Chomp: Phase I of Napier’s plan underway as Florida adds new players & staff

Florida football coach Billy Napier speaks to the crowd during halftime of an NCAA college basketball game between Florida and Alabama, Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022, in Gainesville, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Stamey) (Matt Stamey, Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

This story first appeared in Chomp, our Gators football newsletter. Subscribe here.


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The Gators have entered phase one of coach Billy Napier’s plan.

It’s the foundation phase, which began Tuesday.

“We really try to define that for the players, you know, this is an action of establishing an organization. You know, it’s a body upon which something is built, right. It’s a basis upon which something stands,” Napier said at a news conference last week.

In college football, Napier said, the process starts over every year because there will be new plays and new staff.

“The organization always has probably 25 or 30% attrition, so new leadership roles at all levels,” he explained. “And then you got a group of new people, rookie players, rookie staff members that have to learn expectations and learn systems and kind of our approach.”

Napier said the goal is to build trust within the organization to establish communication.

“I think it’s important that you define self-discipline for the players. We want to define attention to detail, and we’re trying to create a structure here of routine time management, obviously, is a big component of this, and we want to establish expectations as a new group, a new way of operating here, establish accountability, and it’s important that we’re consistent and that we’re fair,” he said. “You know, we have goals and objectives for all the development parts of our program, right, strength and conditioning and performance, sports science, nutrition, the athletic training room, academics and our new GateMade program.”

In an episode of Gators Breakdown, host David Waters weighs in on Napier’s news conference about how the Gators plan to attack in phases.

🐊 Commitments & roster moves

The first official visit weekend of 2022 for the Gators certainly paid off.

The Gators got commitments from safety Miguel Mitchell, cornerback Jalen Kimber and offensive lineman O’Cyrus Torrence.

The 247Sports Composite has Mitchell, who’s from Oxford, Ala., as a three-star player in the 2022 class.

Torrence is coming from Louisiana, where he started for three years and a two-time All-Sun Belt Conference selection. ESPN has him on its 2022 Way-Too-Early All-America team.

And Kimber is transferring from rival Georgia.

Napier strikes big in the transfer portal.

In this episode of Gators Breakdown, David reacts to the commitments.

Meanwhile, in other roster moves, defensive end Brenton Cox Jr. confirmed he will be back for the 2022 season. And tight end Kemore Gamble will be transferring to UCF.

🏈 Another former Giants assistant among additional hires

Napier is rounding out his staff in Gainesville.

He grabbed another former New York Giants assistant, Sean Spencer, who was named the Gators’ co-defensive coordinator and defensive line coach. Spencer sent the last two seasons as the Giants defensive line coach. Before that, he spent six seasons at Penn State and three seasons at Vanderbilt. He joins former Giants offensive line coach Rob Sale, who was named Florida’s offensive coordinator and offensive line coach.

Other hires over the last week or so include Ty Darlington, who joins Napier’s staff as in the role of quality control — tight ends. Darlington spent the last five years at this alma mater, Oklahoma.

Jay Bateman was named inside linebackers coach. Bateman spent the last three seasons as North Carolina’s co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach. Prior to his time at UNC, Bateman was Army’s defensive coordinator for five seasons.

Savannah Bailey will serve as senior director of player relations and GatorMade, a holistic player-focused and purpose-driven initiative that develops each Gators football team member during their tenure at Florida and beyond. Most recently, she was the director of life skills and community service at Clemson for five seasons. With the Gators, Bailey’s role will focus on creating and implementing opportunities for applied leadership and professional development of Gators football scholar-athletes.

Former Gator Cheston Blackshear will serve in the role of quality control — offensive line. He returns to Gainesville after spending the last four seasons at Dartmouth, where he was the offensive tackles and tight ends coach. He was a member of the 1996 national championship team and began his coaching career at Florida as a graduate assistant from 2002 to 2004.

And Chris Couch will serve as a GameChanger coordinator. In his role as an analyst, he will focus on the special teams unit. Couch spent last season with Napier as Louisiana’s special teams coordinator and the director of quality control and analytics. Before that, he spent five seasons at Tulane.

In the latest episode of Gators Breakdown, David discusses with listeners the staff hires, as well as recruiting news. Also, former Gators defensive lineman Antonio Valentino shares his history with Spencer.

🏀 Men’s hoops wins 2 SEC games

The Florida men’s basketball team won two consecutive Southeastern Conference games.

Last weekend, the Gators got their first SEC victory this season. They defeated South Carolina 71-63 on the road.

Then the Gators pulled out another SEC win on Wednesday night when they beat Mississippi State 80-72. The Gators were able to get the W even though they were without their leading scorer and rebounder Colin Castleton due to a left shoulder injury aggravated in practice.

Coach Mike White said after the game Castleton’s injury is “significant” and he will miss more games.

Next up: Florida hosts Vanderbilt this Saturday at 1 p.m.

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