Billy Napier talks about what went wrong at Florida

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Napier felt like he had let down everyone in the program. He talked to assistants, staffers, head coaches he worked with in the past and opposing coaches to diagnose where the breakdowns occurred. Now the head coach at James Madison, Napier came to the conclusion that he should have delegated more — and sooner.

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“I think that we really struggled to manage the workload that came with NIL, that came with the portal,” Napier told On3. “?I think in general there, the work continued to be loaded up in terms of my responsibility to our team and to our entire organization. So, for me, in general, if I can sum it up, I would say the ability to delegate and hire exceptional people in certain areas and hand over more responsibility to those guys and empower them to do their job at a high level.

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Napier recognized he should have given up offensive play calling, saying, “I think that I probably was a little stubborn.” His skill as an offensive coach helped him get there in the first place, but Florida’s offense struggled for the majority of his tenure, never finishing better than 57th nationally in scoring. He held onto the responsibility even as he needed to spend more time on everything that came with roster management in the NIL era.
“I think that that took away from the level of detail that I had provided in a lot of those areas in the past,” Napier said. “And then once my back was against the wall, I wasn’t confident or comfortable enough to hand that over to somebody else.”

Napier gave up play-calling at James Madison, a decision he said he should have made “a while back.” He hired offensive coordinator Cam Aiken, whose offense at East Tennessee State averaged 32.5 points per game last season in the FCS. Aiken worked for the previous two years as an analyst at Ole Miss.

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Though the on-field results were not there, Napier felt proud of other things he and his staff did at Florida. He thought the Gators improved their facilities and “the infrastructure of the football organization.” He mentioned Florida built its NIL collective during his tenure, and he pointed out new head coach Jon Sumrall kept about a dozen staff members who had spent multiple years with the team.

“I do think that we, just in general, built an organization from top to bottom that was impressive,” Napier said. “And I think that the fact that they retained the majority of those people within that organization, I think, speaks to that. I’m thankful for Jon for doing that. I do think that a lot of those people are incredible at what they do, and I think that they deserve to stay, and I’m glad that he saw that. That was able to create some stability for them. So, in general, I think that’s ultimately what we did. We finished up the facility piece and then obviously built a football organization that I think could go toe-to-toe with anybody in the country.”

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