Breaking down the biggest concern with Billy Napier's response to special teams errors
Florida‘s special teams have been a sore spot all season, with a handful of hard-to-believe gaffes costing the team at key moments along the way. Saturday’s overtime loss to Arkansas provided even more.
The most glaring was a substitution infraction that occurred after Florida picked up a key first down to get into very makeable field goal range with the clock winding down at the end of regulation.
While the offense went to spike the football to stop the clock after a nice gain, the field goal unit ran onto the field.
Because of that, officials deemed it a substitution, which granted Arkansas the right to substitute its personnel — which the Razorbacks didn’t seem interested in doing anyway. But Florida then snapped the ball to spike it before officials had signaled ready for play, triggering a substitution infraction.
The Gators were backed up five yards and the ensuing field goal attempt sailed wide right from 44 yards out.
Head coach Billy Napier was pressed on the special teams gaffes throughout the season and whether he’d consider operational changes after the season, and he mostly deflected and pointed to all areas of the team needing improvement. It was an answer that likely left many Florida fans unsatisfied.
“It was perplexing to me his response of clutching my pearls, ‘Whatever do you mean, special teams problems?'” GatorsOnline’s Nick de la Torre explained on the Andy Staples On3 show.
To understand Florida’s particular special teams situation, it’s important to know that the Gators do not employ a full-time, on-field assistant as a special teams coordinator. Analyst Chris Couch is in charge of the unit.
Because he’s not an on-field coach, he’s technically limited in what he can do on gameday. De la Torre dove into the nitty gritty of Saturday’s breakdown to explain.
“You have to help the players. Is hiring an on-field coach helping the players?” de la Torre said. “When you’re saying — and I don’t think this is Billy Napier’s intention — we had a player think he heard a word and that signaled him to run on the field and they ran on the field, well then my question, follow-up to that would be, the play before you had a timeout, and then you ran. So who’s your coach for special teams to be in the offensive huddle to say, ‘Hey, if we get a first down, the clock stops and then this is what we’re going to do.’ You don’t have a coach, you have a graduate assistant, an analyst who can’t, by letter of the law, coach on the field.”
That’s a major potential problem.
On top of the substitution infraction, Florida’s special teams have sporadically but routinely lined up with only 10 men on the field on field goal blocks, and the team was infamously penalized against Utah for having two players with the same number on the field on special teams at the same time.
The crux of the issue is that most Florida fans want some changes on special teams and how the operation is run, and Napier didn’t exactly hint at that with his response Saturday after the loss.
“You can say, ‘Yes, we are evaluating it, we think it’s been a rough patch.'” de la Torre said. “And that kind of leads you down the direction, ‘We think this has been a weakness and we will evaluate that.’ You’re not saying, ‘Hey, we’re firing people. Heads are rolling.’ But you’re saying, ‘Yes, I acknowledge what the fans (are saying).’ It lets the fans know, ‘Hey, we hear you, we also agree with you and we will make those changes.’
“Instead if I’m Billy’s PR guy we’re leaving that press conference and I’m saying, ‘Hey, man, we did not do well there.'”