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]]>Although the results of Napier’s make-or-break moves won’t be evident for months, defensive end Justus Boone was ready to show the effects at Florida’s annual media day Tuesday.
“If I take this shirt off, I’m ripped up,” Boone said.
Boone and the Gators will wait for their season opener against in-state rival Miami on Aug. 31 at the Swamp to unveil whatever progress they’ve made heading into Napier’s third season in Gainesville.
This is much is clear: Napier didn’t hesitate to retool every floundering aspect of his program following Florida’s third consecutive losing season, the last two under his watch. Napier is 11-14 in two years in Gainesville, a stint that includes consecutive losses to Kentucky and a 1-7 mark against rivals Georgia, Florida State, LSU and Tennessee.
Napier fired two defensive assistants two days after a season-ending loss to the Seminoles in November and then essentially benched 30-year-old defensive coordinator Austin Armstrong, special teams coordinator Chris Couch and strength coach Mark Hocke in the weeks that followed. All three remain on staff but no longer in charge of anything.
Veteran coach Ron Roberts is now running the defense. Former NFL assistant Joe Houston is directing special teams. And Tyler Miles is heading the strength program. Napier also retooled the nutrition side and promoted Russ Callaway to co-offensive coordinator.
The importance of those moves was evident when Napier brought Roberts, Houston, Miles and Callaway to media day.
“We’ve got to go execute our formula,” Napier said. “We haven’t quite done that in all parts of our team.”
Roberts is tasked with fixing a unit that allowed 38.2 points a game in five consecutive losses to end the season. The Gators managed just 22 sacks — their fewest since 2013 — and three interceptions en route to missing a bowl for just the third time since 1990.
Houston is assigned with eliminating a variety of special teams gaffes that have plagued the program, culminating with botching a late-game situation against Arkansas in which the field goal unit ran onto the field while the offense was lining up to spike the ball.
The illegal substitution penalty that followed resulted in a 5-yard loss and seemed to be the difference in Trey Smack missing a 44-yard field goal with seconds left. The game went into overtime, and Florida lost 39-36.
Houston installed a “launch pad” on the sideline to help moving forward. The mat has a circle for each special teamer to stand in. It should prevent the Gators from lining up with too many or too few players.
“It’s essentially a sideline huddle,” Houston said.
Miles’ impact is already being felt. The Gators have 62 players topping 20 mph in sprints and 45 guys lifting more than 300 pounds in the weight room, dramatic improvements from the previous two years.
“Finish is a word that’d been used quite a bit this summer,” said Napier, whose team dropped close games to Arkansas, Missouri and FSU in November. “I think how we train just might be the difference.”
Although Napier will continue to call plays, he’s giving Callaway more input and responsibility. Callaway’s approach is straightforward and simple: get the ball in the hands of your best players, most notably sophomore receiver Eugene Wilson III.
Wilson will be as important to Florida’s offense as anyone, including returning quarterback Graham Mertz, senior running back Montrell Johnson and highly touted dual-threat quarterback DJ Lagway.
All four opened training camp Tuesday by checking into an on-campus dorm, a drastic change from last year’s posh hotel.
“We’re trying to create an old-school feel to training camp where they appreciate when they move back into that nice apartment here in a couple of weeks,” Napier said.
Maybe, just maybe, old-school results might follow. The Gators were picked to finish 12th in the 16-team Southeastern Conference, a prediction that quickly found its way back to Florida’s locker room.
“We’re not worried about trying to prove anybody wrong,” Boone said. “We’re just looking to prove ourselves right. We just want all our work to not go in vain.”
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]]>The post Billy Napier enters Year 3 with Florida hopeful while facing ominous vibes, daunting schedule appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.
]]>Napier arrived at SEC Media Days on the hottest seat in a conference where they say “it just means more” — so that makes it the hottest seat in the country.
The vibes around the Gators seem ominous. Napier sounds hopeful.
“I love our team, and I really like what I’ve observed,” he said Wednesday. “I just think we’ve got for the first time, we’ve got some stability. The roster’s kind of stabilized. I think we’ve got competitive depth. There’s credible leadership at the players level.”
Napier was hired away from Louisiana-Lafayette after the 2021 season, taking over after Dan Mullen was fired. He stepped into a program that had fallen behind in recruiting, facilities and staffing.
Napier hired an army of analysts and staffers with a plan to try to stack the type of high school recruiting classes that would give the Gators a team that looked more like Georgia’s and Alabama’s.
It’s not that Napier ignored the transfer portal, but a methodical rebuild can be a tough sell at a program that has won three national titles.
The Gators went 6-7 with future first-round NFL draft pick Anthony Richardson at quarterback in Napier’s first season. In need of signs of progress in 2023 to ease the worries of fans and lock in blue-chip recruits, the Gators regressed to 5-7.
Now, Year 3 seems as if it’s a make-or-break season for Napier, who rattles off stats that support optimism.
Florida returns 17 starters and players who have made 463 career starts and 41,000 career snaps. The Gators rank fourth in the SEC in returning production.
