Florida Football hopes roster stabilization gets them over the hump in 2024

Entering year three of his tenure with Florida Football, Billy Napier is in need of a breakthrough season. The Gators have had a complete roster overhaul during the past two seasons and were forced to play plenty of underclassman during the 2023 season.

Heading into a critical 2024 season, Napier is hoping the returning experience on the roster is going to finally get Florida over the hump.

Florida Football: Through The Fire

Appearing at SEC Media Days, Napier laid out his vision for why Florida will be better than 6-7 or 5-7 in 2024. Now as we noted yesterday, the bulk of his focus was on Florida's revamped strength and conditioning program but he didn't address any of the organizational problems that ultimately caused their downfall more times that not in 2023.

One area he did touch on was the fact that one of the struggles from last season was the youth Florida had to rely upon. The Gators had 2,660 snaps taken by freshmen last year, the fifth most in the country.

And while that youth might not have been ready last year, the good thing is that a ton of them are back in 2024 with a ton of experience now under their belt.

"I like our team. I believe in our team. When people ask me why, it's about experience. It's about production. We've got 463 starts on this team, 17 starters returning. We've got 41,000 snaps coming back this year, and we're fourth in our league in returning production. We've got competitive depth for the first time."

- Billy Napier

The part about competitive depth also rings true for Florida. If you think back to last season, what happened when Shemar James, Caleb Douglas, or Graham Mertz got hurt? There was a significant drop off with their replacements. This year, will have options across the board if someone gets hurt or is under producing.

So when Florida takes the field on August 31 against Miami, part of the belief from Napier that 2024 will be better is that the Gators won't be relying on players partaking in their first ever college football game, which will hopefully cut out some of the mistakes we saw from Florida in 2023.