Florida football: Which assistants are pulling their weight?

Florida football has a huge coaching staff with an army of assistants that Billy Napier brought on for his first year at UF.

In theory, having this many coaches will help a program be elite in every aspect, and not have many weaknesses in-house. But it hasn’t necessarily worked out that way so far.

We’ve already graded out the offensive coached and defensive coaches for this past season, and now we’ll take a look at how well some of the Gators’ assistants performed in their first year.

Katie Turner came over from Georgia when Napier took the job and came with lots of high praise from UGA players that she helped to recruit.

And for the most part, she did a great job. She has a great social media presence with the players, and she is very involved during recruiting visits.

In her first year on the staff, the Gators pulled a class with their highest average since 2010, and have a lot more momentum on the trail than in years past.

If the NIL aspect of recruiting can improve, Katie’s job will be even easier.

Speaking of NIL…

NIL is relatively new to college sports, but there are a lot of schools that have already figured out great ways to entice recruits with deals and endorsements.

Florida has not yet shown the same prowess.

The Gator Collective is an awesome organization that has done a lot of good for both the players and the fans and is an awesome addition to the program. The Gator Guard has awesome potential but hasn’t yet matched up with some of the other big dogs in the NIL landscape.

The Gators have a long way to go in the NIL game before they can match up with the top teams in the space, and they won’t be competing for top-5 classes until they can improve.

To be honest, I wanted to give Couch an F here, but after looking at the stats a little more he deserves up to a D+.

It’s no secret that the Gators were poor on special teams this year. The “game changers” definitely changed the game, but it generally wasn’t in favor of UF.

The Gators ranked 86th in the country in kick return defense and 33rd in kick return offense in FBS this season.

They ranked 79th in punt return defense and  60th in punt return offense.

These numbers just aren’t good enough for the SEC, and they aren’t good enough for a “game changer” to be putting out. He’ll have to improve his unit next season.

One aspect of the program that doesn’t get as much shine at times is the media presence and the content that is put out by the football program. Jordan Herald absolutely killed it this year.

I mean seriously, have you ever seen a video better than this one?

The media department, even though they don’t always get much recognition, is a vital part of any program due to the work they do on recruiting visits and during games.

Florida football is in great hands with Herald leading the charge.

Keep up with Florida football at Hail Florida Hail.