In our preseason magazine, I had an article called “The Billy Napier Conundrum.” Here’s the quote that comes to mind after the loss to South Florida.
“So I get it. The four-game win streak; the 8-5 season; Lagway showing he has what it takes to be great; the defense stepping up in big ways after that bye week. All of those are reasons Gators fans have to be very hopeful heading into 2025.
But I also get it. The lack of an OC hire; playcalling in Tennessee territory; openers in two straight seasons where the team didn’t look ready; an unfortunate Mertz injury being what forced Napier to give Lagway the reins. All of those are good reasons that Gators fans have to be reticent to fully jump on-board with full-throated optimism.”
-Will Miles, 2025 Read & Reaction Preview Magazine
I should have known better because the second list needed to be longer. Special teams needed a mention. Conservative decision-making on fourth down did too. And how could I forget undisciplined penalties after having two guys on the field at the same time with the same jersey number?
My point in rehashing these additional items isn’t to pile on. It’s that while we all wanted to buy in to the first list, the second was so long that we shouldn’t be using “upset”, “unacceptable” or “ugly” to describe this loss to USF.
Maybe we should be using the adjective “predictable.”
Is Napier Done?
Probably.
I called for his firing after the Texas A&M loss last season. That was obviously before the winning streak and the close to the season. And going back to what I wrote about Dan Mullen’s firing in November of 2021 is something we should keep in mind as we ponder where Florida goes from here.
“It’s pretty obvious that Dan Mullen is done. It’s not obvious because he’s lost the team. It’s obvious because he has lost the ability to generate hope within the fanbase. Once you lose that, there isn’t anything you can do to get it back.” – Will Miles, 2024 Read & Reaction Preview Magazine
That’s why Napier is still the coach. The four-game winning streak – and more importantly, the emergence of D.J. Lagway – brought hope back to the fanbase (and analysts such as myself) that this year could be different.
So do I have confidence that Billy Napier has what it takes to lead Florida to where they need to go? No, not at all.
But USF may turn out to be a high quality team when all is said and done. D.J. Lagway might actually turn into the Lagway that we saw at the end of last year in time to save things. And folks like me were picking Florida as a 9-3 team who would be right on the border of playoff contention. That outcome is still possible, as unlikely as it seems right now.
Ragging on the players or pining for Urban Meyer to come back as an interim just nukes a season that because of the playoff system is still alive, even if on life support. The eulogy for Napier’s time may still be written at some point this year. But it’s premature to do so after only two games.
Napier’s Obvious Blunder
None of this absolves Napier of the absolutely horrific job he did coaching this team against the Bulls.
After the game in his post-game press conference, here’s what he had to say about the final sequence:
“We had two (timeouts), right, to ultimately at that point, there’s going to be a field goal kicked. They have one, right, so they had an extra down, so regardless of when the timeouts get called, it’s going to end up about the same.” – Billy Napier
Let’s examine this logic.
When Byrum Brown completed a 29-yard pass to Alvon Isaac to the Florida 32-yard line, USF was in distant field goal range with 1:54 left in the game. But after Brown completed a 12-yard pass on the next play, Napier allowed the clock to run to 1:15 before USF then handed the ball off for a 6-yard gain. Again, Napier allowed the clock to run to 0:29 on second-and-4 before calling a timeout after USF got a first down on a Brown run with 0:22 left.
Let me count the ways that this is all so, so stupid.
First, the minute Brown hit the 12-yard pass for a first down, Napier needed to make a decision quickly about what he wanted to do and stick to his guns. You’re either going to try to keep USF to the longest field goal attempt possible while leaving yourself the maximum time available, or – and Napier doesn’t even seem to have considered this possibility – you’re going to let them score a TD giving your team enough time to go down the field and score a TD themselves.
In the first circumstance, you call your first timeout right after the catch. The reason is that since you only have one timeout left, USF will run the ball to make you use it, then bleed the clock down for what is a relatively short field goal (but not a chip shot). If they screw up a snap or get a holding penalty, maybe it pushes them to the edges of field goal range or maybe you get lucky and they miss. The odds of winning this way are relatively remote, but it is a defendable approach.
In the second circumstance, you still call your timeout after the completed pass, but then let them score on the very next play. That way, you have one timeout and probably 90 seconds or so to go down and score. USF will go for two points (to push the game to seven), and if they don’t convert that, you even have a chance to win the game.
Napier decided neither approach made sense and called his timeouts late. The result was that USF was still able to bleed the clock. But instead of bleeding it out at the 20-yard line, they were able to position the ball for what was essentially an extra point.
The Final 2:52
But none of this addresses the worst part of all of this. Why in the hell did Florida only have two timeouts?
When Nico Gramatica missed a 58-yard field goal and it seemed like Florida would escape with 2:52 left, Napier and Co. somehow blew a timeout coming out for the next possession. You certainly don’t want to lose five yards at that point to a delay penalty, but how could the offense not be ready to run a play after a change in possession?
I know people will criticize the decision to throw the ball twice in that possession, but I’m actually okay with that decision. USF was packing the box expecting a run. Florida hadn’t been able to move them multiple times on third-and-short when they knew a run was coming. If you’re going to criticize, I think the place is that Florida decided to run two pass plays with significant degrees of difficult.
