Florida Football: How should Gator fans feel about Billy Gonzales?

They say what’s old is new again, or something like that. But after we threw around an handful of names to fill the vacant wide receivers coaching slot for Florida football, Billy Napier settled on Billy Gonzales.

This is the third go-around in Gainesville for Gonzales, who re-enters the chat with a wealth of experience, a laundry list of NFL receivers he has had under his tutelage, and questionable recent run at recruiting.

Florida Football: Guess who’s back?

Gonzales can flat out coach and hearing all the former players that worked with him pipe up after news broke that he was returning to Gainesville should give Florida football fans confidence. Among the receivers that he has worked with include:

• Percy Harvin
• Odell Beckham
• Freddie Swain
• Van Jefferson
• Kadarius Toney

Gonzales is a high energy guy on the field and when looking around the potential candidates to fill the vacant position, he is as qualified of a coach as Napier was reasonably going to find.

The catch however is his actual recruiting and talent evaluation. Of the five receivers listed above, Harvin was the only one that Gonzales recruited and signed out of high school. He did have a hand in Florida’s current wide receiver room and brought Xzavier Henderson and Jaquavion Fraziars to Gainesville, among others.

Florida’s realistic depth chart at wide receiver for 2023 will be Henderson, Fraziars, Ricky Pearsall, and someone from the freshman trio of Aiden Mizell, Andy Jean, and Eugene Willson. Maybe that fourth slot goes to a guy like Caleb Douglas, Thai Chiaokhiao-Bowman, or Marcus Burke, but its an underwhelming group on paper.

That’s on Gonzales as much as anyone.

Some of that recruiting concern will be mitigated by Napier and Florida might actually get a mix of speed guys to go along with the big bodied receivers that Gonzales prefers.

Billy Gonzales knows what he is doing once on the field and Florida football fans ultimately should feel satisfied that he will fit in just fine with Napier’s staff.