Billy Napier, Florida Lose Key Assistant Coach

Originally posted on Athlon Sports | By Samuel Kingery | Last updated Jun 4, 2025 1:33 AM ET

The Florida Gators football coaching staff will be looking a tad different moving forward.

According to 247Sports' Matt Zenitz , special teams coach and analyst Chris Couch is departing from Billy Napier's coaching staff to join Willie Fritz's staff at Houston. He will be the Cougars' special teams coordinator, leaving Florida after two years with the program.

Prior to joining the Louisiana coaching staff as special teams coordinator and the director of quality control and analytics in 2021, where Billy Napier was then the head coach, Couch had spent four years at Tulane with Fritz. Couch had the Green Wave ranked in the top 50 nationally in both kick and punt returns from 2018 to 2020.

When Florida hired Napier, Couch followed along the storied SEC program, and was put in the same role he had at Louisiana. The first season they had together in the Swamp was disappointing, and the special teams unit did not perform up to expectations.

The Florida message during that season always put emphasis on strong special teams play, but a special teams turnover led to their demise versus Vanderbilt.

"We made decisions to be aggressive and try to return them but we weren't very good at it," Napier said midway through the 2022 campaign.

The 2023 season special teams performance was again lackluster. Before the 2024 season, Joe Houston, formerly of the New England Patriots, joined the program as a senior analyst and was eventually promoted to special teams coordinator.

The Gators' special teams unit showed significant improvement over two seasons, and two of the key specialists, long snapper Rocco Underwood and kicker Trey Smack, will be on Florida's roster for the 2026 campaign.

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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