Continuing with the SP+ previews, this is my take on Florida and LSU:
Billy Napier was successful at Louisiana perhaps because he elevated recruiting to the #1 position in the Sun Belt Conference and brought in Power 5 transfers. He built their roster up from middle of the pack to the pole position.
He may be a good coach but similar to Saban he also had the best talent relative to his conference opponents. His predecessor with the Ragin Cajuns had been dismissed because an assistant had been paying players. That guy is another story and it doesn’t look all that pretty to me.
Anyway, Napier worked under Saban and Swinney as well as McElwain and from what I can tell he leans toward the offensive side of things. He’s expected to be the offensive play caller for the Gators.
He is considered to be a good recruiter but recruiting at Florida against other SEC, ACC, and B1G schools I suspect is going to be a bigger hill to climb that recruiting at Louisiana against other bottom tier G5 schools.
If for whatever reason he can’t consistently elevate the recruiting at Florida into the upper tier of the conference he may not last 4 years which I think is the max the Gators have allowed for their last 3 coaches.
His departure from Louisiana may have been good timing from a business/career perspective. Bill Connelly has Louisiana ranked #124 in FBS schools for returning production this year. Ouch.
This year Connelly and others who track returning production are incorporating the stats of transfer players into their numbers. For example, Pickett is gone from Pittsburgh so these gurus are substituting his lost production with the production at QB by Slovis at USC. Same with Rattler at South Carolina. I’m not sure how that’s going to stand up but that’s what they’re doing.
I have a hard time listening to Kelly at LSU. He sounds like a preacher turned politician. One of the things that he said that stood out to me is that when he got to LSU the roster only had 39 scholarship players left on it. He expect to have 84 guys by the time the season starts. Similar to Florida though some of the guys he’s inherited were high level blue chips so I don’t know how they’re going to do this year. According to Connelly’s SP+ maybe not so good. Both Florida and LSU have a number of what I would consider toss up games, at least at this point. Toss up meaning where the projected margin is equal to or less than one TD.
I’ve got Florida at maybe 8-4 but probably not that good and LSU at 3-9 and I hope that’s where they finish. I would love to visit the Tigers message board after them having a 3-9 season. jmo.
Note: From Connelly’s tweet above, we have the highest returning production relative to any one on our schedule and our numbers aren’t aided by transfers that I’m aware of, at least not yet. jmo.
