Florida closes strong on National Signing Day, but Gators still have progress to make in recruiting

Football

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Image Credit: Maddie Washburn, UAA

A vote of confidence for the coaching staff, three straight wins to end the 2024 season and 12 commitment flips — many of them from rivals — in a 17-day span have the Florida Gators riding high and operating with more momentum than the program has experienced during the tenure of head coach Billy Napier. And yet, the Gators remain at least one step away from competing with the nation’s most successful teams of late.

Don’t get it twisted: What Napier pulled off was impressive. Signing eight blue-chip prospects committed to other programs — taking key players away from Florida State, Georgia, Miami, Tennessee, Penn State and USC, among others — over just more than two weeks completely changed the trajectory of the Class of 2025 for Florida.

Especially when you consider they came at positions both needed for UF and hard to come by for many programs. Florida added two of their three best signees — both top-100 defensive backs — during that stretch along with a four-star quarterback who will play a crucial role behind freshman DJ Lagway.

The Gators jumped 33 spots in the 247Sports Composite team rankings from No. 43 before the LSU game to No. 10 at close of business Wednesday on National Signing Day with 48 hours left in the early signing period. UF had been ranked as low as No. 51 a few weeks earlier, and yet, it presently sits five spots ahead of UM (No. 15, which went 10-2 this season), 15 ahead of perennial recruiting power Clemson (No. 25, about to play in the ACC Championship Game) and 12 ahead of FSU (No. 27, which came a quarterback away from playing in the College Football Playoff last season).

Florida also ranks directly in front of the likes of Tennessee, Notre Dame, USC, Oklahoma and Penn State. This despite Napier being on the hot seat most of the season and three of those teams holding an inside track to CFP appearances of their own this year.

With the expanded 12-team playoff field, recruiting at this level — with a complementary performance in the transfer portal — should be enough to get the Gators into contention from a talent perspective. It’s not enough to come close to winning a national championship, however.

Florida will wrap up this cycle with a class ranked 10th or lower for the fifth straight season. This for a program that is more than capable of hauling top-five classes as the flagship university of arguably the most plentiful, talent-rich state in the nation. The Gators have not placed that high in more than a decade at this point (2013).

That is not all on Napier, of course. And there is no one within the organization more aware of what Florida can accomplish when it’s operating on all cylinders — not only as a staff in recruiting but as a team on the field. As well as he and his coaches may be able to recruit, winning matters because it is proof of concept that Napier’s “process” is actually paying dividends.

“We have work to do. We came here with the intent of rebuilding the place, top to bottom, becoming a championship contender, getting back to where our team has been in the past,” Napier said Wednesday night “… We’ve improved the player experience here. The missing piece was the on-field, the brand of football, the winning, the execution. …

“We are not done. We just showed promised [late in the season]. The vote of confidence and the stability, combine that with our how team competed, that’s why we were able to close.”

Napier expanded on these comments a bit later.

“It was a combination of how our players competed and played — obviously, winning — the character that they showed through the tough first month of the season — how they responded, how they continued to fight. That spoke the loudest of all. And then, to get the administration stamp [of approval] was a big deal. And then you go prove it down the stretch on the field with a couple big wins. …

“This is a game of momentum. We’ve had momentum at times, obviously in the first three years, but we’ve struggled to keep it. For the first time, we kept it. Today is another step in the right direction.”

The most stark difference between the close of this recruiting cycle and ones that preceded it is what happened in the final few days. The Gators’ class fell apart last year as they dropped the final five games of the 2023 season after losing the final three of the 2022 campaign. Negative recruiting ran rampant, especially with word that Napier would enter 2024 on the hot seat.

Even two years ago, though, Florida was a finalist for some of the top uncommitted players in the country and landed none of them on National Signing Day. The Gators did not have a banner day this Wednesday, either, but looking at the 24-hour period in a silo rather than put it in context of what happened over the last 17 days is a foolhardy approach to evaluating the way UF closed on this cycle.

“I [would have] liked all those guys to commit to us in June; that would’ve been a lot better. We [had] finished second on a lot of them,” Napier explained while putting the 12 flips in context. “The common deal was like, ‘Hey, [you’ve] gotta prove it on the field, and there’s gotta be some stability.’ Once we proved those things, it led to, ‘Hey, that’s where we wanted to be.’

“We battled the narrative — and we obviously didn’t help ourselves the way we played in the first month. This offseason was challenging to recruit to because of the narrative. We contributed to that [with our play], so nobody is making excuses.”

In other words, Florida put itself behind the eight-ball forcing it to battle back from the brink rather than operate from a position of strength. If the Gators had not ended 2023 so weakly and played better at the start of the 2024 season, they would have locked in far more commitments at an earlier juncture. In turn, that would have allowing the coaching staff to go out and spend more time reeling in additional big fish it missed in the closing stretch — because it likely spread itself too thin trying to make up as much ground as possible rather than put the full-court press on a couple key prospects to bolster an already-strong class.

Napier believes playing football at Florida is a unique opportunity for prospects, particularly given the direction the sport is turning. While the Gators possess a burgeoning NIL operation and clearly have finances to stand in the 1B tier of compensating players — there is ultimately no competing with the likes of Oregon (Nike) and Ohio State in particular — the value proposition offered by Florida is about more than dollars and cents.

“You attend to attract what you sell, to some degree,” he said. “… We still believe in the game and what it can teach. It has become transactional, but we like to think that we’re not that type of program — that we can still view the game in a certain light. And I still think there’s people out there that are looking for that.”

Up next for Napier and the Gators coaching staff is retaining their own players and attacking the transfer portal to fill positions of need. Florida is not expected to lose any top-tier starters as it did last year, but the staff still has plenty of work to do with players who may not have been pleased with how much they saw the field this season. Out of the portal, UF will be seeking a veteran QB in particular after missing on another flip candidate; it also needs offensive linemen and pure cornerbacks.

“There’s a bunch of good players out there. … There’s lots of ways to add players to your team now,” Napier said. “It’s just a different era. You just got to continue to evaluate, continue to recruit, get the best 105 you can get.”