The worst-kept secret in Gainesville is that Billy Napier needed an offensive coordinator. Despite all the talent Napier had assembled, the Gator offense never evolved and kept regressing until Napier's last game.
Despite all the noise that Napier should have hired an offensive coordinator, he kept digging his heels in with the determination that he was the chosen one.
As it turned out, Scott Stricklin was among the people who tried to get through to Napier to no avail.
Scott Stricklin tried to get Billy Napier to hire an OC
At his press conference on Monday, Stricklin went over his decision to fire Napier. He was asked at one point what conversations he had with Napier about trying to get the offense fixed, and his response was revealing:
"We had a lot of conversations related to that. We spent probably hours in conversation. I shared with him that I thought that his strength may be in leading the program and overseeing the bigger picture.
But at the end of the day, my philosophy is, you hire head coaches — as athletic directors, you hire head coaches — you give them authority to make decisions on how they want to run their program, and you hold them accountable to that.
That's probably part of the reason we're here today."
In other words, Strickling was trying to give Napier a lifeline, and Napier refused to take it.
It ties in with what we have said over the past couple of years about Napier: once it was clear his brand of offense was never going to work in the SEC, Napier was either too naive, too stubborn, or too narcissistic to give up play-calling duties.
He seemed miffed every time it was brought up in interviews and press conferences, almost befuddled why people didn't think his offense was any good.
The root problem of Napier's offense is that there was zero evolution to it, and teams were just sitting on well-known tendencies game in and game out. Combined with zero feel of when and where a play should be called, there is a reason why Florida is 104th in the country in points per game despite a five-star QB, two five-star WRs, a future NFL RB, and an All-American center.
Napier had the talent, but because he wouldn't take Stricklin's advice to let someone else call plays, he is out of a job in Gainesville.