Gators AD had 'A lot of Conversations' with Napier Regarding Offense Before Firing

Billy Napier's refusal to give up playcalling was a big criticism of his time with the Florida Gators.

Florida Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin detailed his conversations with now-fired head coach Billy Napier. | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- While Scott Stricklin ultimately made the decision to fire Billy Napier, he believes the outgoing former head coach is leaving the Florida Gators better than he found it.

"He's leaving this place in a much better position than when he found it, from the quality of the roster, a lot of the support structure that our team benefits now, whether it's the life skills program like GatorMade or other things, the kind of people he's brought in this program has been top-notch. I just want to acknowledge that and how much respect and appreciation," he said in Monday's opening statement.

Yet, the decision to move on from Napier and begin his third head coaching search was clear despite it being "not an easy decision."

"These things are inexact science when you're dealing with choosing people. And I'm not exactly sure why. I have some thoughts," Stricklin said. "But obviously he did a lot of really good things. Just at the end of the day we didn't win to the level we needed to."

Florida Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin hired Billy Napier in late 2021. | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

While the program, in Stricklin's eyes is in a better place than when Napier found it, his shortcomings were too big to ignore.

A big part of the decision, came down to Napier's offensive deficiencies.

The team's primary play-caller, Napier's team's never averaged more than 30 points per game in a season, including a tenure-low 22.8 points per game this season. Taking away the 55-0 win over FCS-based Long Island, the Gators averaged 21.2 points per game this season.

Stricklin said he had "a lot of conversations" relating to Napier's offense at Florida.

"I shared with him that I thought that his strength may be in leading the program and overseeing the bigger picture," he said. "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."

There have also been reports that Napier was asked on multiple occasions to hire an offensive coordinator with one failed attempt to bring in Charlie Weis Jr. from Ole Miss after the 2023 season. While, Stricklin did not go into detail about those specific conversations, but did admit those converstations did happen.

Florida Gators quarterback coach Ryan O'Hara will call plays moving forward. | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

"I'm going to keep those conversations between the two of us private," he said. "But we had a lot of conversations related to that. It wasn't this or else. As I said, ADs hire head coaches. They don't hire assistant coaches. That was his decision."

Napier remained steadfast in his abilities as Florida's play-caller across his near-four seasons with the Gators despite calls from the fanbase to give those duties up. Prior to his firing, Napier detailed his decision to keep calling plays despite Florida's offensive struggles and other head coaches around the country giving the role up.

"Well, it's Year 8 for me, and I think it's the way we've done it. I think it helped us get here. It helped us," Napier said on Sept. 29. "But look, I think there's a lot of guys that are still doing it, too. You could argue both ways here. I watched several of them this weekend."

Napier also explained his decision came down to keep consistency with quarterback DJ Lagway.

Ironically, that reasoning played a role in Napier's replacement as the offensive play-caller with quarterback coach Ryan O'Hara set to take over, interim head coach Billy Gonzales confirmed on Monday.

"I think it's important that he has an opportunity to sit and talk to DJ and have DJ look at him in the eyes," Gonzales said. "I think that's always something that I've always thought was an important piece as a quarterback coach, getting a chance. That's the main reason to me why I would like him to call plays, just because of that relationship of being able to look at the quarterback, talk to the quarterback, visualize the quarterback, so they're seeing the same things and hearing the same things."

Florida will get two weeks to prepare for the post-Napier 2025 season with a bye this week before facing Georgia on Nov. 1 while Stricklin begins his third head coaching search at Florida.

"My sense is we will have a wide variety of candidates," Stricklin said. "We want people who can win championships at the University of Florida. That's going to be our goal. We want somebody who can come in here, be a strong leader and win championships. And, like I said, there's probably people from a lot of different backgrounds that could have the potential to do that."