact with players who don’t immediately enter the portal.

—Anyone who hasn’t played more than four games could choose to opt out and retain a year of eligibility, another roster management issue.

—And does Florida even have a viable candidate to be promoted to interim head coach, someone who might be able to carry the torch for several months and keep a team, staff and recruiting class together?

So it makes sense to keep Napier around as long as possible, even knowing he’s no longer the long-term solution in Gainesville and will be booed endlessly in upcoming home games against UCF and Kentucky.

Fortunately, Napier demonstrated composure and professionalism while being bombarded with questions about his job security.

“Responsibility, accountability is the only option here,” Napier said. “The most important thing, and I told the players this after the game on Saturday, is that they stick together. … We can’t control what’s said outside or what’s done outside. We can control what’s said inside the walls.”

Napier’s firing would surely provide much of Florida’s fan base with a sense of short-term relief after three years of frustration. And the move could help the program’s third-party collective continue to raise money and avoid missing monthly payments to players.

But the negative aspects of the program’s September end seem to outweigh the positive ones.

“We all know there’s going to be a lot of noise, and it’s up to us as players to decide what we pay attention to,” said Florida quarterback Graham Mertz, who was part of a 2021 Wisconsin team that started 1-3 before winning seven straight and advancing to the Las Vegas Bowl. “Is it each other or is it what’s happening outside? Is it our job or is it something else?”

Napier insists there is still time to turn things around. But no one who has watched the Gators play this season can honestly say they are on the verge of being one of the worst teams in the league.

There’s a clear lack of talent, especially on both lines of scrimmage. And Napier continues to miss defenders in the transfer portal. Add in the loss of his two best players to SEC opponents — edge rusher Princely Umanmielen to Mississippi and running back Trevor Etienne to Georgia — and the replacement of eight of his initial 11 recruits, and Napier’s once-promising plan is now a failure.

“We can’t live in a mindset of ‘should have,’ ‘could have,’ ‘should have,’” Napier said. “I think at the end of the day we have an obligation to the players and our leadership at the university to do our best to play well this week.”

“That’s all we can control. Anything else is a waste of time. (…) It’s essential not to point fingers, to accept some responsibility and to point out cases where accountability is needed. That’s key, especially for young people in the world they live in now.”