Billy Napier just can’t escape the hot seat. He’s in his fourth season with a .500 record, more unranked losses than most of his high profile SEC counterparts, and more questions than answers after another slow start to a season that was supposed to get everything right. Napier’s buyout is back on the table, and I’m sure not even Scott Stricklin himself will be able to avoid letting Napier go if this gauntlet Florida has on the horizon goes awry.
Instead of taking less responsibility off his plate to ensure he can be the best coach for this team, he doubled down on retaining play-calling duties and it’s clear he’s clueless about where to go from here. He could have hired someone this offseason, but felt that with his job on the line, he wasn’t going to put that in the hands of someone else. That’s fair, but I don’t agree with it.
#Gators HC Billy Napier said he remains the primary play-caller and has given no thought of turning that role over to anyone else.
— Scott Carter (@GatorsScott) September 8, 2025
Maybe he should take a page out of Ryan Day’s book. Day turned to offensive savant Chip Kelly to call the offensive plays, and it got Ohio State its first championship in 10 years. Maybe it’s time for Napier to put his pride aside too and worry less about the plays and more about being the CEO of this team.
Billy Napier can’t continue down this path knowing it’s not working for both him and his team
Napier has one of the best quarterbacks in college football and one of the best young cores any high profile coach could ask for in today’s age of college football. This team is better than 16 points against a South Florida team with a fraction of their NIL budget. Florida’s offense was absolutely miserable against South Florida.
The offense was held to just one touchdown in the second half, nine points in the first half and more uncertainty about how to get this team going. With the conference slate they have ahead of them, South Florida is not the team to be having these problems against. That falls on Napier and his poor play calls.
Since he refused to bring in someone with an offensive mind, he should turn to his offensive coordinator and let them take over the play calling, that’s one less thing Napier has to worry about as scrutiny around him continues to grow. He thought he was the best person to engineer this offense, and that’s proven to be wrong.
Napier needs to put his ego aside and realize if he doesn’t want to be bought out of his contract, he needs to take the play calling duties off his plate.
Florida’s lack of discipline in late-game situations is proof Billy Napier has too many things to worry about
The Gators had 103 penalty yards and 11 penalties in the game, none more harmful than the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Brendan Bett for spitting on a USF player. If Napier was focused more on the team and not trying to run an offense, these things don’t happen. In year four, if silly penalties like this are happening, there are bigger problems at stake.
The fact that Napier can’t get his offense to chew the clock with less than three minutes left in the game is equally as alarming. If he wants to call plays, why is he struggling to call the right plays to keep the offense afloat while also not putting themselves against the clock unnecessary.
And then there’s the safety in the third quarter, too, that gifted South Florida two points, which ended up being the difference in the game as well. This team is underperforming their talent and Napier is right to take responsibility for that, but that’s not enough. He needs to find a solution for it rather than continue to state the obvious.
You could point to a lot of things that went wrong in Florida’s loss to South Florida on Saturday, but at the end of the day, there’s only one glaring problem that seems to keep repeating itself: Billy Napier. Between the game management, poor play-calling and lack of discipline in the locker room, it’s clear this Florida team has hit rock bottom.
This isn’t an overreaction because Napier shouldn’t be dealing with the same problems he’s had since he took over. He’s a great recruiter, but he can’t get his guys to win games they should and win the games that matter. He’ll have the next month of the season to figure out if he’s truly the answer.
Napier defended himself as the right person to be the coach of Florida and even Brian Kelly went out of his way to defend Napier. But if Napier doesn’t make some serious changes, he won’t have the time to figure out if he’s the best coach moving forward.