Has morning dawned on a new era of winning for Billy Napier’s Florida Gators?
At a program mired in mediocrity for much of this decade, there are inklings of hope everywhere.
Florida closed the 2024 season on a heater, winning its final 4 games, including 2 impressive wins over a ranked LSU and top-10 Ole Miss team in November. The Gators parlayed on-field success into a strong recruiting finish, dragging a class that ranked in the 50s in late October to 8th in the 247 Composite last week, after 4-star Tennessee corner commit Onis Konanbanny flipped and signed with Florida on Wednesday morning.
A season after losing 2 of the program’s best players in the transfer portal after a 5-7 season, the Gators excelled at player retention this winter, utilizing a revamped, effective NIL collective to bring back All-American center Jake Slaughter, All-SEC offensive tackle Austin Barber, wide receiver Tre Wilson III, and key defensive line fixtures Caleb Banks and Tyreak Sapp.
The Gators’ defense, much maligned for the better part of 2 coaching regimes, returns the bulk of its production from the first unit in Gainesville to finish in the top 50 in yards allowed per play (42nd) and top 25 in SP+ defensive efficiency (23rd) since 2019, when Dan Mullen’s 11-win Orange Bowl ranked in the top 10 in both categories. There are lingering questions on the edge, and unproven pieces at wide receiver, but even allowing for those, this will be Napier’s most talented roster yet in Gainesville.
But the Gators have returned quality players and production before, and that hasn’t always stopped the losses from piling up over the past few seasons, greying the beautiful red of the bricks and green of the palm and pines that dot the University of Florida’s majestic campus.
A consensus Freshman All-American selection at the most important position in sports, Lagway gives the Gators the type of talent that changes a program’s ceiling.
The College Football Playoff era is filled with stories of quarterbacks who changed the trajectory and ceiling of programs and coaching staffs stuck in the mud or just short of the summit, from Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence redefining what was possible at Clemson to Joe Burrow making a national champion out of Ed Orgeron at LSU.
Florida fans know what a championship quarterback looks like.
There are 3 statutes in front of The Swamp that honor 3 Heisman winning quarterbacks, and another quarterback, Rex Grossman, won an SEC Championship and an AP Player of the Year award.
Florida went 6-0 in games Lagway started and finished a season ago, and the Gators led Georgia when he left the game with an injury before halftime. Florida ultimately lost to Georgia for the 4th consecutive season, falling 34-20 after Carson Beck led the Bulldogs to 2 touchdowns in the game’s final 5 minutes.
Lagway finished his freshman season with 1,915 yards passing and 12 touchdown passes. In the process, he was 2nd in yards per attempt (10) and second in average depth of target (11.8) behind only Jaxson Dart of Ole Miss (10 yards per attempt, average depth of target 11.9). Among SEC starters returning in 2025, Lagway’s big-time throw percentage of 8.8% is nearly 3% higher than any other returning starter (Diego Pavia is 2nd, at 5.9%).
Certainly, Lagway has room for improvement. His interceptions (9) need to decrease. The completion percentage, sitting at a good, not great, 60%, needs to increase. But there simply aren’t many humans on the planet that can make throws like this one:
A great quarterback changes everything, unlocking a window to a championship world that may otherwise stay shut.
With Lagway on campus, Florida’s championship window is open.
That leaves Napier 2 years to get it right. Two years before Roger Goodell walks onto a stage and announces, “With the __________ pick in the NFL Draft, (someone that we all hope isn’t the New York Jets) select DJ Lagway, quarterback, University of Florida.”
A 2-year window that will define whether Florida is a championship program again or left wondering how they squandered the best quarterback talent to grace their campus since Tim Tebow graduated after the 2009 season.
Is Napier up to the challenge of capitalizing on that window?
Winning the recruiting battle for Lagway was step one, and the job Napier and quarterbacks coach Ryan O’Hara did preparing him to start as a true freshman, a byproduct of a season-ending injury to Graham Mertz that put Lagway ahead of schedule on Napier’s original development plan, was an impressive step two. For Lagway and Florida to take the next step, though, might require more than just player development. It might require a better offensive scheme.
That’s where everything comes back to Billy Napier.
Despite an overwhelming body of evidence in college football that head coaches who also serve as primary play-callers may limit a team’s ceiling, Napier continues to call the ball plays at Florida.
Last season, the Gators finished 37th in SP+ offensive efficiency, just a 1-spot improvement from 2023. For those unfamiliar, SP+ efficiency measures how effective an offense is adjusted for tempo and strength of opponent. It’s about as comprehensive a measurement of the effectiveness of an offense as exists.
Florida’s success rate metrics (how often a play gains a successful amount of yardage, given down and distance) are similar even over his 3 seasons at Florida. Florida’s success rate in 2024 was 41.3%, which ranked 12th in the SEC. That was a 1.1% improvement over 2023’s 40.2%, but both numbers ranked in the bottom half of the SEC.
The big difference for Florida in 2024, outside of defensive improvement, was the added explosiveness.
