It can’t just be Graham Mertz or bust for Florida at QB … right?

Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

The analogy was a bit harsh.

When Graham Mertz’s commitment to Florida went public, I tweeted that it felt like when you go to the grocery store having not eaten all day, and you tell yourself that you’re going home with a nice juicy steak, but you instead panic and go home with a Hungry Man frozen dinner.

With all due respect to the fine folks at Hungry Man, where sodium is just a number, you get my point. Florida’s addition of a 3-year starter who never had more than 2,136 passing yards in a season was underwhelming. This was a place with multiple national championships in the 21st century that had a wide-open quarterback room after the NFL departure of Anthony Richardson. After Jack Miller’s underwhelming bowl game performance, there was an assumption that the Gators would land a big fish in the QB transfer pool.

Mertz wasn’t that.

However, there was also this assumption after Mertz’s late-December commitment that it was OK if he wasn’t some decorated transfer because blue-chip quarterback recruit Jaden Rashada was set to enroll as the quarterback of the future.

As we now know, Rashada won’t be that. An NIL deal that fell through led to Rashada being granted his National Letter of Intent release and now the Gators are entering 2023 with more questions than answers at the game’s most important position.

It might sound harsh to wonder — is Billy Napier really putting all of his eggs in Mertz’s basket?

The transfer portal is closed until May, so barring an addition from someone who already entered the portal, it doesn’t appear that Florida’s quarterback room is about to get a splashy addition until after spring camp. Of course, there was at least the possibility of landing former LSU quarterback Walker Howard, but he elected to play for Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss.

For now, it’s Mertz and the aforementioned Miller who will battle it out. Without a highly touted true freshman like Rashada, Feleipe Franks or Emory Jones, there won’t be some silver lining if the starter falters. There’ll just be a fan base getting more frustrated and a head coach’s seat getting a bit hotter.

Don’t get it twisted. If the over/under on Napier’s time in Gainesville is 2 years, I’ll be the farm on the over.

But at the same time, there should be that urgency from Napier. Consecutive incompetent offenses usually doesn’t excite the masses at Florida. Ask Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain about that.

(It’ll never not be baffling that Florida failed to have a top-50 scoring offense for the first 7 years of the post-Urban Meyer era. Yes, I know that was a triple negative. So were those Florida offenses.)

Napier sticking with a Mertz-Miller battle into fall camp would be a sign of 2 things. One is that Napier actually liked what he saw from them and he felt that they had enough skills to work with. The other is that Napier didn’t like what he saw from the transfer portal and he didn’t feel that they had enough skills to work with.

And I suppose I shouldn’t totally dismiss redshirt freshman Max Brown, though he’ll be playing on the Florida baseball team and it’s probably unrealistic to expect him to compete for QB1 in 2023.

With the portal closed, the only potential head-turner that Florida could add to compete this spring would be someone like Sam Huard. The former 5-star quarterback entered the portal after Michael Penix Jr. announced his return to Washington. Huard had 4 interceptions on 42 pass attempts in scattered work as a true freshman, and once Penix arrived in 2022 with first-year coach Kalen DeBoer, Huard had even fewer opportunities.

Huard, however, reportedly has eliminated Florida as a possibility.

Of course, even if Florida were to add someone like Huard, Napier would be banking on 1 of those 3 options soaring to new heights with the Gators’ surroundings. A group who just had its offensive line gutted by departures has a nice 1-2 punch in the backfield with Montrell Johnson and Trevor Etienne, but outside of Ricky Pearsall’s return, it’s hard to project the 2023 offense looking much more dynamic than it was in 2022.

That’s why it’s hard to assume that Mertz is going to step in and become the solid, reliable SEC starter that Florida needs to take that next step. Hopes are pinned on him being wildly misused by Paul Chryst’s staff at Wisconsin, and that Napier can find the remedy. At this time a year ago, that’s what we said about Richardson. I wouldn’t say that ended up being a positive. The game didn’t slow down for Richardson like Florida fans hoped it would. At least not for the entire year.

You could say the same thing about Mertz. In his last 2 years as a starter, Mertz threw an interception once every 27.1 attempts, which was almost identical to Richardson’s 27.9 in 2021-22. Mind you, that was while Wisconsin had a Power-5 worst 18 passes of 30 yards the last 2 seasons. That was only 2 more than Navy.

A month ago when Mertz committed, the hope was that he could at least Florida a couple of months of solid quarterback play before ultimately giving way to Rashada. Whether that was in early-November or in 2024, well, I suppose that hope depended on how optimistic of a Florida fan was laying out the plan.

Now, the plan appears to be rebuilding Mertz or banking on Miller moving past the bowl game performance and showing that he can be a viable signal-caller with a full roster. Neither one of those sound like enticing options, but for now, that’s reality.

The plan wasn’t for the Rashada situation to play out like this. If the new plan is for Mertz or Miller to be serviceable until No. 6 class of 2024 quarterback DJ Lagway arrives, that seems daunting, especially knowing that Florida’s NIL ducks don’t appear to be in a row.

Napier’s attention to detail is his biggest strength. He was praised for being so process-driven and for having the understanding of a support staff to help in all things talent acquisition. In 2023, there might not be a whole lot more opportunities for talent acquisition at quarterback. Napier’s best hope is continuing to add pieces around his new signal-caller and to develop like he’s never developed before.

If he can’t do that, his declining approval ranking will reach new lows.

That’s not too harsh.

View Comments

    • That's cute, but it is amazing how fast you Vol fans forgot your recent past. Let me remind you - Georgia State!

      • One year of football success has totally erased the Vol fans minds of those Fifteen(15) years of wandering in the SEC football desert.

        • You are the most annoying 'Bama poster i've ever seen.

