Florida enters defining year of Napier tenure, aim for return to national relevance

Billy Napier sat in the Heavener Football Center dining hall in late July, when a shadow — and an idea — cast over him. Like most others in Gainesville, the Florida football coach knew of Olivier Rioux, the 7-foot-9 center on UF’s basketball team.

But amid the runs of preparation for fall camp, Napier watched the giraffe-like player and made a note.

Days later, Napier had Rioux on the football field at practice. The thought was that his stature could make him a valuable asset to UF’s special teams unit, serving as a one-of-a-kind designed kick blocker. While that didn’t pan out, it represents the mindset his team is championing as it enters the season. Florida is leaving no stone unturned to avoid falling flat, as expectations are as high as ever.

The Gators debuted at No. 15 in the preseason Associated Press Poll, their first time ranked to start a campaign under Napier. This would all be a fever dream if it were October 2024. In the middle of last year, the Gators sat two losses away from a fourth consecutive losing season.

Rumors swirled that the UF Board of Trustees would convene to remove Napier. In response, UF AD Scott Stricklin publicly backed the coach. But a day later, they suffered one of their worst losses in recent memory at the hands of Texas, 49-17.

Safe to say, things changed soon thereafter, and every conjecture about what Florida’s 2025 season may hold is based on what happened in the final weeks of last year.

“Leading up to November, the things that transpired, it forced us to kind of jell together,” defensive lineman Tyreak Sapp said, looking back on the mindset shift that allowed Florida to end the season with four consecutive wins. “It would have been easy to point fingers and say it was his fault, and whoever’s fault. But I feel like it was just up to us to take accountability for ourselves and put it in our hands, because we look at each other like, who else is gonna do it?”

Fueled by that adjusted perspective, UF steps into the national spotlight. Much of the focus is on quarterback DJ Lagway, who deserves equal credit for Florida’s abrupt turnaround last season, starting for the back half of the season as a freshman.

He’s a Heisman contender now, but that’s only if he’s on the field. Through 18 months at UF, he’s missed time with a handful of differing ailments, including a game last season and most of spring practice. After saying he’s “not an injury-prone guy” at SEC media days last month, he’s yet again limited by a calf injury with fall camp underway.

“He’s day to day,” Napier said at the beginning of training July 29. “In general, he’s made a lot of quick progress. ... His ability to participate in practice will be a little bit more each opportunity that we get going forward.”

In recent days, he participated in 7-on-7 drills, but didn’t play in Florida’s latest scrimmage.

While Lagway can’t single-handedly make Florida a top 15 team (although he may try), if his health remains an issue, the Gators surely won’t be in College Football Playoff contention.

Who Lagway’s surrounded by may also play a significant role in the program surging to national relevance.

“This is the first year that we can say we got really all (position) rooms,” offensive coordinator Russ Callaway said. “Not saying that we have 50 first-rounders, but we got a bunch of really good players that are hungry and that have been working. So I think just the ability to spread it around a little bit more is going to be exciting.”

But as Napier and his staff know well, talent alone won’t get them where they want to go. Thus, they’re trying everything from having defensive linemen pick up boxing to work on their twitch to gathering players for “congregation dinners” where their phones are taken, seats are assigned and they answer deep questions about their lives. The hope is that creating a more cohesive team will bring out its best.

So, while Lagway is only a true sophomore, the 2025 season feels like it’s building toward a crescendo of sorts in Florida. New Year’s Six bowls don’t have to worry about hosting the Gators anymore. But with the star quarterback, the school’s most returning starters in years and a bevy of talent, there’s an air of hope that things are about to change.

Rioux won’t be blocking kicks and, hopefully, no Florida defender should need to box on the field, but the Gators are taking every step to make this the year they rise again — to contend in the SEC, to seize a place in the national conversation and to prove that Florida football has turned a new leaf.

This story was originally published August 19, 2025 at 6:00 AM.