Still, all the talk about Florida this offseason has focused on a daunting schedule and Napier’s job status.
“It was just chatter,” quarterback Graham Mertz said. “That’s exactly what it is. I mean for us, and I always tell my guys every day, I’m like, look we can focus on what people are saying or we can focus on what we are doing.”
Napier sees a team ready to win the close games that have gotten away from the Gators the past two years (six losses by a single possession).
“Change doesn’t happen overnight,” Napier said. “Timing is everything, right? When we took the job, what we inherited, the work that needed to be done. I think we’re on schedule to some degree.”
Year 3 is often when things click for a new coach. See, Texas under Steve Sarkisian.
“I think part of it was our culture. We had to keep building our culture, the things that were important to us, and that takes time. It takes time to learn the schemes,” Sarkisian said. “You bring in coaches and you have an idea of what you want to run, and that’s nothing against a previous staff, but maybe they didn’t recruit the types of players that fit what we wanted to be and how we wanted to play. So that takes time, too.”
The Longhorns had a losing record in his first season, then made a jump to 8-5 in 2022 that left many Texas fans still not quite convinced Sark was the guy.
“But as you continue to stay committed to who you are and you stay committed to your course of action, you stay committed to what you believe in, over time you start to reap the benefits of that,” Sarkisian said.
Last season removed the doubt. The Longhorns made the College Football Playoff for the first time, Sarkisian received a four-year contract extension and Texas will enter this season — its first in the SEC — with national title hopes.
Nobody is expecting the Gators to take that big of a leap, especially against that schedule. The Gators’ schedule looks as if it was made by someone who is holding a grudge against Napier.
Florida faces Georgia, Texas and Mississippi, all top-10 teams in last season’s final AP Top 25. Add Tennessee, LSU and Texas A&M in conference. And then there’s the nonconference schedule of Miami, UCF and Florida State.
“Look, the great thing about our schedule, we don’t have to take this on as individuals. We get to do this as a team,” Napier said.
Napier talks about how the rapidly changing landscape of college football (NIL and loosened transfer rules) made rebuilding Florida more challenging.
“So we already knew that we had a ton of work to do at Florida,” he said. “You know, from a facility standpoint, infrastructure, modernizing the approach, best practices, improving personnel. But then here we go. The evolution of the game starts while we’re doing that.”
Napier said he thinks a lot about how he would have done some things differently and is trying to adapt on the fly.
Napier is Florida’s fourth coach since Urban Meyer left after the 2010 season, having won two national titles.
The instability hasn’t helped Florida get back to championship level. Whether Napier can show enough progress in Year 3 to earn patience will define the Gators’ season.
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]]>The post Virginia, Tennessee, Florida expect experience from ’23 College World Series to provide an edge appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.
]]>The CWS opens Friday with North Carolina (47-14) playing Virginia (46-15), and Florida State (47-15) facing Tennessee (55-12) in Bracket 1. North Carolina State (38-21) meets Kentucky (45-14), and Florida (34-28) plays Texas A&M (49-13) in Bracket 2 on Saturday. Winners in double-elimination bracket play square off in the best-of-three finals beginning June 22.
Virginia, Tennessee and Florida are here for the second straight year, and each brought back the majority of their lineups.
“I can tell you that last year was the first time any of us had played in front of 25,000 fans,” Virginia’s Casey Saucke said. “It was electric and you love hearing the stadium like that, seeing the stadium like that. It’s not going to faze us as much this year with the core of our lineup returning. We’ve already played in front of that, so when you’re getting in the box for the first time, you’re not as nervous.”
The Cavaliers lost two one-run games in the shortest of their six CWS appearances, and Saucke and his teammates said they learned a lesson about the importance of being fully dialed in on the field and not getting caught up in the pomp and pageantry of the event.
There are autographs to sign, outings to the city’s nationally known zoo and other attractions, team dinners and media responsibilities. Players also try to carve out time to spend with family members who come in from around the country.
Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said he offers advice about time management, and this year for the first time he had returning players address teammates about how to handle the distractions. Griff O’Ferrall said he tried to describe to the CWS newbies what would happen in and around the games so there are no surprises.
“The first couple of innings, you are a little bit in awe and just a little bit in shock just with the atmosphere itself and how many people are in the stands,” O’Ferrall said. “We’ve been trying to talk to the young guys and the guys who haven’t been here, just giving them a heads-up on what it’s like. Our main message has just been to not try and do too much. We’re here for a reason. As long as we do the small things and do what we’re capable of, the moment doesn’t get too big.”
Texas A&M has three key members of its pitching staff and a utility player back from its 2022 CWS team and NC State still has seven players from the 2021 roster that was sent home by the NCAA after three games because of COVID-19 protocols.
North Carolina is here for the first time since 2018, and Florida State for the first time since 2019. Kentucky is making its first appearance.
Tennessee, like Virginia, hopes to have a longer stay this year. The Volunteers lost their opener to LSU and Paul Skenes and beat Stanford before getting knocked out with a 5-0 loss to LSU, the first time they were shut out in 133 games.
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