With Lagway behind center, the Gators produced 49 pass plays of 20 yards or more (a 6 completion jump from 2023) and 23 pass plays of 30 yards or more (a 9 completion jump from 2023). The result was an offense with a higher ceiling, even if overall productivity remained about the same.
Does the data suggest a flaw in Napier’s scheme?
SDS spoke to multiple SEC defensive coaches, all of whom prepared a defense to play Florida this season. Each coach was granted anonymity to speak freely about Napier’s scheme and play-calling ability. The conversations paint a mixed picture, with freely offered praise interspersed among terse criticism.
Each of the coaches SDS spoke with, for example, praised Napier’s run concepts.
“(Napier) does a nice job in the run game. They are multiple, both in their concepts and personnel groupings. It’s about the quality up front with their run game. There aren’t scheme issues. It’s tough to prepare for,” one SEC defensive coordinator told SDS.
“They have a host of zone concepts that they disguise variations in and make it hard on you,” a longtime SEC defensive assistant echoed. “They are well-coached on the offensive line, too. That group was far better by the end of the year than they were in September. You don’t usually see a team improve that much on the line of scrimmage. That’s good coaching.”
Napier’s passing game concepts, though, left plenty to be desired.
“We had situations where they were in their “11” personnel, and our safety called route trees pre-snap. They are predictable in that grouping. They are better in their “12” personnel stuff, but they weren’t hard to scheme for us in the passing game,” another SEC coordinator told SDS.
“They need DJ Lagway, right? You don’t watch them on film and go, ‘Hey, look how open Florida’s receivers are.’ They need a big-time guy like DJ to make elite throws,” echoed another SEC coordinator.
Florida’s passing game in “11” personnel, for example, ranked 14th in the SEC in success rate, but 5th in explosive pass percentage. In other words, Lagway’s ability to make monster throws offset a schematic decision that failed more often than it succeeded.
Is Lagway’s abundance of talent enough to offset Florida’s schematic flaws in the pass game? Perhaps.
More concerning, at least to some, might be Napier’s situational play-calling.
Decisions like running a jet sweep to get 6 inches at Tennessee in a tight game in 2024 or running a double reverse behind a spotty offensive line against a fast FSU defense in 2023, allowing for a monster loss that helped flip momentum towards the Seminoles, linger with more than the Florida fan base.
“I think situationally they can make some bizarre decisions. They fall in love with the same route on 3rd down. They overthink a run against Tennessee when they have a big quarterback and an All-American center. That stuff turns a football game. Everyone is good. You can’t give away possessions,” one coordinator told SDS.
Another praised Napier’s roster rebuild at Florida, but questioned whether you can still do it all in this era of college football.
“There’s so much on a head coach’s plate now, from NIL to the portal to the bigger staffs you manage to recruiting boards,” a longtime SEC assistant told SDS. “It’s hard to do it all, you know? They have built a roster that can start to win there. Billy is a fantastic recruiter. A great person. He doesn’t need to do everything. Sometimes as coaches the hardest thing we do is letting someone else help.”
As Florida enters Year 1 of the remaining 2-year Lagway window, Napier will continue to be the primary play-caller.
In an exclusive interview with the outstanding Florida football podcast Gators Breakdown, Napier told host David Waters that he believes continuing as Florida’s primary play-caller is in the program’s best interest.
“I think the big thing is that it helps us as from an identity standpoint as a team,” Napier said. “You’re a part of the inner workings, from an installation script standpoint and then how gameday goes.”
Napier’s reluctance to give up putting his imprint on the offensive game plan does not mean, in his view, that he hasn’t relinquished some control, as he told Gators Breakdown.
“Look, I think the big thing is and we’ve been fortunate — is that we have a really good offensive staff. You know, you think about the position coaches that we have. I was really pleased with Russ Callaway and the more responsibility that he took on this year from a leadership standpoint. Russ did a great job running the unit meetings. He did a good job organizing the staff. And certainly, you know, in that coordinator type role as an exceptional young coach, that was where I think we took a step forward.”
Napier pointed to other staff members, including quarterbacks coach O’Hara, highly regarded in national coaching circles, and said he deferred more to other coaches than ever last season, especially as Florida stormed to wins in its final 4 games to finish with 8 wins, the program’s highest total since 2020.
“There are things that as a head coach, you know, things that maybe I used to do, I thought those guys did a great job taking some of that off my plate. And I think in general that helped us be more productive down the stretch.”
Will Napier’s increased deference to staff make Florida productive enough to cash in on Lagway’s elite talent?
Right now, for what it’s worth, Vegas doesn’t seem convinced, pegging Florida’s over-under win total at 6.5 for 2025, which would be a step back from the 7-win regular season in 2024, despite the likely sophomore progression from Lagway.
If that happens, would Napier even be coaching Lagway in 2026?
Maybe. Perhaps winning that recruiting battle earned Napier the right to see it through to the end.
Then again, at some point you must take the next step forward.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it was worked on every day.
If Napier can’t build Florida into Rome with Lagway, will he ever?
