Florida Gators part ways with head coach Billy Napier

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Florida Gators have moved on from head coach Billy Napier midway through his fourth season. The decision to part ways with Napier was made on Sunday following UF’s 23-21 homecoming win against Mississippi State.

Napier is under. 500 after 45 games with the Gators, who are 3-4 this year. They were a preseason top-15 team and closed out 2024 with a four-game winning streak to go 8-5. Napier has an overall record of 22-23 (12-16 SEC) at Florida. That includes a 6-7 finish in 2022 and a 5-7 mark in 2023.

Napier was hand-picked to be UF’s 28th head coach by athletic director Scott Stricklin. He replaced Stricklin’s first hire, Dan Mullen, who didn’t make it out of his fourth season. Mullen posted a 34-15 record in Gainesville but went 2-9 in his last 11 games versus power conference opponents.

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Florida has now fired its fourth coach since 2014 and will conduct another search for the fifth time in 15 years.

Napier was hired after going 40-12 in four seasons at Louisiana, including a perfect 16-0 mark against members of the Sun Belt West Division. He won four straight West Division titles, a share of the Sun Belt crown in 2020 and the 2021 Sun Belt Conference Championship. UL made four straight bowl appearances.

Billy Napier’s tenure at Florida

Napier’s inaugural season began with a 29-26 win over the No. 7 Utah Utes. He’s the first Florida football coach to beat a ranked opponent in his first game. That good will was quickly undone with a loss in The Swamp to Kentucky the following week. Napier went 0-4 against UF’s rivals in 2022 and a road loss at Vanderbilt — the program’s first since 1988 — was the biggest black eye on the entire year.

The 2023 season started with a loss at Utah before the Gators rattled off three victories, including a win over No. 11 Tennessee. They dropped another game to Kentucky, this time in Lexington, making Napier the first coach in Florida football history to lose his first two games versus UK. But the worst loss came at home against a 4-8 Arkansas team, which was part of a five-game skid to end the year.

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The Gators opened 2024 in a 1-2 hole with home losses to Miami and Texas A&M but won three of their next four games as DJ Lagway became the starting quarterback. After losing to No. 2 Georgia and No. 5 Texas without the Freshman All-American, and Stricklin’s statement that Napier would return in 2025, the Lagway-led Gators won four games in a row over LSU, Ole Miss, FSU and Tulane.

Following a season-opening win over Long Island, Florida had an embarrassing 18-16 loss to USF before dropping back-to-back road games at No. 3 LSU and No. 4 Miami. A 29-21 win over No. 9 Texas gave Napier a stay of execution — and his third straight SEC win at home versus a ranked opponent — but the 34-17 loss at No. 5 Texas A&M ended any hopes of Napier turning the season around.

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Billy Napier’s most damning stat at UF was his 0-14 mark away from The Swamp against top-25 teams. He also struggled to beat Florida’s main rivals — Miami, Tennessee, Georgia, LSU, and Florida State — finishing with a 3-12 record. His lone wins came in 2023 over the Volunteers and last season versus LSU and FSU, but he never beat the Bulldogs (0-3) or the in-state Hurricanes (0-2).