Florida coach Billy Napier finished the first scrimmage with his new team increasingly aware he needs more bodies before next season.
It still might not be enough to accelerate the Gators’ rebuild. Either way, this roster isn’t going to cut it.
Napier applauded the Gators’ physicality Thursday, praised the overall quarterback play and appreciates the players’ buy-in with a new staff.
“There’s a lot of bright spots,” he said.
The looming dark cloud is a lack of quality depth to run the kind of operation Napier expects and the Gators need.
Florida’s lack of personnel prevented Napier from calling 25 to 30 plays he normally would. Injuries at tight end, including a career-ending one to redshirt freshman Gage Wilcox, forced long snapper Rocco Underwood into action at his high school position.
The redshirt freshman and former Lake Mary standout responded with a pass reception.
“We got a lot of players who are taking advantage of opportunities,” Napier said. “You can sit around and complain about those things but to me, I see opportunity. That’s the approach we’re going to take.”
Once the offseason arrives, Napier and his staff will seize every opportunity to beef up the Gators’ roster. Expect Florida to be very active in the transfer market.
“We have spots available,” Napier said. “You can anticipate us being very aggressive in the portal this spring. We need players.”
Florida’s needs also will benefit the bottom of the roster.
Napier expects to award scholarships to five walk-ons. While a nice gesture to a well-deserving group the move does nothing to narrow the gap with Alabama, Georgia and Texas A&M.
For now, the Gators push to improve during the final seven spring practices, culminating with the spring game the night of April 14.
Despite not fielding a complete third string, Napier does not anticipate injuries and depth concerns will alter the game’s format. Under former coaches Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen, the Gators did not always have enough offensive linemen to stage a spring scrimmage.
“As long as we’re able to stay relatively healthy … We’ll be able to play our traditional spring-game format,” Napier said. “We got a lot of work to do. Heck, I haven’t even thought about the spring game to be honest with you.”
One area of concern is cleaner quarterback execution during stressful situations. Napier, however, chalks some of it up to the Gators’ inaugural scrimmage in a new system.
“Probably the one negative there were a couple of critical situational errors,” Napier said. “But that’s part of it because everything we’ve been doing has been compartmentalized and the situation is defined. When you get to a scrimmage all the variables are changing, the ball’s moving, you have to change gears mentally.”
Napier declined to single out individual plays or performance Thursday.
“We’re a long way from individual players,” he said. “What we’re focused on right now — we have a lot of good individual players — we’re trying to build a football team.”
To help get across his message, Napier invited Les Snead, general manager the Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams, to speak to his team.
Snead echoed Florida’s first-year coach when it came to program building.
“A term that they use was, ‘We,’ not me,” Napier said. “He told many stories about individual players on their team really accepting their role, working to earn more, the importance of each individual role, whether that’s big or small. We all know we got about 100 football players out there, but there’s probably 250 people or so that contribute to our team.
“It’s important that we all understand that it takes a lot of people.”
This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Edgar Thompson at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com or follow him on Twitter at @osgators.
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