On first down, Vernell Brown, III – the only player on offense to really do anything significant – was isolated one-on-one to the outside. Lagway threw a bad pass, but that route towards the outside is way lower percentage than you’d want at that point. Why not just throw a bubble screen and let Brown work one-on-one (the corner was playing off)?
And Brown will probably be the first to tell you that he should have caught the ball on third down to put the game away. It was a beautiful pass from Lagway and the defense was vulnerable to it. But again, I’d say that the degree of difficulty needed for that conversion was higher than some other options.
Yes, Florida only ran 0:27 seconds off the clock, but the timeout still looms largest to me. The chain reaction of not having three timeouts put Napier in a situation where he had to make split-second game management decisions.
And he chose….poorly.
Hidden Points
Bud Davis beat me to this particular criticism when he posted this on X.
Lot to unpack from the USF game, but the conservativeness on 4th down really ended up coming back to bite Florida
Credit: @gameonpaper and @theFirmAISports pic.twitter.com/9kUifL9ObZ
— Bud Davis (@JBudDavis) September 7, 2025
There is no doubt that Napier cost his team by being ultra conservative on fourth down, but it got me wondering about how Florida wound up in those fourth-down circumstances to begin with.
As I was rewatching the game, this play caught my attention.
This seems like a pretty innocuous play. Florida had a second-and-3 after Lagway had completed a 7-yard pass to Tre Wilson. But the announcer at the time said something about this being a good time to take a shot because you’d still have two downs to get the first down.
The play after I’ve shown here was the throw Lagway laid out there that went through the arms of tight end Tony Livingston for what could have been a touchdown. The Gators OL jumped on the next play, making it second-and-15. A screen to Wilson and a slant to J. Michael Sturdivant left them at fourth-and-6 at the USF 9-yard line.
Based on Bud’s numbers, you can make a convincing argument to either go for it or kick the field goal once the situation got to the fourth down. But what Napier did by taking the shot on first-and-10 rather than second-and-3 was that he removed any margin for error after the Livingston miss.
The only reason to not take the shot on second down is if you’re not going to go for it on fourth-and-short. Napier valued the first down conversion more than the margin for error. I think that’s a miscalculation, likely one driven by his desire to be conservative on fourth down.
What’s up with D.J.?
Somehow, that Napier conservatism has rubbed off onto QB D.J. Lagway. That’s the only way I can explain what we saw in this game.
On this play, tight end Hayden Hansen (#89) is running a go route right at the single-high safety. Receiver J. Michael Sturdivant (#9) tries to get outside to the numbers and beat his guy down the field (and does). Where I’ve paused the play after the snap, notice that the safety (#5, Fred Gaskin) turns towards the middle of the field.
Fans are going to home in on Hansen being open but that’s not what concerns me. Instead what concerns me is that last year, this was an automatic throw to either Chimere Dike or Elijhah Badger in Sturdivant’s spot. The minute that Gaskin showed Lagway that he was helping towards the middle means he can’t get out to help against Sturdivant.
This was what made Lagway so special last year. We quibbled about his ability to read defenses and pick apart zones. But when the defense exposed its jugular and gave him an opportunity to win on the outside, he did it and did it consistently.
He only has one interception on the year (and I’m not sure that ball was intercepted). He hasn’t thrown the ball up-for-grabs much at all, and certainly not nearly as much as he did in 2024. But the magic that came along with the mentality to throw some ill-advised passes also seems gone as well.
I joked all offseason that Napier couldn’t possibly have a Lamborghini like Lagway and keep him covered up in the garage. But it appears that I may have underestimated Florida’s head coach.
Takeaway
For years, I’ve been saying that the Billy Napier era would come down to whether D.J. Lagway was a transcendent player.
That’s what’s necessary when you recruit at Napier’s level (good, but not truly elite). That’s especially true when you’re terrible at clock management, ultra conservative on fourth downs, cost yourself points on special teams consistently, and are unable to keep your players from spitting on the opposition in clear view of the referee on key drives.
If that’s a lot to put on the young man, I agree with you. But that’s what Napier has done to the kid by not finding edges anywhere else on the field.
I thought coming into the year that Florida would have a clear advantage at QB in just about every game this season. They didn’t against USF, as Byrum Brown matched Lagway in QB Rating (134.4 to Lagway’s 130.1) but far outplayed him via Yards Above Replacement (my stat that takes running and passing into account) by a count of -1.02 for Lagway to 0.11 for Brown. It’s not that Brown was great (a YAR of zero is average). It’s that Lagway was actively bad.
That has to change or Napier’s in real trouble. We all know what’s coming up on the schedule, but it’s not just that. It’s that Napier has to rebuild the hope that the promise of Lagway represented at the end of last year to possibly survive. And that hope can’t be a 6-6 season where Lagway starts playing better towards the end. It can’t even be another 8-5 season.
In your fourth year at a major school, the players are yours, the scheme is yours, and the program is yours. This program is what Billy Napier has built. Right now, it’s not good enough to beat USF. They better hope the Bulls are way better than anybody thinks this year or that Lagway can reclaim his magic touch.
Because otherwise, this is about to get ugly.