Napier wins early signing day, puts rivals on notice that things are different in Gainesville

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It just feels different.

That was the prevailing thought that went through my head all day as the dominos fell for the Gators and new head coach Billy Napier.

First, it was 4-star (251st ranked) safety Devin Moore out of Naples. Then came DT Chris McClellan (100th ranked) eschewing his home state Sooners to keep his commitment to Florida. The boom was dropped when 5-star (28th ranked) safety Kamari Wilson chose Florida over the fighting Kirby’s and by the time 4-star linebacker Shemar James (64th ranked) chose the Gators, I was expecting it.

In fact, if you watched me giddily recap the early signing day class last night on Gators Breakdown, you saw my confidence when it was announced that St. Thomas Aquinas 4-star offensive lineman Julian Armella had moved up his commitment announcement.

Armella eventually chose Florida State, but that wasn’t what mattered to me. What mattered was that after four years of having the same conversations over and over about Florida’s recruiting and expecting Smart to stuff Mullen in a locker on the recruiting trail, Florida finally had a guy who could not only fight back, but had me expecting Florida to win these battles.

Everything isn’t perfect.

Florida still sits at 14th in the SEC rankings. The transfer portal undoubtedly waits for some Gators players who aren’t going to want to stick around for the Napier regime. There are still gaping holes at defensive tackle – and with the departure of Emory Jones – at quarterback.

But those things all existed before Wednesday. And while they will still exist on Thursday when Billy Napier wakes up, just about everything he could have hoped would happen on Wednesday happened. And the results from Wednesday exceeded my wildest expectations.

The job isn’t over. There is definitely still work to do. But there is now way more hope that Napier is the right man for the job and that Florida has taken the first step towards joining the nations elite programs.

One day at a time, one person at a time.

Pump the brakes, just a little

In case you can’t tell, I’m really excited about Wednesday’s events. And we’ll brag about the good things in a minute, but first I think we should all take a step back and face the reality that the job isn’t done yet.

Dan Mullen actually did a pretty good job in his transition class. He managed to hold on to Kyle Pitts, Amari Burney and Dameon Pierce from the McElwain class. He was able to convince Jacob Copeland to recommit to the Gators. And he got Malik Langham and Emory Jones to flip from Alabama and Ohio State, which gave fans hope that he was going to be able to get the job done against the big boys.

Looking at the metrics, there was reason to believe Mullen’s recruiting had the Gators headed in the right direction.

Mullen compared favorably to Ron Zook, Urban Meyer and Will Muschamp and was a considerable step up from Jim McElwain when looking at transition classes. By that metric, Billy Napier looks to be on a similar path, especially when it comes to top-100 players.

But obviously looking at this list, comparative success on this list does not mean success in the future. Ron Zook’s second class ranked 1st overall and had six five-star players. Urban Meyer and Will Muschamp’s second classes were ranked 2nd and 3rd overall, respectively, and both had three five-stars.

McElwain’s second class ranked 12th overall and Mullen’s ranked 9th. Neither of them signed a five-star player.

The point isn’t to cast aspersions at Napier. I think he did a fine job salvaging what he was able to from the Mullen era to put together a successful early signing day. Rather, the point is to emphasize that everyone but McElwain looked to be solid recruiters after the transition class.

It wasn’t until the “bump” class (second season) that we started to see the differentiation.

Napier the recruiter

Nobody knows this more than Billy Napier. Luckily we do have some data to look at what he’s able to do when given a full year to bring in recruits.

Napier took over the Louisiana job in late 2017, the exact same time that Dan Mullen took over the Florida job. The average recruiting ranking under former coach Mark Hudspeth was 97.6 nationally and 3.9 in the Sun Belt.

Napier didn’t really make an immediate impact in recruiting at Louisiana, finishing 5th in the Sun Belt conference and 105th nationally. His highest ranked recruit was Timaje Porter, ranked 882nd overall. If you’d have been looking at the 2017 class, you’d have been underwhelmed as Hudspeth’s top signee was ranked 682nd.

But upon closer inspection, what you’d also see is that Hudspeth had five players (in a 20 player class) who signed letters of intent but didn’t enroll. Napier only had one.

And then the recruiting jumped. Napier secured the 77th ranked class nationally – and more importantly, the first ranked class in the Sun Belt – in his second cycle. Again, all of his recruits who signed also enrolled in school and he brought in four transfers, one a 4-star defensive lineman (Tayland Humphrey).

Interestingly, when you look at the All-Conference lists (Pro Football Focus) for the Sun Belt in 2021, four players from that bump class make the list, two of them first teamers. But five from the 2018 transition class made it too, three on the first team.

That’s a different model than what I highlighted last week for Alabama, Georgia and other Power-5 teams. Usually those teams got limited production from their transition classes and then exploded with the bump class.

Because these are mostly 2 and 3-star recruits, likely there is a longer development time. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Napier’s team didn’t outright win the Sun Belt until those guys started to show up on the all-conference lists.

