Gators football head coach Billy Napier coached his final game with Florida on Saturday.
The Gators fired Napier seven games into UF’s 2025 season on Sunday, ending a tenure defined by a lack of success and unseen improvements.
Florida wide receivers coach Billy Gonzales will take over as interim head coach for the remainder of the season.
Many expected Florida to have its best year under Napier, potentially competing for a conference championship and a playoff spot following an impressive turnaround in 2024. However, the opposite unfolded.
Florida opened the year with a 55-0 win against Long Island but struggled immensely across its next three games, losing to South Florida, Louisiana State and Miami. Despite the Gators beating Mississippi State 23-21 in Napier’s final game as head coach, his tenure seemingly reached its breaking point following a 34-17 loss to Texas A&M the week before.
Napier, 46, ended his Florida career with a 22-23 record, the worst record of any Florida head coach through 30 games since Raymond Wolf, who went 13-24-2 from 1946-49. He never won a road game against a Top 25 opponent, and his loss to South Florida on Sept. 6 marked the first time Florida lost to an in-state opponent at home besides Florida State or Miami since 1938.
Napier was hired in 2021 and was the successor to former Gators head coach Dan Mullen, who UF fired Nov. 20, 2021. Before he arrived to Florida, Napier was the head coach at Louisiana from 2018-21.
There, he coached the Ragin’ Cajuns to three straight seasons with 10-plus wins, a 16-0 mark against Sun Belt West Division opponents, four consecutive West Division titles, and a share of the Sun Belt title in 2020 and as the 2021 Sun Belt Conference Champions.
Despite the high degree of success he experienced in Louisiana, he never found his footing in Gainesville.
Napier tallied memorable losses year after year as Florida’s head coach. In year one, he went 5-7 with a loss to Kentucky at home and a road loss to Vanderbilt. In his second season, the Gators lost to Arkansas at home, a program that finished the year 4-8 and won just one conference game in 2023. In the following season, Florida was humiliated by Miami and Texas A&M at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, 41-17 and 33-20, respectively.
However, the Gators finished the 2024 season on a four-game winning streak, picking up impressive wins against No. 21 LSU and No. 9 Ole Miss. The Gators also won their first bowl game since 2019.
The turnaround marked a stark contrast from the rest of Napier’s tenure — one that seemingly fulfilled the words that he often spewed throughout his tenure, regardless of wins or losses.
“Our team is really close,” he said repeatedly, this time following Florida’s loss to Texas A&M Oct. 12. “We have to learn how to finish.”
The Gators collected just two wins against FBS opponents in Napier’s final year. The Gators beat then-No. 9 Texas Oct. 4 and Mississippi State on Saturday.
Contact Luke Adragna at ladragna@alligator.org. Follow him on X @lukeadrag.
Luke is The Alligator's Sports Editor and is a senior sports journalism student. In his free time, he enjoys playing with his cat named Pete and going down a rabbit hole of niche professional athletes (shoutout Charles Sims).
