It’s easy to like what Swinney/Saban alum Billy Napier is building at UL Lafayette

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Well damn, Billy, you’re not messing around.

After a bumpy first few months on the job, UL Lafayette head coach Billy Napier has unleashed hell since the start of October 2018. On the field, he engineered a run of six wins in eight games, which resulted in his Ragin’ Cajuns both winning the first Sun Belt West division title and raising their S&P+ ranking nearly 25 spots (from 118th to 94th).

They faltered early, both in the conference title game against Appalachian State (they were down 17-6 before making things interesting) and in the Cure Bowl against Tulane (they were down 24-7 20 minutes in, then rallied), and finished 7-7. But the start-to-finish improvement was obvious.

Off the field, Napier signed one of the best classes in Sun Belt history.

According to the 247Sports Composite, UL’s 2019 recruiting haul ranked 76th overall, ahead of USF’s, Cincinnati’s, BYU’s, FIU’s, and that of a lot of other schools that shouldn’t be finishing behind a Sun Belt school. This class ran away from the rest of the 2019 Sun Belt’s.

We’ve heard enough through the years about the high school talent in Louisiana that it’s always confusing that an ambitious Louisiana school isn’t collecting more of it. Well, now the Cajuns are collecting it.

Napier signed mid-three-star talent from Kentwood (defensive end Kendall Wilkerson), Thibodaux (receiver Brandon Legendre), Baton Rouge (linebacker Tyler Guidry), Metairie (quarterback Chandler Fields), Monroe (offensive lineman Logan Newell), Mandeville (receiver Jacob Bernard), New Orleans (defensive back Jaden Henderson), Greensburg (offensive lineman O’Cyrus Torrence), Kaplan (defensive tackle Quintlan Cobb), and more.

He raided every corner of Louisiana in exactly the way you would want a head coach of Louisiana-Lafayette to do, and he did so after at least somewhat proving his bona fides on the field, too.

Now all he’s got to do is keep it up. Eventually, predecessor Mark Hudspeth couldn’t. Hudspeth exploded out of the gates, taking over at UL in 2011 and igniting a run of four consecutive nine-win seasons.

The Cajuns mostly ranked in the 90s in S&P+ but twice achieved much greater, ranking 64th in 2012 and 65th in 2014 and confirming every bit of potential this program seemed to possess. But keeping the roster stocked grew more and more challenging, and he went just 15-22 in his last three seasons. The Cajuns fell to 118th in 2017 and elected to start over with Napier.

For one year, at least, Napier has lived up to a résumé that appears lab-created for success. He was Dabo Swinney’s first offensive coordinator at Clemson in 2009-10, went to Nick Saban’s Alabama for a year, followed Bama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain to Colorado State for a season, then spent four more in Tuscaloosa. He took over Arizona State’s offense in 2017 and improved it from 48th to 35th in Off. S&P+.

Napier has Swinney and Saban experience, he has experience in the South, and he’s still not yet 40 years old. (He’ll hit that milestone in July.) It sure seemed like he was ready for a head coaching job, and he’s thus far made the most of the opportunity he’s gotten.

Mind you, Hudspeth didn’t leave a bare cupboard. Napier inherited a team with a high level of returning production and eventually took advantage. The transition from an experienced core of talent to your own star recruits is trickier than it sounds — just ask UTSA’s Frank Wilson, who also overachieved in his first season, signed some great recruits, and stumbled.

We’ll find out a lot more about UL’s prospects over the next two years. In 2019, the Cajuns must find a new starting quarterback, then hit the road to face Mississippi State (in New Orleans), Ohio, and, in conference play, Arkansas State and Georgia Southern. They do get Troy and App State at home, but S&P+ projects them as a favorite in only six games overall. They could improve and struggle to top last season’s seven wins.

Then, in 2020, they will replace a potentially enormous batch of senior starters. At that point, the program will officially change from Transition Stage to All Napier. I would bet that this is all going to work out well for Napier, but hurdles remain.

Napier brought Rob Sale, former offensive line coach at Georgia and Arizona State (and ULM!), to Lafayette to serve as his offensive coordinator, and the relationship has worked pretty well so far. UL combined an efficient and explosive run game with a passing game that was a bit all-or-nothing and ended up improving from 75th to 53rd in Off. S&P+.

You could almost make the case that they achieved this improvement despite the quarterback. That’s perhaps a bit harsh, but even though Andre Nunez completed 63 percent of his passes, a lot of that came from a really nice screen game. He took too many sacks (7.1 percent sack rate) and didn’t offset that with enough rushing success, averaging just 3.5 yards per non-sack carry with a 32 percent success rate. (QBs should be well into the 40s.)

Nunez faltered when pressured, and there’s absolutely no guaranteeing that Levi Lewis or whoever succeeds him — JUCO transfer Jai’ave Magalei? one of two three-star freshmen (Chandler Fields or Clifton McDowell)? — will fare any better. In limited opportunities, in fact, Lewis was a bit more explosive as a passer but just as sack-prone and inefficient on the ground. But at the least, the Cajuns might be able to avoid a drop-off at the position.