In his time at Florida, Dan Mullen had the exact same player rating pretty much throughout. It started at 90.75 in his 2018 transition class and then held near that level (90.56 (2019), 90.74 (2020) and 90.30 (2021)) for the rest of his tenure.

Napier didn’t have that issue, and saw his classes continually improve, with 247Sports player ratings of 80.01 in year 1, 81.81 in year 2, 82.93 in year 3 and 83.53 in year 4.

So let’s transfer that success to Florida while making a couple of assumptions. First, let’s assume that Napier’s class fills out for the 2022 cycle but keeps the exact same average player rating. Then let’s assume that he sees the same average player rating jump in each season that he saw at Louisiana.

Then let’s assume that he were to show the same improvement in his time at Florida.

The 2022 recruiting class is divided up into tiers. The first level is Texas A&M (94.24), Alabama (95.17), Georgia (92.82) and Ohio State (94.04). The next level is Texas (90.37), Penn State (90.87), Notre Dame (91.54) and North Carolina (91.70). That puts Florida right in the top of the second level next year and competing with the big boys in level one in years 3 and 4.

Of course, I think some of these assumptions are flawed. First, Napier is going to improve this class as there are plenty of targets that will raise up that average player ranking. TreVonte’ Citizen (95.33), Jacoby Matthews (98.30) and Trevor Etienne (92.58) would all boost that number.

And I’d actually be slightly disappointed with a 91.64 average player rating for the 2023 class. Yes, it would be higher than the 2022 class, but history tells us that Napier will need to see a jump up into the level one tier in his bump class or it won’t happen.

Whether he’ll be able to do it wasn’t answered by his first early signing day, but his time at Louisiana gives me hope he’ll be able to get the job done.

Napier the person

I knew coming into Wednesday that the transition classes don’t usually yield significant results, even for elite program builders. After all, I just wrote about it last week. So why do the results for this early signing day give me hope?

For many, the hope comes from this quote at Napier’s press conference Wednesday evening.

“I love evaluating. I love recruiting. It’s kind of the competition in the off-season, and certainly although we’ve been going at it here for just a few days, it’s been a lot of fun with this Jumpman and this Gator on my shirt.”

This is certainly a welcome change from the previous two regimes. Both Mullen and McElwain were far more likely to talk about schematic advantages than they were to talk about loving recruiting. They knew it was necessary, but it clearly didn’t bother them that much when they finished slightly behind other SEC rivals.

That always drove me nuts. I mean, how can you rant about not wanting to lose in thumb wrestling and then not care when you constantly get your butt handed to you by Georgia, Alabama and LSU on the recruiting trail?

But the thing that makes that quote different is that Napier didn’t say it to generate hope prior to delivering. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve heard him talk about enjoying recruiting. Instead, he’s talked about the process of building a world-class program, but has been cautious about promising that anything will come quickly.

The fact that he was able to deliver and then he talked about loving recruiting meant that his actions followed his words. This is a stark departure from previous regimes, where it always seemed like they were trying to chase promises with actions that couldn’t quite measure up (remember Clarabelle?).

I know the recruiting quote got everybody excited, but it wasn’t the one that made me think the Napier era has a chance to be truly special. Instead, it was this one, which is how Napier started his press conference.

“Specifically, the UAA pilots, man, I mean we’ve got some of the best in the entire country and we’re very thankful for that.”

Napier then went on to thank the Gainesville community, Bonnie Hopper and Kim Adams, the current recruiting and personnel staff, the previous staff, the creative media team (Kevin Camps), the video staff, and even the Hilton Hotel and various restaurants around the Gainesville area.

That’s a stark contrast to Dan Mullen’s first early signing day press conference where he opened by talking about the swag that Florida had given him to wear, and then praised his new staff coming in and the crunch they were under.

It’s not that Mullen was a bad guy or even that what he said was wrong. It’s that Napier has come in and preached relationships and people and then he exemplified it at a time when he could have puffed out his chest. Instead, he gave credit to everyone and their mothers instead of pointing at himself.

We’ve all been on job interviews. You get a sense of the culture almost the minute you walk through the door. If it is a competitive, cutthroat environment, you feel it. If it is a familial environment, you feel that too.

That’s why this feels different. Every story that has come out about Napier has been glowing. I had one person at a high level who interacted with Napier prior to him being hired at Louisiana tell me that he was the most genuine person he’d ever met. But I’m a natural cynic. It all sounded too good to be true.

But you don’t take the time to thank Bonnie Hopper (responsible for commercial and charter travel for the UAA) without valuing people and relationships. I have no doubt that Napier has some flaws. I’m sure we’ll see them as we get more exposure to him.

We all saw the video of him talking to his Louisiana team after the Sun Belt Championship where he choked up when thanking them for helping him move on to Florida as they celebrated their coach. That video drove home the point to me and today’s press conference reinforced it.

I would have wanted my son to play for Dan Mullen because Mullen was the head coach at Florida and I love the Gators. I would want my son to play for Billy Napier in large part because of Billy Napier. That feels different.

And apparently, the recruits feel it too.