Florida Football: It’s October 18th, and Billy Napier hasn’t been fired

We here at Hail Florida Hail read a lot of things that get written about Florida football from many different outlets. Almost everyone who writes primarily about the Gators within the main circle of writers is level-headed and has a solid grasp of the program’s direction.

Yes, there are times when we must critique things as we see them, and by no means is a call for patience a free pass to do whatever with no consequences. But before the start of the season, most Gator fans understood that 2023 would be an up-and-down ride, and people in Gainesville were willing to take that journey with Billy Napier.

Those from the outside were convinced that Napier would be such a trainwreck in 2023 that Florida would have to fire him in the middle of the season.

It’s weird though; it’s October 18th, and Billy Napier is still the head coach of the Florida Gators.

Florida Football: You sure about that?

As we highlighted with Graham Mertz, most national projections had Mertz as one of the worst QBs in the SEC.

So much for that.

If we hit our rewind machine here at Hail Florida Hail, we can find similar projections about Napier.

(Rewind noises)

Stewart Mandel of The Athletic said:

"“[He’ll be fired in] Week 11. Big brand SEC programs don’t let coaches have two bad seasons, and Napier, 6-7 in his first one, has the makings of a last-place team this fall. That former Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz is his best option at that position does not bode well. If he really goes 3-9, the boosters will find $32 million to pull the plug.”"

Brandon Walker of Barstool Sports said:

"“If you wanna see a team that might get their coach fired this year, it’s this one. The Florida Gators. The Florida Gators might have to fire Billy Napier at some point this year.”"

Even once the season started, Paul Finebaum of ESPN said:

"“You’ve got a brand new president there in former Senator Ben Sasse who is a forward-thinking guy who would look at Deion (Sanders) and go, ‘I like this.’ I think he could consider this the ticket,”"

(Cut back to present time)

We say this all the time here on the site that we are not full-time writers. We do this part-time while working full-time jobs.

Yet how is it we do this part-time better than some of these people do it full-time?

It’s October 18th, and Billy Napier hasn’t been fired because those paying attention knew that would never happen. He’s playing literally the youngest roster in the country and still has a signature win over Tennessee while guiding Florida football to a 5-2 record heading into the bye week.

The people in Las Vegas, who are normally pretty accurate with these sorts of things, even lost focus and set the over/under win total for the entire season at 5.5 wins.

Most computer models rank Florida somewhere around 30th in the country, which sounds about right.

It’s by no means the endgame goal for Gator fans, but considering the Neighbors to the West lost to Jacksonville State in year two of their current overlord and Miami’s current overlord doesn’t know how to take a knee, we would like to think the trajectory of Florida is looking just fine and you “Sunbelt Billy” trolls should sit this one out.

Florida has a rough schedule down the stretch and is only favored in one of their remaining five games, according to ESPN’s FPI.

So it is still possible things will go south and we feel far less optimism six weeks from now.

But based on what national prognosticators told us before the season, we are just going to point out that it’s October 18th, and Billy Napier has not been fired.