Florida legend gives advice to HC Billy Napier after terrible start

Steve Spurrier is a legend for the Florida Gators. The man who was nicknamed "the Head Ball Coach" won the Heisman Trophy as a quarterback for the Gators in 1966 and then won a national championship for Florida as a head coach in 1996.

There are few people more suited to advise this current iteration of the Gators than Spurrier, despite the fact that he's been retired from coaching since 2015.

Perhaps, then, it's wise for current Florida head coach Billy Napier to take Spurrier's advice after a no-good, awful 1-3 start.

Recently speaking on the "Another Dooley Noted Podcast", Spurrier suggested that it's time for Napier and the Gators to make a change.

It doesn't matter what change that is, but something needs to happen.

“The only suggestion, like I said earlier, is try something different,” Spurrier said (h/t On3). “I’m certainly not telling Billy and his guys what to do, but if it’s not going very well, try something different. Whatever that may be is up to him. Do we need different guys playing? That’s up to the coaches.”

Napier is coaching for his job at Florida 

The long and short of it is that Napier is on the hottest of hot seats in Gainesville. He earned some goodwill for himself with last season's 8-5 campaign, and the expectations heading into 2025 were that Florida was going to take the next step and perhaps even be a sneaky College Football Playoff team.

Then, the Gators lost to South Florida at home in Week 2, and that was followed up by consecutive losses to No. 4 LSU and No. 2 Miami.

It's not going to get better, either, because up next on the schedule are No. 10 Texas and No. 9 Texas A&M and No. 5 Georgia. No. 13 Ole Miss, No.15 Tennessee and No. 8 Florida State are all still looming large on the back half of the schedule.

Frankly, the Gators may not win another game if Napier doesn't do something to shake things up. Whether that's a change of personnel, perhaps at quarterback, where DJ Lagway has struggled (his touchdown-to-interception ratio is 5-to-6), or a change in philosophy, Napier desperately needs to pick up some wins.

If he can't adhere to Spurrier's advice and switch things up before it's too late, he can basically kiss his job goodbye.