Florida QB Graham Mertz tries to take the heat off HC Billy Napier

Florida Gators' head football coach Billy Napier is in a tough spot just three games into the 2024 season.

He entered this campaign — his third in Gainesville — with a middling 11-14 record. Through three games in 2024, he's 1-2 with bad losses to Miami and Texas A&M.

Sure, Florida boat raced Samford, but beating inferior opponents while not being competitive against the "big boys' is not the expectation in Gainesville.

So much so that there's a ton of heat on Florida to get rid of Napier. There's even reporting that a group of boosters has already pooled together the money to cover the buyout it would take to fire him.

Napier's ship is seemingly sinking, but not everyone has abandoned him yet. In fact, it's worth noting that senior quarterback Graham Mertz seems to be fully in his coach's corner.

“He has my absolute full support,” Mertz said in the postgame news conference (h/t On3 ). “I’ve never seen somebody prep the way that we prep, prepare the way we prepare. We have a great plan going into every game. I know everybody in the locker room trusts coach with everything we got."

The players may still trust Mertz but it won't matter if the people pulling the strings of the program are already out on him — as they probably should be.

Still, Mertz tried to put the blame on Florida's players rather than his coach.

“Honestly, it’s up to us and what we do during the week, what we do during the game. Are you playing with heart or are you not? And I think that’s where us, as a team, we need to come together, and the players need to — we need to play the ball that we know we can play," Mertz said.

Unfortunately, Mertz and the Gators may not have many more opportunities to help Napier turn this around. If he's not fired before these games, Florida still has to run through a gauntlet that features UCF, Tennesee, Georiga, LSU and Ole Miss.