Is Billy Napier’s brand of football a flawed plan at Florida?

As Florida gets deeper and deeper into its rebuild under coach Billy Napier, questions have emerged about the identity of the team Napier is trying to build and whether that identity is the right fit for Florida.

Clearly Napier wants to play winning football. For him, that’s generally looked like having a team that can control possession and grind down games, playing smart in all three phases of the game and playing, as he calls it, complementary football.

You have to be a very physical team to pull that off.

Florida found that out the hard way when it went up to Kentucky and lost 33-14 this weekend.

“Billy Napier came in and he said if you know me you’ll know that this one hurts,” said Florida beat writer Nick de la Torre, recapping the game on the Andy Staples On3 show. “And it hurts because they got beat by a brand of football that he wants to have.

“Billy Napier wants to be what Mark Stoops has built at Kentucky. He wants to be physical. He wants to be a bully. But Mark Stoops has been building it and recruiting to that identity for 11 years, so I don’t know why, in Year 2, you’d go to Mark Stoops’ house and try to out-Kentucky Kentucky.”

Could Florida have done more to emphasize its skill position players and use speed in space? Perhaps. To date, that hasn’t been a big point of emphasis for Napier.

And until he gets the right players in for what he wants to run, it might look a little rough. Right now the primary issue might be on the offensive line, where the Gators have been banged up and simply haven’t proven capable of pushing opponents around.

“Will Florida get to that point at some point?” de la Torre said. “Yeah, I think they can. They’re recruiting great. They can get to that if they want to. Do Florida fans want to be a different version of Kentucky? Probably not.”

It is somewhat antithetical to the way Florida has won big over the years.

“I think when Steve Spurrier was sitting in press conferences complimenting Kentucky’s punter after winning by 45 it’s not because they out-Kentuckyed Kentucky,” de la Torre explained. “It’s because they used their speed on the outside, it’s because they used their speed at linebacker, on the defensive line. Florida is a fertile recruiting ground for skill position players and the coaches that have had success at Florida have had fast teams that lean on that.”

Whether Napier has a change of heart or softens his philosophy remains to be seen. He has preached patience and that his rebuild would take some time.

In any case, Florida sits at 9-9 since he took over, with a 4-6 mark in conference play. That won’t cut it long term.

“I don’t know that Billy Napier wants to be a three yards and a cloud of dust team, but when he looked across the field at Mark Stoops and that football team, he thought, ‘Man, that would be nice to have a team that played like that,’” de la Torre said.

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