Billy Napier shares spring game takeaways, message to Anthony Richardson
TAMPA, Fla. — Florida coach Billy Napier made the first road stop of his spring speaking tour Tuesday in Tampa.
Napier received quite the reception with a sold-out event at Amature Works, but he wasn’t nervous about addressing the crowd.
“I’ll tell you this: These events are a lot easier to do when you’re undefeated, right? Really it’s what you would expect,” the first-year coach said. “Certainly excited to be here today to represent our team and our entire organization and staff.”
The Gators concluded their first spring camp under Billy Napier and his staff with the Orange & Blue Game last Thursday. The Blue squad (first-team offense, second-team defense) dominated with a 34-0 shutout win against the Orange team (first-team defense, second-team offense).
RELATED: Breakdown of Florida’s Orange & Blue Game
Some of the standout performers were quarterback Anthony Richardson, running back Montrell Johnson, tight end Dante Zanders, linebacker Diwun Black and cornerbacks Jalen Kimber and Jordan Young. Napier shared his takeaways from the spring game on Tuesday night — hours after addressing his players about it.
“We met with the team today and kinda put the game to bed,” Napier said Tuesday. “The takeaway is the Blue team did what was required to win. When you really evaluate the game, early in the game in particular, the Orange team moves the ball. They lose a four-point play and they missed the field goal. Blue team takes the ball down the field, scores in the red area.
“Same thing occurs: Orange team moves the ball down to the red zone, throws an interception, and Blue team takes the ball, drives the field and scores a touchdown. When you evaluate the conversion downs, when you evaluate the turnovers, when you evaluate touchdowns in the red area, penalties, all the things that it takes to win the game — the Blue team did what was required to win. We could draw up a better turn of events in the game to teach the team and hopefully learn some lessons from some missed opportunities and mistakes within the game.”
Billy Napier on Richardson’s citation
Richardson stole the show in Florida’s spring game, eclipsing 200 passing yards and scoring three touchdowns. The positive press he received afterward was short lived, as he made headlines the next day for recent a speeding ticket.
Richardson addressed his traffic citation and took responsibility for his actions exclusively with Gators Online. What was Napier’s message to him?
“Well, I think the big thing is you play quarterback at the University of Florida. There’s a certain expectation and standard that comes with that,” Napier said. “Certainly, for me, the quarterback has always been a standard-bearer for the entire organization. Anthony made a mistake and certainly the one thing I can say about Anthony is he’s taking complete ownership of the mistake. I think it’s our job here is to discipline Anthony to create an experience through discipline that will affect his decisions going forward. And certainly, he can be a great example to the rest of the team, in terms of how he handles himself, how he approaches this.
“But there’s no question that with mistakes, with struggle comes opportunity for growth. I think we all can agree in here that in our lives, we’ve all made a number of mistakes and with that comes an opportunity. You can choose to make excuses and compromise, or you can choose character and make the necessary adjustments in your life. I think Anthony has made the right decision. We’ll do some things in-house from a discipline perspective and they will all be with the intent to hopefully help him not forget those big signs with numbers on them, you got to stay underneath that number.
“But I do want to make sure I’m not … this is serious deal. I think that there’s consequences that come with these things, and certainly he’s fortunate that he got away with it. And nothing happened significantly. So, there’s a lot of lessons to be learned here, and I’m hopeful that he will.”
