OFFICIALLY DONE : The Gator football program hires former Patriots assistant to run their special teams

Florida is apparently preparing to hire Joe Houston as an additional special teams analyst for the 2024 season. He is a former kicker who played collegiate football at Iowa State and most recently in the NFL with New England. He’ll collaborate with GameChangers coordinator, aka special teams coordinator, and fellow analyst Chris Couch.

Billy Napier still has time to employ or name one of his ten major assistant coaches as special teams coordinator, special teams coach, executive head coach for special teams, or whatever other title he can think of. Last year’s staff changeover occurred in February, so moves this late in the coaching cycle are not uncommon.

Last year, special teams were a consistent source of aggravation, from the two No. 3 issues against Utah to the end of the season. The close loss to Arkansas was especially bad because the Gators had yet another case of ten guys on field goal block, their own field goal unit running on the field while the offence was attempting to clock the ball, and multiple missed kicks, including after the aforementioned snafu and resulting penalty. All of these issues arose in November, following the team’s opening date. There were no excuses then, and there are none today.

The challenges were puzzling to some extent because Florida did not have the same issues in 2022. It might simply be that the squad was fielding more first- and second-year players, as well as transfers on special teams, making communication more difficult. I do not know. What I do know is that not adjusting the staff would have been difficult for Napier to sell as the program entered its critical third year.

If Couch and Houston dominate special teams, Florida will remain one of just a few teams without an assistant coach formally overseeing the third unit. Let’s take a closer look at what that entails.

First and foremost, the NCAA has language for a program’s main coaches, as one would expect: “countable coaches”. In the FBS, you have one head coach and ten full-time assistants.

I discovered an official NCAA PowerPoint presentation, which, of course, discusses some of the factors that make a coach countable. One example is providing technical or tactical instruction to an athlete. Making tactical judgments during practice or competition, as well as off-campus recruiting, are both important.

Other employees are covered by NCAA bylaw 11.7.2, “Non-Coaching Staff Member with Sport-Specific Responsibilities.” The most crucial aspect of this bylaw is that such an individual “is prohibited from participating in on-court or on-field activities (e.g., assist with drills, throw batting practice, signal plays)”. This is the classification that “analysts” fall within. Couch and Houston are non-coaching staff members with sports-related responsibilities.

Some fans are unaware that almost everywhere, all assistant coaches instruct special teams. If your special teams coach also coaches the linebackers, you probably don’t want him to teach blocking techniques. If it’s the tight ends coach, he might not be the greatest person to teach gunners how to catch and tackle returners while sprinting at full speed.

However, when each assistant coach is doing their own thing, someone needs to coordinate the efforts. The usual job title refers to a “coordinator”.

Special teams require the same type of hands-on labour as offence and defence. Someone still has to work on developing schemes, designing good fakes, and determining when and how to audible into a fake. Someone still needs to scout opponents to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Someone must create people groups, determine who is first in specific scenarios, deal with unexpected injury fill-ins, and assess how well the various assistants are teaching their areas of responsibility.

Putting an analyst in charge of special teams can be effective. Georgia hasn’t had a countable coach win a special teams championship since 2021, but it did win the national title in 2022 and finished in the top five in 2023. Also, if an analyst is in charge of strategies and scouting, one of the countable coaches will not be required to do so in addition to his position responsibilities and recruiting.

However, because analysts are not permitted to give guidance or make tactical decisions as specified in the PowerPoint presentation, some additional planning is required for game day. An analyst can communicate with a countable helper, who can then pass information to players, although doing so risks slowing things down or mixing up messages in a quick game of telephone.

Overhauling that element is the Gators’ most serious concern heading into next autumn. Florida was decent or better than average in many of the SEC’s special teams statistical categories. The Gators have even led the conference in punting average the last two years, due to Jeremy Crawshaw. However, these stats do not account for situations such as having fewer than 11 players on the field because someone on the field goal block unit was injured on the last play before the attempt and his backup was delayed in getting ready — a real explanation Napier gave when discussing an incident during the Razorbacks loss.

It could simply be terrible luck that so many things occurred at once. Couch’s seventh season on special teams, and Napier had him supervising the unit from an analyst’s role with far fewer blunders than in 2021 and 2022.

Even if it was just a rash of misfortune, it demonstrated the brittleness of the system as it was implemented. Maybe it works good most of the time, but it was also more unreliable than its designers seem to have anticipated.

Houston’s track record is pretty positive, therefore he could be the missing component in resolving the difficulties. However, the man’s hiring has yet to be officially confirmed, so drawing any conclusions is premature.

Regardless, the addition of another main special teams player of some sort demonstrates Napier’s desire to make adjustments this offseason. He’s been methodically and deliberately working his way through the staff, both on-field and off, and Houston is like many of the new faces in that he’s coming from the NFL rather than another college program. We’ll all find out in eight months whether all of the shuffling was sufficient to cure 2023’s ills, but special teams makes one fewer place where Napier has stood pat this offseason.