One of the Tennessee Vols' top SEC rivals lost a key assistant coach

The Tennessee Vols aren't the only program searching for new assistant coaches midway through February (Tennessee needs a running backs coach and a linebackers coach thanks to recent departures). 

The Florida Gators are also dealing with some staff changes. Florida lost strength and conditioning coach Craig Fitzgerald to Boston College earlier this month. And on Thursday, the Gators learned that offensive line coach Darnell Stapleton is leaving Gainesville for the NFL to join the Washington Commanders' coaching staff. 

Stapleton spent the last two seasons on Napier's staff at Florida. He previously coached under Napier at Louisiana. 

Napier is an oddity in college football as he actually has two offensive line coaches on staff. Rob Sale, Florida's official offensive coordinator (Napier calls plays), is also an offensive line coach. 

The expectation is that Napier will pursue another offensive line coach, based on comments he made in late 2021 when he was hired at Florida. 

“Certainly when you’re coaching offensive line, you’ve got to coach five players,” said Napier when he was introduced at Florida. “Nobody’s got one coach coaching five DBs. I don’t know why you wouldn’t have two guys coaching the offensive line.”

There's been an unusual amount of coaching staff changes this year that have occurred later in the offseason than normal. And it seems no program has been immune to those late changes -- almost everyone is dealing with it to some extent.