Patience
- Thread starter gatordad1
- Start date
Personally I'd rather have a small class of 15-16, with 10 4-5 stars...save the counters.
There isn’t going to be much of that when you have a new coach with an entirely new coaching staff. Doesn’t look like any holdovers from previous staff. Recruiting has basically always been about relationships.
That said, even the Insiders are very confused why this class is falling apart so badly. You lose kids every time, but they seem to be jumping ship very frequently and very quickly. Like I said, seems to even have those in the “know” confused. Any ideas here Paco?
Napier doesn’t want to elope. He said that in his PC. I don’t think he is even comfortable taking kids that he doesn’t have some kind of relationship with and you have some vice versa. I think he is hesitant that it will work out since transition classes very rarely do. He’s not going to sign a big class. None of these current commits were going to help next years team so I think he’s likely thinking transfer portal help for next year and then recruiting high school prospects for the 23 class. It’s also hard to recruit when you really only have 3 coaches on staff. I think that is why he said he would focus more on recruiting in January when he has a full staff. We are targeting some NFL guys and we can’t get them right now. We will see if it works or not. It’s just still too early.
Here are some exact quotes from his PC
"I'm drinking water through a firehose right now," Napier said. "But it's part of it. And we're going to make the best of the situation one day at a time, one person at a time. That's the approach we'll take.
"You guys are probably going to get frustrated with me. We're going to be very patient and calculated about everything that we do. And eventually we'll have the full group together and we'll go to work."
"I think it's important in recruiting that both sides understand each other and have had time to build relationships, to have conversations, to know who is going to coach you, to fully understand what the plan is," Napier said. "So I think it goes both ways in that regard. I think it's an injustice to them and it's an injustice to us to all of a sudden just hurry up and elope right here at the last second."
He also said that Florida likely wouldn't sign many players in the Early Signing Period, and that once the ESP ended he'd have more of a chance to get his full staff assembled and put together a more coordinated approach to recruiting leading into National Signing Day in February.
I think people probably just maybe didn’t think he literally meant what he said or maybe didn’t think it would be to this extent but he did say these things in his PC.
"I'm drinking water through a firehose right now," Napier said. "But it's part of it. And we're going to make the best of the situation one day at a time, one person at a time. That's the approach we'll take.
"You guys are probably going to get frustrated with me. We're going to be very patient and calculated about everything that we do. And eventually we'll have the full group together and we'll go to work."
"I think it's important in recruiting that both sides understand each other and have had time to build relationships, to have conversations, to know who is going to coach you, to fully understand what the plan is," Napier said. "So I think it goes both ways in that regard. I think it's an injustice to them and it's an injustice to us to all of a sudden just hurry up and elope right here at the last second."
He also said that Florida likely wouldn't sign many players in the Early Signing Period, and that once the ESP ended he'd have more of a chance to get his full staff assembled and put together a more coordinated approach to recruiting leading into National Signing Day in February.
I think people probably just maybe didn’t think he literally meant what he said or maybe didn’t think it would be to this extent but he did say these things in his PC.
If kids are choosing to leave and he lets them, thats great. If these kids are leaving after he meets with them because he is saying no thanks, Well with that comes a high school coach who likely isn’t sending him future players. Very dangerous game to push kids out.
True but keep in mind he nor anybody from his staff personally offered any of these kids. We will see if it backfires on him or not.
I'm not because I understand the circumstances but the Gator Facebook page has a lot of people who are.
I haven’t so much seen people judging the class as wanting to know why kids he is meeting with a jumping ship
How many of the decommits are kids he has met with? I can’t even keep track anymore. Evers & McClellan?
This is exactly what is going on. I read more about him and listened to a couple podcasts and if you keep these quotes in mind it absolutely makes sense. Most of us don’t conceive of the level of detail he’s focused on. He won’t put one piece in place he’s not comfortable with, esp right now. He’s putting down the foundation for what this is going to be, and he’s not going to take a kid he doesn’t know, no matter how good the film. There’s too much at stake. There are no guarantees, but this is the level of detail you see in guys like meyer and saban. No detail is too small, and every decision is made with the goal of winning titles in mind. So if he’s not solid on a kid, he’s not going to roll the dice. Not now anyway. The risk to the process is greater than the chances of success. I’m not saying he’s going to work out, but this is why he’s doing it this way, and pretty much every complain I’ve heard about him would fit his definition of “scared money.” It comes from a place of fear of the unknown rather than trust in the known. He has had not just success but unprecedented success at a lower level, and that’s what you look for
In hiring a guy from a non p5. He knows what he wants to do and what it will look like, and there is no reason to add pieces that don’t fit just to keep some people on a message board from panicking.
He may quickly turn this around so its not some crazy low class (Mac made a late push to keep his from being really bad) but lets just say for arguments sake he doesn't. How many good result SEC coaches have had terrible first classes because they had to be detailed? Haven't looked at Meyer's, Saban's or Kirby's first transition class but I have feeling they were not crazy low.
