One of the maddening aspects of Billy Napier during his tenure with Florida Football has been his approach heading into halftime. Almost without fail, one can count on Napier taking a conservative approach and running the clock out rather than trying to pump the ball downfield to get points heading into halftime.
Last night in the CFP semifinals between Penn State and Notre Dame, Napier probably felt vindicated in his approach after Drew Allar threw a game-losing interception rather than play for overtime.
To do so ignores what Notre Dame did heading into halftime to help spark their comeback.
Florida Football: Chew Clock
We are not going to run through all of Napier's greatest hits when it comes to being conservative with two minutes to go, but the most recent incident was against Ole Miss when he was actually putting a drive together for a potential field goal attempt, called a time out, and then ran the ball to let the clock expire.
There was also the game against Kentucky when he had a 14-point halftime lead and still managed to get booed.
As maddening as moments like that have been, the Allar interception is a reminder of the risk one has when trying to hurry up, and we can almost guarantee that moving forward if Napier has another conservative moment, he will cite the pick as part of the rationale.
But at the end of the first half, Notre Dame got aggressive themselves and were rewarded. Even in the middle of the drive, they had to replace Riley Leonard with their backup, and rather than bleed the clock out like we can 100% guarantee Napier would, Marcus Freeman kept the gas pedal down, and the end result was a field goal heading into halftime.
Notre Dame won the game by a field goal for those keeping score at home.
Just store these two moments away in your memory bank for the inevitable time in 2025 when Napier has 1:45 to work with and, let's say, two timeouts but elects to play it safe.