Florida Football Recruiting: The juxtaposition of Dan Mullen and Billy Napier

Early Signing Day has come and gone for Florida Football, and the Gators have finished 11th in the 247 Team Rankings. There is still time to move to the top if they can land a couple of final prospects, and as we wrote yesterday, if we had to give the class a report card grade, we would give it a B.

It's a solid class with a handful of players we do like, but one of the narratives floating around trying to claim this class is better than the classes that Billy Napier's predecessor used to bring in doesn't hold as much water as one may think.

Florida Football: Talent Acquisition

One of the common critiques of Dan Mullen was that his recruiting just wasn't good enough to contend for a title. His classes were good enough to go 10-2, but whenever Florida had to go against a squad with top-five recruiting classes, the talent gap began to show.  

Add on the fact that Mullen had a laissez-faire attitude when it came to recruiting, famously stating, "We're in the season right now, we'll do recruiting after the season, when it gets to be recruiting time, we can talk about recruiting," and Gator fans felt they were never going to get over the hump with Mullen in charge, prompting the change to Napier.

On the surface, one would look at Napier coming in 11th during year three and say, "Wait a second, didn't we eviscerate Mullen for not having top ten classes?"

You would be right.

Then, the counter-argument is that the recruits Mullen signed frequently never made it to campus or made an impact. If we are being honest, there is a hint of truth to that. As we highlighted last week, Mullen's class of 2019 was ranked 9th, but only one of the seven players from that class who were ranked in the top 150 overall wound up making a real impact for the Gators (Kaiir Elam).

But this notion that Napier's recruiting classes are leaps and bounds better than Mullen's because of this idea that Napier's evaluations are elite is flimsy because there isn't enough data beyond anecdotal examples to actually support that.

Napier's 2022 class was hastily patchworked together due to when Napier was hired, so it isn't fair to judge him based on that class. And we don't know yet which members of the class of 2024 or 2025 are for sure going to pan out.

But there is enough data to start judging his class of 2023, which finished 12th in the 247 rankings.

That class had 22 commits, and in 2024, where everyone in the class was either a redshirt freshman or a sophomore, 12 members of the class took at least 100 snaps for the Gators.

Compare that to Mullen's class of 2020, which finished 8th and had 14 players take at least 100 snaps in 2021, in addition to Jeremy Crawshaw, who didn't take 100 snaps but was the starting punter.

It's not to say that Mullen's classes were great or that Napier's classes are bad. It's to say that, like a lot of things in the Billy Napier Era, there is this wall built around Napier that attempts to absolve him from any critiques or pointed questions, and if you are to question it, you are told, "Well, you just don't know ball."

Napier just had the top two members of his class of 2023 transfer out (Ja'Keem Jackson and Kelby Collins) in addition to another top 200 player transfer out last year (Will Norman).

Of the other five members in the top 200 overall from that class, four took at least 100 snaps in 2024. Whether they had an impact is debatable.

Dijon Johnson would have the strongest case after a solid showing against Ole Miss and FSU. Kamran James did have the second-most hurries on the team in 2024, but just one sack. Eugene Wilson was relegated to running 27 orbit motions a game before he got hurt. Aidan Mizell wound up with 13 catches for 152 yards.

All of these players could still wind up being great, but when we blindly shout from the mountaintops that Napier's classes are leaps and bounds better than Mullen's, we are doing so based on hope and the sour taste left in our mouths from the Dan Mullen Era.