DJ Lagway’s regression may be last flaw for Billy Napier at Florida

He has survived a multitude of bad losses and poor decisions, and the dumbing down of one of college football’s most iconic brands. 

But he can’t outlive this.

What saved Billy Napier’s job as the Florida coach in 2024, is the very thing that will get him fired in 2025: you can’t screw up the quarterback. 

Especially when he has generational-level talent. 

“Not good enough,” Napier said after Florida’s stunning loss last weekend to 18½-point underdog South Florida. “And it’s my responsibility.”

The irony of it all hangs like September humidity in The Swamp.

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When Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin announced midway through last season that Napier would return for 2025 – despite an overwhelming amount of on-field evidence that Napier wasn’t fit for the job – the thought process was straightforward. 

Napier needed time to develop freshman five-star quarterback DJ Lagway, whose rare skills could elevate the rest of the team. When Lagway’s performance did just that in the second half of 2024, it elevated expectations for 2025. 

More dangerous: it allowed Napier to double down on his wildly predictable offensive system and play calling. 

Instead of hiring a legitimate and experienced offensive coordinator and play caller at the end of 2024 to help Lagway develop into an elite player, Napier kept betting on himself. A bet that, until Lagway’s seven games as a starter, had crapped out on a weekly basis.

Now Lagway is trying to find himself in that same system, and if the first two games of the season are any indicator, he looks like he has regressed. Same accuracy issues, same poor decisions with the ball, same reckless throws.

Those issues could be overlooked last season when he was a freshman, and when his uber-talent took over. He was raw, but he was a highlight reel ― and you had to live with the mistakes.

Not anymore.

Napier told anyone who would listen this offseason that this was his best roster in four years at Florida, and that he finally had a winning culture set. He had an elite offensive line, and a group of dangerous skill players around Lagway.

Then big, bad South Florida strolled into Gainesville, and the sins of the past washed over it all.

The predictable offense. The unimaginative play calling. The same undisciplined operation where penalties eliminate touchdowns.

All of which falls on the shoulders of Lagway, and his critical second season of development.

The only thing it lacked from the previous three seasons was two players wearing the same number on the same play, or two units running onto the field at the same time with the game on the line. Or any of the countless other maddening coaching decisions of the past.

It did, however, reveal a new low: Baylor transfer defensive lineman Brendan Bett – he of the “winning culture” that was set in the offseason – spitting in the face of a South Florida player on the Bulls’ final, game-winning drive.

It also underscored this undeniable truth: when you lose with rare talent at the most important position on the field, you’re not just doing a disservice to the player and the program, you’ve officially exposed who and what you are as a coach. 

For all to see.

Some coaches never have the opportunity to coach an elite, NFL talent at quarterback, much less one who could be the most talented to ever play the position at the school. Some coaches do, and know enough to get out of the way and watch the magic happen. 

Gene Chizik at Auburn with Cam Newton. Ed Orgeron at LSU with Joe Burrow. Jimbo Fisher at Florida State with Jameis Winston.

The last thing any coach can do is be the reason an elite talent doesn’t reach his ceiling. But when does Stricklin, Napier’s staunchest ally in a sea of turmoil from the jump, finally see it?  

Because if he didn’t fire Napier in the middle of last season, he’s not going to do it now. 

If he didn’t fire Napier after last year’s embarrassing September home losses to Miami and Texas A&M – when Florida boosters came up with the millions in buyout cash needed – he sure isn’t going to fire him after yet another September punch to the gut in Gainesville (with buyout money that’s still available). 

If Napier wasn’t destined for unemployment after losses to Vanderbilt and Kentucky, and after needing a field goal at the end of a meaningless bowl game to extend Florida’s NCAA record of consecutive games avoiding a shutout, he’s not destined for it now.

If Napier wasn’t dead man walking after the fire drill episode of both the offense and field goal units on the field at the same time late in a(nother) home loss to a double-digit underdog (Arkansas), what else can he get away with?

If Stricklin will put up with a predictable offense that lacks imagination, and a defense that until recently has produced historically poor results, what else will he put up with?

If you go into every fall Saturday – I mean, every – with more trepidation than anticipation about which Florida team you’ll see, what more do you need to solidify what must be done?

If you keep hoping for the team that beat LSU and Ole Miss in 2024 to show up, and keep getting the product produced in every other meaningful game since 2022, you can hope in one hand and puke in the other. 

And they’ll look the same.

With or without generational talent at quarterback. 

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.