The last time the Samford Bulldogs came to Gainesville, the Florida Gators allowed more than 50 points in a shootout victory.
Florida head coach [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag] — who wasn’t with the program at the time — is hoping for a much different scenario this weekend. Much has been made of Florida’s grueling strength of schedule, but the lone win circled on the calendar all offseason has been the Week 2 matchup with Samford.
Napier isn’t simply planning to win on Saturday. He’s looking for Florida to put its most complete product on the field since he took over the reins in December 2021.
“We’ve got an opportunity this Saturday to play our best football this season,” Napier said Wednesday. “It’s obvious (that) we’re very frustrated with how we performed last week, and there’s only one way to fix that and it’s to perform better this week.”
Napier seeing improvements in practice
Napier took the brunt of the criticism from fans and media after the Gators took the field seemingly unprepared to deal with a Hurricanes team that is also in its third year of a rebuild. Seeing how far ahead Miami was compared to Florida was a true wake-up call for Napier’s crew.
In response, Florida has delivered perhaps its best week of practice of the year. The job is far from finished, though.
“Obviously, we’re in the middle of some adversity, and I think it’s important, that we have perspective here. We practiced the way we should practice today. I’ve got a ton of respect for the way the team worked today. We need to continue to improve.
“Credit to the players. I do think, in life, sometimes we get consumed with ourselves. I’ve heard it said that success is when I add value to myself and significance is when I add value to others, and I think it’s important for our young people — as they go along and they pursue success and they have success as people, as students, as football players — that while they’re doing that, they create significance by how they do that and how they impact other people.”
Napier knows that his team failed to check many boxes in Week 1. A steady wave of deserved criticism won’t let him forget that, but he the coaching staff can earn some goodwill back with an appropriate throttling of an FCS program.
There’s still hope in Gainesville, but Napier can’t afford to be caught bluffing about his team’s preparation level again this year. There needs to be a massive step in the right direction for Florida to have any hope of making a bowl game.
“I’m excited about what I saw out there today. We have to continue to get better each week, and I do think that we’ve got an opportunity to be a good football team as the season goes here.”
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