One of the things that Billy Napier loved to say over and over was that Florida was going to be a "process oriented" team. This sounded great in theory, until one realized that the hamster on a wheel has a process too, that doesn't mean it's going anywhere.
And now that Napier leaves town as the only coach with a losing record since the 1940s, we are going to take a glance at where his "process" failed.
On field orginzation doomed the Gators
Perhaps the biggest red flag of the Billy Napier Era came against Arkansas in 2023. After getting dragged into a dog fight against a 4-8 Razorbacks squad, it looked like Florida was going to squeak out a win with a game winning field goal.
But when Florida went to spike the ball to set up the field goal, the field goal unit was already on the field and chaos ensued.
Florida was backed up five yards, missed the ensuing kick, and went on the lose in overtime.
It was a moment that was emblematic of repeated flaws that kept popping up over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again for a team that was supposed to be "process oriented."
Whether it was two players wearing No. 3, the inability to get the correct number of players on the field, or constantly getting plays calls in too slowly, the Gators kept having these moments that had nothing to do with the players and everything to do with the coaches.
Offense was too dependent on "the process"
Napier's refusual to hire a true offensive coordinator is among what ultimately sealed his fate in Gainesville. Anytime he was asked why the offense was struggling, Napier always responded with this belief they just needed to execute better.
In Napier's his process would lead to an offense that would do everything correctly on every play, and thus it wouldn't matter what the physical play call was.
In reality, what happened was an offense that was dependent on five-star players making five-star plays because the play itself was given such a low margin of error of working.
Napier seldom put his players in a position to be successful unless they were perfect and following "the process."
Elite talent just wasn't elite enough
Part of why Napier made it work at Louisiana is that he was able to find those "diamond in the rough" type of guys and build them up better than his competitors at the G5 level.
The problem at the Power Four level is that those type of guys are usually still outclassed by the five-star studs who live up to their billing.
So when Napier built an offense around the idea of having players execute at a high level, he did finally get elite play makers in Gainesville (DJ Lagway, Vernell Brown III, Dallas Wilson, Jadan Baugh, etc). The issue is that he didn't extend that talent to his offensive line and tight ends.
For a man who insisted on running two tight end sets, he never recruited the position at an elite level. Likewise, he constantly fell short of landing the elite offensive linemen despite the fact he had two offensive line coaches.
So again, his "process" fell short because the ceiling of those key guys wasn't high enough to begin with.