The Rebuild: Billy Napier begins to surgically repair Gators program, and build his army

Even by the ultra-hectic standards for the Florida Gators football program, the first week of the Billy Napier was an unprecedented roller coaster ride.

Some of it was positive, and some of it was negative. All of it, though, was on par with what Billy Napier warned fans about at his introductory press conference: “You guys are probably going to get frustrated with me. We’re going to be very patient, and calculated about everything that we do.”

Translation: as is usually the case when a coach gets fired, the Florida football program was pretty severely wounded when Dan Mullen was handed the pink slip. Billy Napier isn’t here to put a bandaid over the wound; he’s here to perform surgery on it. And for the ultimate analogy-within-an-analogy: that surgery includes the construction of an army.

First, for the external analogy, the surgery. Surgery takes time to fully recover from. The actual surgery itself is a large part of what makes recovering from severe wounds such a long process. On the other hand, a bandaid can stop the bleeding, and make things seem like they’re going to be all right for a little while. It’s the quick fix. But a bandaid doesn’t actually do anything to address the internal problems. In order to truly get back to top condition, you have to go in there and fix it. Fail to address those internal issues for too long, and they’re liable to doom you later on. Surgery may not be a pretty process, it may not be enjoyable, and it very well might make things get worse before they get better- but it’s how restarts work.

After Florida had finished conquering FSU 24-21, I milled around outside the stadium and casually polled former Gator players who had returned for that game about who they would want to be the next head coach. Among them were former Florida defensive linemen Adam Shuler and Cece Jefferson, and former safety Major Wright. They didn’t all agree that Florida should have fired Dan Mullen. But each and every one of them agreed that if Florida was going to hire a new coach, it needed to be a long-term hire.

“I’m tired of short-term fixes,” another former player told me. “Get it right this time. I don’t even care if Florida goes 3-9 and then 5-7 these next two years (he then paused to laugh at himself and add, ‘that’s not gonna happen but you know what I’m saying,’) …I would trade that bad two year stretch for a coach who has us humming like Ohio State, Oklahoma, Clemson, Alabama, or even Georgia for the next dozen years.”