I Regret To Inform You Billy Napier Made Correct Call On Timeout In 4th Quarter

A familiar turn of phrase, especially in my line of fandom, is "winning in spite of your coach."

This is a phenomenon that occurs when your football team has the talent to win any game on its schedule, yet the man steering the ship is so incompetent that each week feels like a rollercoaster ride through the win probability meter.

There may not be a better example of "winning in spite of your coach" than one Billy Napier, head coach of the Florida Gators.

Napier and his squad pulled off a shocking 29-21 upset of the 9th-ranked Texas Longhorns, but if you would believe it, the game probably shouldn't have even been that close.

The Gators used a dominant performance from their defensive line and a three-headed attack of Dallas Wilson, Vernell Brown III, and Jadan Baugh on offense to bully the Longhorns into submission, but a series of questionable decisions by Napier made this contest look more competitive than it otherwise would have.

No decision was more scrutinized than Napier's timeout in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter to avoid a ten-second runoff when his team had the ball.

Fans and casual observers alike were left flummoxed at the decision.

Wouldn't the smart play be to force Texas, who is out of timeouts, to accept the ten-second runoff and milk the clock a little more?

I have carved out a sizable niche in my short time at OutKick dumping on the beleaguered Gators head coach, but I have to call balls and strikes fairly, and Billy Napier may have actually made the right call here.

So it turns out, not only did Napier want to keep his potential first-round draft pick at left tackle in the game by using a timeout, he also was justified in calling the timeout since the clock would've stopped anyway.

Now, the play that they ended up calling out of the timeout was abysmal and the question of whether Napier actually knew this rule in the heat of the moment is a different conversation altogether, but you know what they say about blind squirrels and nuts, so I must tip my cap here.

With the win, Napier almost assuredly bought himself at least another half a season in Gainesville, but it's wins like the one he orchestrated yesterday that make me and the rest of Gator Nation counting down the days until his dismisal.

And let's be honest, that day can't come soon enough.