Florida Football: Three takeaways from Billy Napier’s press conference

Fall camp is opening for Florida football, meaning real football is just around the corner. The outside outlook for the Gators may not be the brightest, but Billy Napier’s squad internally is a confident bunch heading into the 2023 season.

Napier took to the podium and answered questions from the media this morning for his 2023 Fall Camp Press Conference.

Florida Football: Fitness matters

In Napier’s opening remarks, he made sure to highlight a handful of players that have made great gains in the weight room over the offseason. He noted, too, that 53 players set records for “max velocity” this summer.

One particular player that saw little action last season that Napier made sure to highlight was defensive lineman Jack Pyburn.

According to Napier, the former three-star prospect has added 10 pounds of muscle while dropping his body fat percentage by 6%.

If you haven’t seen his highlight film from high school, it is worth checking out.

Another player that stood out in Napier’s roll call was freshman Tony Livingston. Napier claims he has gained 28 pounds of muscle since January. And given the lack of depth at tight end this season, he is a player worth keeping an eye on.

These numbers were juxtaposed by a question Florida’s strength and conditioning coach Mark Hocke answered earlier in the press conference. When asked about the weight gain defensive tackle Desmond Watson had in the offseason, which caused quite the stir on Twitter when Florida initially updated player weights for the season, Hocke made sure to praise Watson as the “Eighth wonder of the world,” but also acknowledged that the goal isn’t for Watson to play at 439 pounds this season.

Leadership matters

One of the major themes Napier preached was accountability, not just from players to their coaches but also from players to other players.

"“There is a renewed accountabillty with this group of players. They would tell you that. We saw really good leadership from a team prespective.”"

Among the things Napier has done to increase buy-in is making sure players have accountability partners and to make sure they recognize other players that are doing the right things off the field.

Compared to the stories we heard leak out after Dan Mullen left, particularly during the 2021 season, it is refreshing to hear.

Napier isn’t waiving the white flag on 2023, but…

Anytime he has been asked about what the expectations are for Florida football during the 2023 season, Napier has made sure to give measured responses, and today was no different.

Napier genuinely believes this year’s team is deeper than last year’s team, but he also made sure to point out that this year’s team will be playing a lot of new guys.

That’s not new news, and true to his philosophy, he is trying to ensure the foundation of the team is rock solid first, with the belief that the wins will follow.

"“We need to expose and eliminate any issues that we have. Any chink in the armor we have as we build our team.”"

The translation is that Napier isn’t going to take shortcuts to try and squeeze out an extra win or two if it means that the foundation of the team is going to bottom out as it did in 2021.

Napier’s 21-minute press conference can be found on YouTube.