Leadership and Experience at All-Time High for Gators in Napier's Year 3

The Florida Gators are bringing a significant amount of experience back from their 2023 team as head coach Billy Napier enters his third season.

The Florida Gators are bringing a significant amount of experience back from their 2023 team. / Matt Pendleton/Gainesville Sun / USA TODAY NETWORK

There’s no way around it, the Florida Gators haven’t been great these past couple of years under Billy Napier. Some of the blame is on him and the overall coaching, but another problem is that they just didn’t have the maturity and experience needed to win games. 

That's to be expected after a coaching change - especially when moving on from a coach who didn't particularly like to recruit.

However, heading into year two under Napier, that shouldn’t be an issue anymore. The Gators will be way more battle-tested than they’ve ever been in the Napier Era. 

“We have 17 starters coming back. We're fourth in the league in returning production. We've got 41,000 snaps of experience coming back,” Napier said during his media availability on Tuesday. 

Having that many starters return is going to be a vital part of how the Gators perform next season. There aren’t many teams in Division I that are going to compete at a high level with a bunch of players who have little to show on their resume like they’ve had in certain positions these past two years. 

“I think there's just a different level of leadership and accountability right now,” Napier said. “I think we went through a little bit of a youth movement year two on certain parts of our team, and we're reaping the rewards of that to some degree now.”

Furthermore, seeing this many key players back in the program for 2024 will help cultivate the culture in the building and improve the leadership that Napier is talking about. 

And one player who is certainly going to lead them this year is preseason Maxwell Award watch list nominee and starting quarterback Graham Mertz, who is in his second year with the Gators offense.

“Graham Mertz has had a phenomenal off-season -- mentally, physically, emotionally, the leadership element,” Napier answered when asked about Mertz’s evolution. “It's his team, and he proved it on the field last year with how not only he produced but also the way he competed, the toughness, the grit.”

Returning their starting quarterback from a year ago is somewhat unfamiliar territory for the Gators. Other than Kyle Trask (starter for most of 2019 and all of 2020) and Felipe Franks (starter from 2017 to early 2019 before injury), there haven't been many quarterbacks in the program that have been named starters in consecutive years since 2016 for Florida. 

Having a familiar voice behind center and leading the offense on the field will be crucial for a group that is going to war with one of the hardest schedules on paper next season. 

Additionally, it is not only returning players who bring experience to the table. The Gators also went out and grabbed multiple players out of the portal who played a significant number of snaps for their previous school. 

From the portal, the Gators added many veteran talents including Elijhah Badger, Caleb Rillos, Asa Turner, DJ Douglas, Chimere Dike, Trikweze Bridges, Joey Slackman and Brandon Crenshaw-Dickson to help bolster positions in need of veteran experience. 

So, if Florida Gators football is going to succeed in 2024, then a large reason as to why they do will be because of their experience and leadership in the building.