It was a Saturday in January, and Billy Napier was at work. Saturdays in January are work days for college football coaches -- what days aren't? -- and especially when you're the head coach at Florida and you went 5-7 in the season that ended six weeks prior. So Napier was at work with his sons Sammy and Charlie when the trio rounded a corner and he saw something that provided him confidence in what was to come, even six months later: 70 Gators in the weight room, putting in work outside of the team's winter conditioning schedule.
That wasn't a one-time thing, either. The fire that burned in winter remained lit into the summer. "Just a few weeks ago, Fourth of July, we've got 53 guys on a Saturday doing extra work," Napier said.
Napier arrived in Dallas for Florida's turn at SEC Media Week armed with that knowledge, along with stats. Lots and lots of stats.
Forty-one thousand snaps return from 2023, along with 17 starters and their 463 combined starts. Quarterback Graham Mertz is chief among them, with his 43 starts, 8,300 passing yards and 58 touchdowns. Florida is fourth in the SEC in returning production. "We've got competitive depth for the first time," Napier said. From January to April, Florida put on 500 pounds of muscle.
As Florida has grown mentally along with physically, Napier said: "The discipline and accountability on this time at an all-time high... This group is about the work."
"The guys are just striving for one thing," Mertz said. "We just want to win."
That's all well and good, because -- on paper, on July 17 -- Florida faces what may very well be the most difficult schedule in college football history. Eight Gator opponents will be in the preseason AP Top 25.
That would be a daunting schedule for anyone, it's also a particularly tricky schedule slate for Florida in particular.
The Gators open with Miami, the preseason ACC favorite, at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. UCF comes to Gainesville on Oct. 5. Georgia is the consensus preseason national champion pick. Florida State is the defending ACC champion and has beaten Florida in both of Napier's tries. "Each one of those matchups will be critical," Napier said.
So that's four losable rivalry games, plus Texas, Ole Miss, LSU, Tennessee, Texas A&M and everyone else.
All of this awaits against a backdrop where Napier has finished sub-.500 in both of his first two seasons (6-7 with a bowl loss in 2022, 5-7 last year), at a place known for its impatience. Florida employed five head coaches in the 20 seasons between Steve Spurrier and Napier; one was Urban Meyer, and the other four failed to surpass four seasons.
Napier has a few strategies to deal with his schedule:
1) Take everything as it comes. Florida can't play Miami, Georgia, Texas, Ole Miss and Florida State all at once. Miami comes to town first, then Samford. The Gators' 12 games will arrive over a span of 14 weeks, and so there was no use in treating those eight preseason Top 25 opponents as a monolith. "One of the things I've learned in our profession is you've got to break things up into short periods of time for your players," Napier said. "The next 10 days are extremely important."
2) This schedule might not be as daunting in reality as it appears on paper. We think we know the challenge ahead of Florida, but September, October and November might tell us a different story than the one we expect to hear in July. It only happens every single fall. "We've got a different team. Every team in our league, about 25 to 30 percent of their roster is new. Some of these teams that we play aren't the same teams they had last year," Napier said. "We certainly are not the same team we had last year."
3) The gap between failure and success is closer than it seems. Six of Napier's 14 losses were by one score, and that doesn't include UF's most recent game, where Florida led undefeated Florida State in the fourth quarter before losing by nine. "We've got to learn how to close those games out," Napier said. "Get in position in the fourth quarter to close those games out consistently."
Five wins keeps Napier on the perceived hot seat. Eight might turn that seat into a throne. "8-4 Florida to the Playoff" has been one of the most common talking points in the halls of the Omni Dallas this week.
Look, doctors rarely leave an operating room and announce they botched it, and likewise Napier didn't come to Dallas to surrender. But Napier took the podium Wednesday equipped with a catalogue of numbers and six months of observation that Florida is ready for the challenge. And it started back in January.
"I've got confidence in our team because I've been observing the work."