On Sunday, the Florida Gators became one of the latest programs to hop on the coaching carousel, firing head coach Billy Napier. The move starts Florida's Head Coaching search instantly and as one of two SEC openings and one of the best programs in the Country, this vacancy will be appealing to many.
While the administration runs the search behind the scenes, the fanbase is going to be fully invested in who takes over this program. Everyone in Gainesville would love to land Lane Kiffin, but he may be happy where he is at Ole Miss. After Kiffin the hot name appears to be Eli Drinkwitz at Missouri, but he lands in the same boat as Kiffin.
If Florida isn't able to reel in either of the poachable SEC coaches, the search truly begins as Florida will then cast a far net. It's impossible to fully know who Florida will interview and look at, but everyone has their best guess.
Pete Thamel ties 3 Head Coaches to the Florida job
On Monday, Pete Thamel, Rece Davis, and Dan Wetzel broke down the firing of Billy Napier and what may come next for Florida on the ESPN College GameDay Podcast. Pete Thamel started with stating the obvious fact that Florida fans would love to have Lane Kiffin or Eli Drinkwitz, but he also gave three other candidates to keep an eye on.
"I also want to add the name Jeff Brohm to the mix. Talk about a guy who fits the ethos you were talking about of yards, aggression, creativity, fun. If you don’t like watching Jeff Brohm’s teams play, ooh. How about those opening couple scripts against Miami, off a bye week? He’s constantly innovating, and that’s kind of part of when Florida was great they had great offensive minds behind it."Pete Thamel
If you look at Jeff Brohm's track record as a Head Coach, he certainly deserves a serious look based on the turnarounds he's already accomplished. By the end of his tenure at Purdue, the Boilermakers were winning 8 and 9 games while playing in Big Ten Championships. Brohm's worst season to date at Louisville was a 9 win season and in 2025, he appears headed to another impressive year.
Thamel then turned to another ACC Head Coach predicting that Rhett Lashlee's name will linger in the Florida search.
"I think Rhett Lashlee‘s name will linger around in this search, he’s a possibility. He may stay, because he’s at a very good job and they’re going to pay him whatever he wants, but he’s certainly going to factor into a bunch of these jobs."Pete Thamel
The difficult part for Florida in trying to land Lashlee is that SMU may be a better landing spot in the sense that Lashlee will get unlimited resources and he gets to play an ACC schedule on a yearly basis. Lashlee has experience in Florida from his time as Miami's OC, but he may be more of a factor in the search at Arkansas where he played and coached.
Finally, Pete Thamel tied what could be the most realistic name to the job in Washington Head Coach Jedd Fisch.
"I think the name Jedd Fisch is going to be bandied around, too, the Washington coach. He’s a Florida grad. He was famously Howie Roseman‘s roommate for like six weeks their sophomore year. Jedd Fisch came through there, student worker under (Steve) Spurrier, not a player. And has had great success so far at Washington."Pete Thamel
The fact that Jedd Fisch has spent time on a Steve Spurrier staff may be the most attractive to the Florida administration. Fisch has proven he can build a winner taking a bad Arizona program from irrelevance to winning 10 games in his final season before becoming a stabilizing force at Washington after Kalen DeBoer was fired.
The next few months will be interesting for Florida as they'll hope there isn't massive fallout elsewhere as the Gators are currently the best job available. Once the season stats to wind down, the Gators search will truly start to heat up which will tell us who's seriously in the mix.