Florida’s first full scrimmage of fall training camp had some unfortunate fallout — edge rusher Justus Boone ore his ACL and is out for the year — but head coach [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag] left practice pleased with the way his team played against each other.
“I do think that there was a lot of quality football,” Napier said on Friday. “I think there’s going to be a ton of coaching that we can do this afternoon, tonight, and even tomorrow morning as we head into the next kind of group of installations that we’re approaching here.”
Napier mentioned that he’d like his defense to tackle a bit better in open space, particularly the secondary, but he didn’t provide much else in terms of specific corrections he’s looking for.
Just two weeks into training camp, the Gators are only 18 days away from the season opener against Utah. The week prior will be different from the others as the team goes through game prep, meaning the final stages of training camp are already upon us.
Napier probably would like more time to work on things with a roster that underwent a massive overhaul during the offseason, but that’s the reason he wanted most of the team on campus by January. Eight months later, position battles are still being worked out and another year of growth and development seems all but certain for a fan base that desperately wants more.
Graham Mertz was recently named the starting quarterback, but Napier also admitted that the coaching staff is locking in the final pieces of the depth chart elsewhere.
A head coach can only be so optimistic with a team that’s still coming together.
“A ton of things to work on,” he said. “I think the staff, we’ve kind of challenged them to present plans for each player, each position group and the unit as a whole, relative to between-play process, communication, alignment, technique and fundamentals, and then we have to take a big picture look at what concepts we need to add, what situations that we need to work, and then what personnel, what adjustments we need to make in that regard…
“… But I think when we put our first group out there, it’s starting to look like what it’s supposed to look like.”
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