          Tennessee quite LITERATELY lives in your head rent free with how much you post about them and the fanbase.

          You add nothing to value in any conversation on this site. You only talk about TN and it's fans and that's it.

          Also, 52-49.

        • ? If knowing my place is getting told the scores of football games then that's a pretty weird way of telling someone.

        • I have to agree with you on that, volfan - but weak retorts are the stock of those inspired to troll.

          That said, I have to tell you that "rent free" is so last week these days. (:

        • I mean, if you are going to tell folks the scores of football games (now do the last 15), don't be shocked when someone tells you the score of a football game.

  • The real reason that Rashada wanted out of his NLI had nothing to do with money. He was just afraid to compete against the Mertzatron!!!!! He knew he would be found wanting.

    All roads lead to Mertz, baby!

  • Watched Mertz's highlights from 2022, he seems to have all the throws and a good touch on his passes. With good coaching he might deliver for us. I'm optimistic.

  • Napier is a former QB, former QB coach, former OC and current play calling HC. He should know a bit more than Connor about evaluating and developing QB talent.

    He certainly didn’t plan to get the Rashada rug pulled out from under him, but I’m also willing to bet a week’s wages he didn’t plan for Rashada to see the field in any 2023 games either, beyond mop-up duty. He didn’t go very hard after any of the flashy QBs in the portal this year, before or after signing “Graham the Mertzinator.”

    That should tell Gator fans that he believes he has all the QBs he needs for 2023, other than maybe a 4th scholarship warm body for his QB room.

    • ...and former hc who had never had a losing w/l record until just last year...and hadn't been a part of a team with a losing record since 2017. i was optimistic about the hire and he could still turn things around in gainseville, but i'm definitely not as optimistic as i was this time last year. he needs some playmakers.

      also, i think you're setting yourself up for some disappointment if you really believe that napier believes that he 'has all the QBs he needs for 2023, other than maybe a 4th scholarship warm body for his QB room.' other than aub and maybe mizz (tbd on horn), i'd take the other 11 teams' starting qb over whoever ends up winning the battle amongst mertz and miller....of which it'll be mertz walking away with it.

      it wouldn't surprise me if mertz finished middle of the pack in the conf..to just outside of the middle. that's actually more of an acknowledgement to a strong core of projected starters in the league than a knock to mertz. that stated, when has middle of the pack or just outside of the middle been acceptable to the uf fan base?

      • I marvel at the level of confidence expressed by most people on Miller’s alleged ineptitude, based on a sample size of one bowl game in which he spent most of his time running for his life.

        This time last year, Napier brought Miller in to back up AR. Why can’t he have brought Mertz in to back up Miller, since Miller is in a stronger position now, with respect to Napier’s offense, than Richardson was this time last year.

        Put another way, who in the media saw Kyle Trask coming?

        • You know what, I think Mertz is going to be a lot better than UF fans think. True he was in a run dominant system, but he certainly appears to get thru his progressions much faster than that RB y'all had pretending to be QB last year...

        • I’ll admit, I didn’t watch a whole lot of Wisconsin football. It was just too boring.

          However, in the few games I did watch, Mertz stared at his primary receiver just before the snap and forced passes into coverage way too often. I also noticed he put good touch on his passes and didn’t gun swing and screen passes at the feet of receivers standing just a few yards away.

      • I think you need a recycle through Troll School, pardner. While the curriculum is strong on speaking through your a*s, you must have flunked the course on being more than one dimensional.

  • Florida made their biggest mistake when the administration decided they were not in the market for a proven successful head coach candidate at the power 5 level.
    Billy was and is a lower tier mediocre head coach. He’s an administrator, I have stated this over and over. There is a huge difference between being a head coach and an administrator, he would make an excellent athletic director but he simply is not a proven successful head coach. You take anyone with some football knowledge and they can win at Louisiana Tech but that doesn’t mean they can win in the SEC.
    He worked under Saban but that doesn’t make him a successful head coach any more than working in maintenance at a hospital makes you a doctor.
    He’s a good man I won’t deny that, he’s probably as best a family man you’ll find anywhere. Ethics? He may just be right up there with the best. However those traits don’t make him a head coach at the SEC level.
    He can recruit……..BUT !!!!! He recruits at Louisiana Tech level.
    I’ll state it over and over YOU WILL NOT FIND A GATOR FAN WHO WANTS SUCCESS MORE THAN ME.
    However when the rubber meets the road Billy is just not going to be the guy who moves Florida past Vanderbilt let alone the rest of the teams in the east.
    The biggest thing Florida fans are riding right now is hope. Hope…..hope that Billy can win, hope that Mertz can quarterback, hope that an all new offensive line can open holes for a 90% run team. Florida’s only hope is their offensive line can be the single elite offensive line in the entire nation because we now have a quarterback who can’t throw and he can’t run and he couldn’t even win in the conference he played in.
    Next season is going to be the biggest fiasco in the recent history of the Florida Gators.
    I will reiterate 3 years and Florida starts all over again looking for a head coach. Maybe by then we’ll have an administration that will go after someone who has proven to be successful.
    My last statement is I do not have any personal reason to dislike Billy Napier it’s just that between last season and the utter incompetence of no improvement during the season and the recruiting to date gives little “hope” of any sustained improvement for this team.

    • And yet, despite it all, Napier will get four or five years to prove you right (or wrong.)

      Brace yourself, year two coming up!

    • Bro just FYI I don't think many people read posts that are this long. I'm sure it has some good content though.

    • CBN coached at ULL, and he wasn’t mediocre, he took them to their conference championship several times and won last year. Oh, and thinking positive is a lot healthier for your well being.

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Connor O'Gara