Florida Football Friday Final: Is Billy Napier a dead man walking as Gators host Mississippi State?

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As the Florida Gators prepare to play the Mississippi State Bulldogs in a homecoming game that will harken upon past glory with visions of past orange and blue success wafting alongside throwback uniforms, the program itself remains under heavy scrutiny amid continued failure at the midway point of Year 4 under Billy Napier. A second off week approaching provides one final chance for Florida to turn the 2025 season on its head, but it also offers the best-possible timing for the Gators to cut their embattled head coach.

Nearly four full seasons into Napier’s tenure, the hope was that Florida would be on the edge of glory — a serious run at a College Football Playoff bid with sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway leading the charge. Instead, the Gators sit 21-23, two games below .500 overall. At 11-16 in SEC play, they are an unfathomable five games below mediocrity within a league UF used to lead.

Napier’s 21 wins through 44 games are the fewest for a Florida coach in modern history. One must go back to World War II to find a Gators coach who performed as poorly with that long a leash. Tom Lieb, who was born before the turn of the century in 1899, started 19-24-1 through 44 games from 1940-44, which included an entire year off due to the war.

Among his most notable peers hired in 2022, Napier (.477) has performed worse than LSU’s Brian Kelly (.739), Miami’s Mario Cristobal (.628), Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman (.771) and USC’s Lincoln Riley (.674).

Granted, Florida plays in the nation’s most difficult conference, it has been facing the toughest schedule in the country each of the last two seasons, and it dealt with a series of quarterback issues that no other prominent team experienced to the same level. There is no denying any of that; however, it neither changes the perception of the product on the field nor accounts for Napier’s inability to develop and coach a winning football team.

Last week, the Gators fell to 0-10 on the road against ranked opponents, 5-17 against AP Top 25 teams overall and 4-12 in true road games under Napier. Florida is 1-16 when scoring less than 21 points and 6-21 when allowing 21 points or more. It is also consistently unable to play from behind, standing 4-17 when tied or trailing at halftime, 3-21 in such a situation after the third quarter.

Napier’s death blow was delivered in Week 2 when a listless Gators team, an 18-point favorite, was embarrassed inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium by South Florida, one of the two most beatable opponents on the 2025 schedule. It was Florida’s worst defeat in four years and its most exasperating defeat outside the SEC since 2013, a last straw for Napier’s tenure, which only could have been extended by winning out through the first off week.

The Gators have recruited well overall, and Napier has undoubtedly created a significant structure around the program amid the introduction of name, image and likeness rights that should last beyond his tenure. However, UF was slow to figure out the transfer portal and NIL game initially, needing to catch up to some of its peers that were well-positioned to capitalize on the changing landscape.

Asked this week why Florida has struggled so regularly on the road, Napier was unable to provide a worthwhile response. Basically, he said it’s tough to win football games:

“They’re ranked teams, and they’re tough venues. We’re in position to make plays – we got to go make plays. … All things contribute to it: the quality of the opponent, the personnel matchups, the schematic matchups and the environment. Let’s not make it any more complicated – let’s don’t overanalyze this – good teams, tough venues, personnel battles and schematic battles. And then the ability to execute with consistency, the ability to communicate in those environments. It’s nothing more than that. We have areas where we can help our players, and we have areas where the players can help themselves.”

The Gators have been behind the schematic 8-ball since Napier put the whistle around his neck. He’s been talking about executing with consistency for four years. It’s understandable if a team struggles to those ends in Year 1 or perhaps even Year 2 if the roster is young. When the same problems arise in Year 4, there’s no one else to blame but the leaders.

Napier’s ever-changing coaching staff, refusal to relieve himself of the burden that is offensive playcalling, insistence into holding two offensive line coaches (who perform worse, together, than most teams with one) and overall refusal to adjust from what he believe works, systematically, are among the many tenets of his downfall.

