When is the right time to remove a coach under fire such as the Gators’ Napier?

While Billy Napier spoke at a makeshift podium after losing to Miami 26-7, Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin stood in the back of the room. The Dan Marino quotes lining the walls of Hard Rock Stadium fascinated the AD.

He had seen everything else before: Napier explaining why he still holds his position is becoming a weekly pastime in Gainesville and other stadiums that have the disservice of watching this Florida team play. His answers, typically, differ by just a few words and a few platitudes.

“I feel like I’m trying to solve problems,” Napier said Sept. 15. “You’re trying to find the right combination of things to help. And look, we’re a handful of plays away from winning.”

So Stricklin played with the wall, paying little attention to his coach. It’s easy to speculate about the thoughts that batted through his head. It’s not easy to lead an athletic program when it’s time to pull the trigger on a hire, which Stricklin has already done with Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen since arriving at Florida in 2016.

There was the expectation Napier would be gone, now 20-22, 3-12 against rivals and 16-22 against FBS foes — each the worst of a Florida coach to receive a fourth year. But with the bye having come and gone, the coach sees No. 9 Texas on Saturday, with five more ranked opponents on the schedule thereafter.

The question, then, is whether this was the right decision, keeping Napier? So we set out, crunching the last 10 years worth of Power 4 coach firings and mutual departures (sorry, Oregon State and Washington State). Since 2015, 55 coaches have gotten the boot for performance-related reasons. Programs have fired some as early as Sept. 11 and others in March. But what departure time has best advantaged a school in future play?

Florida should know well.

“If something needs to be done eventually,” former Gators athletic director Jeremy Foley said after firing Ron Zook in 2004. “It must be done immediately.”

But he might not be entirely right.

Of the 55 firings, 18 resulted in the school finding itself in the AP Poll sometime in the following season. Only twice — USC firing Clay Helton in 2021 and LSU firing Les Miles in 2017 — has a school gotten rid of its coach before October and found success the following year. Nine of the 18 came in November or December, as well, which could provide backing to Stricklin and Florida’s decision to stand pat.

But that doesn’t mean Florida, if it’s going to fire Napier, should hold back for too long. Ten coaches saw the door in December or later. The best record of their respective programs the following year was 6-7. When a coach is fired too late in the year — especially if it’s a decision that has been looming — there often isn’t enough time for a school to appropriately retool its coaching staff and roster for the coming year.

Six programs have fostered 10-win seasons immediately following a change of the guard, including Florida in 2018 with Mullen. Outside of the Helton-to-Lincoln Riley transition at USC, all of the others rid themselves of their coaches between Oct. 17 and Nov. 26. Each school also found its replacement by mid-December, providing more than enough time for coaches to re-recruit their predecessor’s roster.

“In modern college football, your first job is to keep players,” 247Sports director of scouting Andrew Ivin said. “You need to find ways to foster interest. … The teams that turn over quickest are the ones that lean on returning production.”

But here’s where everything above adjusts: the worst final-season winning percentage of any SEC coach (outside of Vanderbilt) was Will Muschamp’s 28.6% in 2020. He got seven games. Through four, Napier is 1-3, with only two games — Mississippi State and Kentucky — remaining on the school’s schedule that it will likely be favored to win.

While half-heartedly watching Napier against Miami, Stricklin accidentally knocked one of Marino’s letters out of place. He stared for a second, waiting for his coach to wrap up his explanation of how hard his team is playing, even if the result didn’t show it.

Stricklin has seen this before — three times, for that matter.