Billy Napier isn’t having the season the Gators would have wanted. The team has lost three consecutive games so far, and DJ Lagway has been, simply put, poor. Despite that, Napier hasn’t shown one bit of sign of giving up play-calling duties, something which he has done for 8 years now. “Well, it’s Year 8 for me, and I think it’s the way we’ve done it. I think it helped us get here. It helped us.” The reluctance surely stems from his love of play-calling, but it also has to do with his former colleague at Alabama, Steve Sarkisian. About whom he finally opened up almost a decade after his Tide snub.

The bye week has helped Billy Napier go back to the drawing board and make DJ Lagway practice 11 v 11s. If three losses were bad, Week 6 wasn’t going to be any easier. Florida is going against Sarkisian’s Texas, who, ironically, are facing similar issues at QB despite winning three games on the trot. Ahead of the game, the Gators’ head coach was asked about Coach Sark, and he was just full of praise.

“I really like Sark. I’ve always gotten along with Sark. I have a ton of respect for his knowledge. I think he’s a good person, I think he has really good intentions and cares about people, and I respect his evolution as a coach in terms of what he’s been through personally. Offensively, Sark has always done a good job of evolving, from going back to the SC days of being in the huddle, being underneath the center the majority of the time, being very pro-oriented, obviously has been in the NFL, and then going to the college game, being more in the gun, the RPO aspect, and just from a run game standpoint on all the complements,” said Napier.

Steve Sarkisian arrived at Alabama in 2016 as their offensive analyst after a stint as a head coach at USC. Billy Napier, on the other hand, had been at Alabama since 2011 as an analyst. He was later promoted to a wide receivers coach in 2013. The two served in the same offense, but Nick Saban chose the Texas head coach as the offensive coordinator in 2017 over his incumbent position coach.

Funnily enough, that position became vacant because another current SEC coach, Lane Kiffin, accepted a head coaching position at FAU before the playoffs. But Nick Saban didn’t let Kiffin stay till the end of the season, as Kiffin’s new gig was becoming a distraction for the team ahead of the 2017 national championship game. They “mutually agreed” to part ways, and Coach Sark became the interim offensive coordinator.

Alabama lost the national championship game to Clemson. Billy Napier couldn’t get the OC position at the Crimson Tide, but found one at Todd Graham’s Arizona State. The ASU head coach even acknowledged the friction that Saban’s decision caused. The rest, they say, is history. “I think Billy was pissed because he was passed over [at Alabama for Steve] Sarkisian and all that,” said Todd Graham in 2017.

Sark also left for the NFL in the same year but returned to Alabama in 2019 to win a national championship with the program.

Billy Napier outlines what he likes about Steve Sarkisian’s plays

At Arizona State, Steve Sarkisian spent just a year, but took the team to the 9th rank in red-zone touchdown efficiency and was ranked 23rd in third-down conversions. Not just that, ASU under Napier was also ranked top-50 nationally in scoring offense, and that helped the Gators’ head coach finally get into head coaching at Louisiana. Despite Nick Saban’s snub in favor of Steve Sarkisian, for Billy Napier, the Texas head coach is still a world-class play caller.

“You know, a little bit more mid zone and obviously a sprinkle of the gap plays and all the play passes that come with that. He’s always done a good job, and I have a ton of respect for him as a coach,” said Napier about Steve Sarkisian when asked about what he liked in his plays. Considering that, the Week 6 game against Texas for Napier is going to be huge, and for Steve Sarkisian, too, it will be a must-win game.

The two offensive maestros faced each other once in 2021, when Napier was the head coach of Louisiana. Texas easily defeated Napier’s team 38-18; however, in that season, Sarkisian finished with a 5-win season. Can we see Napier using the old wounds to fuel a comeback against Sark’s team? Or is Florida’s season already doomed?