That screen game really was effective. Running backs Trey Ragas and Elijah Mitchell combined to catch 45 of 55 passes for 578 yards and five touchdowns, and Z-receiver Ryheem Malone was one of the most dangerous screen receivers in the country.

Granted, this typically requires either deception or sturdy blocking on the outside, which means that it became a bit of an all-or-nothing tactic for UL — it’s likely part of the reason they were abnormally effective against bad defenses (46 points per game in wins) and pretty much locked down against good ones (18 points per game in losses). But hey, in the Sun Belt, you’re going to face plenty of bad defenses.

The screen game didn’t keep UL quarterbacks from succumbing to pass rushes, but it did spread defenses out for run success. Ragas, Mitchell, and Raymond Calais combined for 2,912 rushing yards (208 per game, 6.7 per carry); all three are scheduled to return this fall, and they could be joined by Arizona State transfer Nick Ralston as well. Ralston played both RB and LB for the Sun Devils; we’ll see where he ends up in Lafayette.

You know what’s better than having a backfield of experienced and explosive running backs? Having an absurdly experienced line blocking for them. All five starting linemen are back, including first-team all-conference guard Kevin Dotson and second-team all-conference tackle Robert Hunt. All five are seniors, and they’ve combined for 129 career starts.

The run game will still be dynamite, but it’ll be hard to improve all that much with such a high bar. Further offensive improvement will depend on a more consistent passing game, then. Malone’s gone, which hurts the horizontal passing game — you figure either three-star JUCO Brian Smith Jr. or Jamal Bell, last year’s backup, will get the first shots at replacing him. But if the new starting QB can handle pressure a bit better (or if the line can prevent it a bit better), there are a couple of terrifying downfield threats available.

Ja’Marcus Bradley and slot receiver Jarrod “Bam” Jackson combined for 59 catches, a 66 percent catch rate, 17.2 yards per catch, and 15 touchdowns last year. If you couldn’t get pressure on the passer last year, you were potentially getting burned deep.

This offense has all the seasoned weapons it needs to destroy Sun Belt defenses. It just needs a signal caller that can avoid negative plays a bit better.

Considering the depths to which it fell in 2017, the UL defense pulled off a decent bounce-back job last fall. I mean, it was still a bad defense — 116th in Def. S&P+ with no redeeming characteristics beyond decent big-play prevention on passing downs — but the Cajuns were 129th in 2017. 116th is clear improvement.

Defensive coordinator Ron Roberts also returns most of last year’s playmakers, too. The top four havoc leaders are back — end Bennie Higgins, linebackers Jacques Boudreaux and Chauncey Manac, and cornerback Michael Jacquet III — and it appears linebacker Joe Dillon, maybe the team’s best pass rusher in 2017, is back after missing a year with injury, too.

The Cajuns showed steady defensive growth throughout the season, which is certainly what you hope to see.

The improvement came mostly in the back. After allowing a 64 percent completion rate and 159.4 passer rating through nine games, the Cajuns winnowed that to 58 percent and 133.3, with half of the season’s eight interceptions, in the last five.

Jacquet’s return is a boon, as is that of safeties Deuce Wallace (God, the names on this defense are just wonderful) and Terik Miller. But three of the top six tacklers are gone — the front seven has much greater continuity — and for sustained improvement, sophomores like corner Eric Garror and nickel Ja’len Johnson will likely have to raise their respective games.

The pass rush was decent, but the Cajuns could stand to find a couple more disruptors against the run. They ranked just 123rd in stuff rate (run stops at or behind the line), with Manac (13) and Higgins (11) the only players to crack double digits. Napier did sign JUCO tackle Ja-Quane Nelson, but otherwise he appears satisfied to let natural development and maturation drive improvement.

Tight wins over Arkansas State and ULM keyed the division title run, and in both games, UL derived a special teams advantage. That wasn’t a coincidence. The Cajuns finished 15th in Special Teams S&P+, keyed by great place-kicking from Kyle Pfau, solid punting from freshman Rhys Burns, and dynamic kick returns from Raymond Calais and Ja’Marcus Bradley.

Everybody’s back but Pfau, but there’s consolation in the fact that Stevie Artigue, UL’s 2017 kicker (who went 3-for-5 on FGs longer than 40 yards), is back. This should be a strong unit once more.

It’s easy for me to get ahead of myself when talking about Louisiana-Lafayette. The Cajuns improved demonstrably as 2018 progressed, then went out and signed an insane recruiting class. Combine that with Napier’s pedigree, and you can pretty easily see a program ready to explode.

There are most certainly still hurdles, though. The schedule is going to limit the Cajuns’ 2019 upside, and there will be an exodus of Hudspeth seniors at the end of the season, making 2020 a little bit scary from a youth perspective.

Still ... upside, upside, upside. UL is going to have a lot of it in the coming years. The saga of both Hudspeth and Wilson remind us that neither success nor sustained success is guaranteed, but I’m going to give Napier the benefit of the doubt here.

All 2019 preview data to date.