GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The first spring camp for the Gators under head coach
Billy Napier is near the finish line.
Florida hosts the annual Orange & Blue Game on Thursday night at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, providing fans their first glimpse of their new head ball coach. Memo to fans: do not wear any yellow.
Based on Napier's comments over the weekend, he saw too much of that particular color during Saturday afternoon's scrimmage.
"We had too many undisciplined penalties,'' Napier said. "That's probably the main takeaway. Last week we played 120 plays and we had two penalties and this week we were way up there."
Napier said the Gators did some things right. They did a good job of protecting the ball. He liked their energy and effort. He just didn't like the sight of those yellow flags littering Florida Field.
In his final season at Louisiana, the Ragin' Cajuns averaged 5.5 penalties per game, which ranked tied for 47th nationally. The Gators averaged 8.08 per game, which ranked 123rd.
Napier can live with 5.5 per game considering Louisiana finished 13-1 and won the Sun Belt Conference championship. But for the Gators to show drastic improvement from their 6-7 season a year ago, they will likely have to reduce the number of infractions that resulted in 105 penalty yards per game.
That is just one storyline heading into Thursday night's game. The two most notable stories of camp centered on the date change of the Orange & Blue Game and the departure of quarterback
Emory Jones.
Here are others that have garnered attention during spring camp:
QUICK READS
--
Napier's appetite to cater to his players looms large with Gators writes
Edgar Thompson of the
Orlando Sentinel.
--
Player shortage forces Napier to be creative; he plans to be very aggressive in transfer portal writes
G. Allan Taylor of
The Athletic.
--
Tight ends coach William Peagler fired up about emergence of Dante Zanders writes
Jacob Rudner of
247Sports.com.
-- Napier looks to
develop four-dimensional players writes
Zach Abolverdi of
On3.com.
-- Receiver
Justin Shorter wants to go out on top as a senior writes
Ethan Hughes of
GatorCountry.com.
-- Defensive tackled
Lamar Goods announces he is headed to the transfer portal writes
Graham Hall of the
Gainesville Sun.
-- Tampa native
Gage Wilcox's
career likely over for Gators writes
Matt Baker of the
Tampa Bay Times.
-- The Orange & Blue Game
a chance to Napier and Gators to showcase the program writes
Topher Adams of the
Independent Florida Alligator.
TOPICAL TWITTER
The Orange & Blue Game is on their minds ...
Gators cornerback
Kaiir Elam one of top players at his position in upcoming draft ...
The Gators gymnastics team got a visit from Napier ...
Former Gators punter Johnny Townsend returns to town this week for a good cause ...
