Florida Football: Report card for Gators offensive coaches in 2022

We have made it to the end of 2022 and it’s time to hand out grades for everyone with Florida football. We previously gave out grades to everyone on the defensive staff, and as you can imagine they weren’t great.

The offensive for the Gators deserved a better fate in 2022 and despite some minor gripes here and there, the offense gets mostly positive reviews.

We are grading on the competency of the unit, general improvement of players, and recruiting prowess.

We will note that while Billy Napier is the offensive coordinator, we are saving his review for later this week.

Florida Football: Run the dang ball

The running backs for Florida football were the highlight of the squad this year. Coach Juluke came over with Napier from Louisiana, so he can claim the success of Montrell Johnson leading Florida’s rushing attack.

But beyond Johnson, Juluke also oversaw Trevor Etienne emerging as one of the top freshmen in the SEC, ensuring he played over Nay’Quan Wright and Lorenzo Lingard.

Even Lingard though looked great in the limited action he had.

You can’t have a great running game without a great offensive line. It wasn’t that long ago that the O-line was a liability for Florida football and now it’s a highlight.

When Michael Tarquin went down with an injury, Austin Barber stepped in flawlessly.

If we were grading strictly on the on-field product, Coach Sale would get an A. But the transfers of Tarquin and Ethan White do raise eyebrows and despite the success of the O-line Florida missed out on the big-name recruit for the position (something about pancakes).

He did land top 150 prospect Roderick Kearney.

One of the oddities of Napier’s staff is that one of his staff positions is dedicated to a second offensive line coach (NCAA rules allow for 11 paid assistant coaches, everyone else has to be an “analyst”).

It’s hard to judge Stapleton for his on-field coaching and hard to know what role he played with the O-line. He is credited as a recruiter on a handful of incoming players, includeivers Coach

Strictly on the field, the wide receivers for Florida football just never quite took off. Part of that is because Anthony Richardson had accuracy, but it also never felt like Xzaiver Henderson took the next step.

Justin Shorter and Ricky Pearsall were fine, but never game-breaking.

As injuries piled up and Florida had to rotate in more guys, players felt like they were ready but were just athletically limited.

Colbert’s biggest contribution in recruiting was helping bring Aidan Mizell and Eugene Wilson to Gainesville.

Perhaps it is unfair to judge Coach Peagler on tight end play after Florida football was spoiled by Kyle Pitts, but the tight ends for the Gators were just kind of there this season.

Now if you want to make a case that Billy Napier ran a lot of two tight-end personnel and the tight-ends did a solid job blocking, that’s fair. But the offense for Florida felt more dynamic when going with one or zero tight ends and the run game held up just fine.

Florida also has no big-name tight end incoming, though that could change in the transfer portal.