When news started to break over the weekend that Deshawn Purdie probably wasn't going to make it to be a member of Florida Football, one of the quick counter-narratives to come out was that Billy Napier shouldn't be blamed for the departure. Purdie apparently thought he could compete with DJ Lagway for playing time, and he might be the only human on Earth who actually believed that.
So even we here at Hail Florida Hail, noted doubters of Billy Napier, have to acknowledge there was little Napier could have done if someone got into Purdie's ear to convince him to leave.
But as our X profile states, I just ask questions out loud, and I do have one follow-up question.
Florida Football: Method Man
The common defense of Napier's portal approach is that he is "methodical."
Back in 2023, he told the Tampa Bay Times that:
"You've got to flip over every rock in a short amount of time, right? So, sometimes our process doesn't fit the timeline, and hey, we lose out on a situation. … We're not going to speed through that process."
As people started to wonder aloud what exactly Florida was doing last year in the portal, given the lack of players Florida signed early, the deliberate and methodical defense was used, and eventually, the Gators did sign 17 players and finished with a top 10 portal ranking.
The only problem is that only six of those commits went on to be contributors in 2024, which was 11th in the SEC.
Now, heading into 2025, fans were told up and down how aggressively Florida was going to attack the portal, only for Napier and crew to largely sit on their hands.
The defense once again is that Napier is being deliberate and he is biding his time to get the right guys.
Florida isn't the only school to have someone suddenly change their mind, and in the new era of the transfer portal, cases like this will happen all around the country. But the problem is that when someone like Purdie does defect, it pokes a giant hole in the narrative Napier wants us to follow along with that he is an unquestioned grade-A evaluator.
Because the other problem for Napier is that Purdie joins a growing list of QBs to burn Florida. We like to have fun with Jaden Rashada, but Napier's evaluations made Rashada the chosen one of his class of 2023, only to wind up getting sued by him. Reports claimed that Napier had a plan in place for Austin Simmons and DJ Lagway to co-exist, only for Simmons to bail to Ole Miss.
Then we add in the flops of Jack Miller, Aidan Warner, and Clay Millen not even being competent backups.
And if you really want to get petty, you can point out that Florida was 7-9 in games that Graham Mertz started and averaged 28 points a game in those 16 games. Old Dominion and Georgia Southern averaged 28 points a game in 2024 and were 69th in the country.
For Florida to have a successful 2025 season, losing Deshawn Purdie has zero impact on that pathway. 2025 is basically DJ Lagway or bust.
But losing Deshawn Purdie is grounds to question if Napier is as methodical and detail-oriented as he claims, why do so many of his evaluations end up with this type of drama?