Exacerbating the condition of Napier’s continued employment are systematic issues within the University of Florida and University Athletic Association — namely the upheaval and politicalization of the UF president role and athletic director Scott Stricklin somehow receiving a five-year extension despite myriad issues surrounding the athletic department — alongside the fact that the nameplate behind the coach’s desk has been a revolving door of late.

Napier in 2022 was the fourth full-time head coach hired by the Gators in the 12 years since Urban Meyer’s departure. Florida had three coaches (claiming three national championships) the prior 20 years.

There is no internal expectation that Napier remains coach of the Gators in 2026, multiple sources tell Only Gators. As such, there is a strong belief and high likelihood that his tenure will end in the next 72 hours, whether Florida wins or loses Saturday against Mississippi State.

Many within the UAA hold Napier in high esteem personally — as they did Will Muschamp, who similarly received a fourth year he did not deserve in 2014. And while they hope Napier follows in Muschamp’s footsteps by finishing out the season despite being jettisoned, there is no overriding belief he will.

As such, the off week is seen as an opportune time to introduce an interim coach, providing the team with two weeks to prepare for its next opponent and final run through the campaign. Running backs assistant Jabbar Juluke was once looked upon as a potential interim coach, though while he returns to the sideline this week, his three-game suspension following a pregame incident at LSU may have taken him out of the running for such a role.

A midseason dismissal of Napier would provide just under two months for Stricklin to continue vetting candidates and make a hire with time allotted to the transfer portal and recruiting cycle, considering the rapid postseason timeline of the sport. (The longer a program waits to fire a coach these days, the worse position they find themselves in during the coaching carousel.)

“It’s what we sign up for. They pay us, they compensate us well. These are challenging jobs, in today’s climate in particular,” Napier said of his scorching hot seat. “We’re all men. We’re all competitors. We understand we live in a production world, and you got to produce. There’s no running from that. It was that way when we signed up for it in the very beginning.

“They used to not pay us as well as they do now. When you do get compensated — and the amount of revenue that’s generated in our game – the compensation, it’s fair [to have expectations]. I have no issue with that. If you’re at a place that doesn’t have high expectations, how much fun is that?”

“Fun” has not been a way to describe Florida football for quite some time, and it’s fair to be concerned with the program’s future even if Napier is ejected as expected with a windfall of an approximately $21 million buyout going his way.

Stricklin would be making his third head football coach hire since becoming AD, an unfathomable allowance but one that has been circumstantially created due to internal UF issues, a men’s basketball national championship and his exceedingly successful fundraising abilities.

“We meet every week. … He’s a great teammate,” Napier said of Stricklin. “We know it’s not good enough. No one loves to lose. We’re identifying areas we can improve and things we need to do better. It’s much like any production business: There’s things you got to do better to get a better result.”

Chief among those things, at this juncture, is finding a new individual to lead the Gators into the future.

Four Bits

Napier believes Lagway has not only turned a corner but become the player he was at the end of the 2024 season: “I see the player that I know, that I saw last year, in terms of the playmaking ability, the accuracy, game-speed decision making, anticipation. We’re paying really well around him, got a healthy receiver group. … There for a while, he was uncomfortable. We’ve been watching him progress every day.”

Napier put over non-playcalling offensive coordinator Russ Callaway: “Russ is one of the bright up-and-comers in the profession. He has a good football mind, but the biggest thing about Russ is he has the ability to connect with young people. He’s a good leader, he has good energy, he’s got great relationships with all the players. He’sa professional; he’s been around the game, his dad is a legendary coach. … Certainly his leadership has been key, and that’s been critical for that side of the ball and certainly for me.”

The offensive line implosion against Texas A&M was explained as an overall failure: “Our issue was we struggled to run it, even when we were in advantage plays where we got a hat for a hat. … We need to be more precise at running back and those individual matchups. We played from behind the sticks. … We had a handful of penalties, and we had too any negative plays – too many inefficient runs against light boxes.”

Napier did not shy away from his lack of overall success at Florida: “When you don’t play well, there’s going to be criticism – at every level of football. … It’s part of the game. We all understand it.”