Florida Football: Should Napier keep looking to supplement Mertz?

Florida football was seemingly linked to every transfer portal QB in the country this offseason and ultimately settled on Wisconsin QB Graham Mertz. At the time this seemed okay because the Gators were also going to have Jaden Rashada on campus to compete for a starting job.

With Rashada more than likely gone, and Billy Napier indicating this week that he is willing to continue looking for a QB that wants to be in Gainesville, Florida is at a crossroads on whether to stick with Mertz heading into the 2023 season or to keep searching.

Florida Football: Three strikes and you’re out

It seemed like Florida football was going to land a big-name transfer QB and kick-start the roster building for 2023. Sam Hartman, Grayson McCall, and Spencer Sanders were all names linked to the Gators at some point in the process.

When Napier signed Mertz out of Wisconsin, it raised eyebrows as he wasn’t on anyone’s radar. 247 Sports has him as the 24th-best transfer QB. That’s not a ringing endorsement.

Mertz’s stats are not pretty, His film is a little bit better as there are signs he can make reads and deliver an on-time ball to his receivers. Mertz was ailed at Wisconsin by an abysmal offensive line, a wide receiver corps that dropped everything, and a coaching staff that refused to make things easier by running play-action.

It seemed like Mertz was only picked up by Napier to be a veteran presence while Rashada developed. He was never meant to be the guy to take the reigns for an entire season.

If Napier had full confidence in Mertz to lead Florida football, he wouldn’t have been in Louisiana this week trying to pick up LSU transfer Walker Howard.

Howard is off to Ole Miss instead.

So now what?

At this point, Napier must decide whether to keep searching or whether to let Mertz and Jack Miller battle it out. If this was NCAA 14, you keep searching because who cares what emotions robots have? In real life, it’s more complicated because you would be telling both Miller and Mertz “Hey, thanks for coming here. We don’t really want you but maybe will do.”

If Napier were to keep searching, he has three options at this point:

Spencer Sanders – When Sanders declared for the portal, Florida football was a betting favorite to land the Oklahoma State QB. Most recently it was believed Auburn would be his new home.

When healthy, Sanders is an accurate QB with a lot of attributes Gator fans will like. He was hurt last season and his accuracy dropped below 60%.

Sam Huard – One of the top-rated QBs in the class of 2021, Huard never saw much of the field with Washington during his two years in Seattle. He’s a west coast guy and Napier is probably never going to take a west coast guy ever again after Rashada.

Marcus Stokes – The four-star QB is currently the only QB ranked in the top 50 by 247 Sports that is still uncommitted. Stokes of course was committed to Florida football but was released after a controversial video of him surfaced in November.

Truthfully, he was probably dropped because it came shortly after Rashada committed and Napier was able to use the video as an excuse to get away from Stokes and have to take two QBs.

So what should Napier do? He should at least pick up the phone with all three of those guys and gauge interest levels. If Mertz and Miller don’t like it, good. Make them play better and earn their spot. One positive for Napier we can say during his year at Florida football is that he is going to play the better talent more times than not (Etienne over Wright for example).

As we have stated multiple times, the roster Napier is building points to 2024 being the breakout season. But a disaster in 2023 could derail that vision before we even get there.