Did they start with classes as poor as ours? Did they have to deal with early signing day?
No. Mac had one commitment in December after he was hired and then grabbed all the rest of his class in January and early February.
Meyer inherited Zook recruiting. This class for us has been bad for a while. Muschamp not caring about recruiting all that much combined with a bad bad year wasn't exactly helping.
You're just going to have to give it some time.
And our new hire from LSU is an absurd get. That'll help a lot.
I looked them up and they all had respectable like # 11 and # 12 transition classes and even Mullen with early signing had a respectably ranked transition class. Mac's was lower than all of them but still # 22.
I hope you are right but if we end up with a class ranked 30 or lower I will be officially worried this could go wrong in a hurry starting in year 3 unless he pulls a top 6 class in his second one. The first 2 years success will mostly be what he can do with the Mullen recruits and the transfers.
Because they were not coming into a situation with a class this bad and a non existent recruiting apparatus. But let’s be clear… he doesn’t care that much about this class and doesn’t care at all about ESD. Transition classes are often kind of weak. I think he’ll pull together what he can and nail down 22 ASAP. But yes, meyer Saban and kirby are this level of detail and would probably do the same thing in this situation.
You keep looking at the rankings. That doesn’t mean anything now. Look at how those classes faired on the field. Transition classes rarely if ever produced much. We already went through this today and here you are 5 minutes ago talking about it again as if we haven’t already looked at Meyer’s, McElwains and Mullen’s transition classes.
He said he was scrapping ESD and focusing on the kids left for the second signing day.
He also is hard after a WR from Texas (3*) but one I assume he has been evaluating for years so I assume the kid can play.
my only complaint is how he let Gibson go, bad look.
Also, you know who had our worst transition class ever? Urban Meyer. And he kinda did OK.
How many players from Meyer’s transition class actually contributed to those National title teams? Like 2 or 3 total. And they didn’t have ESD back then.
Again this weird thing where they just look at the rankings.
I mentioned earlier that Mac was left with like 6 recruits that eventually signed (not sure how to even look up who recommitted after Muschamp was fired and such). He had one December commit.
Rest were in late January early February.
Pre-ESD. So we'll see. I do like that Napier isn't just going after anybody to fill a quota.
And this "bad look on Gibson thing" is a bit much. Happens all the time.
Of course if the counter argument is that he goes to Evers house and tells him in person to look elsewhere, well that's awful too.
Can't have it both ways. And we all know that many recruits are committed to coaches instead of programs anyway.
The problem is “ghosting” Gibson pisses of a coach who may not want to send players to Billy in the future. It was very unprofessional. It was a **** up. Not saying the end of the world but poorly handled
It literally happens all the time.
And you, nor I, know how it went down.
We know that Evers doubled down on his commitment after the announcement and then had an inhome from Napier which led him to open up his recruiting.
You ever think MAYBE it's these kids that's are the immature dramatic ones? Did Gibson not get enough love initially and was frustrated but wanted to make it seem like it wasn't his fault but the new coach's?
You're better than this.
Let it play out.
And again, I remember you and others bitching about Saban's grey shirts and then forcing them out as better talent got there.
Obviously that strategy didn't piss high school coaches off because he still gets all the talent.
Come on.
Also, how long did he ghost him for? He's only been the coach for 3 days.
You don't think maybe this is the kid? Making an excuse? Making himself look better and taking a dig knowing that it will literally never be known how it went down because Napier or any other coach would ever discuss it publicly?
Dude, you were more than all in on Muschamp. You thought Mac “deserved a chance”
We haven’t made a decent hire since 2004.
I will give Billy his due, Raymond was a huge pull. But a handful of red flags as well. Time will tell but for every positive there is a huge question.
if this one doesn’t work will you sit the next one out?
Mullen was/is a good coach. He just doesn’t want to recruit or put the time in or do what is needed to build a program at this level. If Mullen did some of those things he’d probably still be here.
No you loon, because you and Fever panic 24 hours in.
I, like a normal person, wait and see.
I soured on Mac pretty early on. So whatever. I never cared much for Mullen before or after he was hired but for a time most of it seemed to be going right.
Btw, if you want to bring up things from the better part of a decade ago, I remember when we were hiring Mac and your go to guy was Jim Harbaugh. That was before he took the Michigan job that cycle.
Of course now you hate him because hate Michigan. But oh do I remember you thinking he'd be great here.
Funny how that works.
Florida keeps losing recruits under Billy Napier. It might not be as bad as it seems.
Florida coach Billy Napier said taking over the Gators 10 days before recruiting’s early signing period is like entering a game with three minutes left in the fourth quarter. If you believe the recruiting rankings, then his Gators are losing. Four prospects have decommitted since Tuesday...
Urbans was bad...three contributors, 4 if you include the kicker. David Nelson, Louis Murphy, Keestan Moore, and the kicker...I think Phillips. So it was ranked around 12....but what I posted above is all that really counts. We won the Natty the next yr. So people need to quit fainting.
