Football: UL bowl journey began with seniors buying into Napier

Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, Dec. 8, 2018

First-year UL coach Billy Napier got his seniors to come his way, and now the Ragin’ Cajuns are bowl-bound. UL plays Tulane in the Dec. 15 Cure Bowl. (Photo: Michael O. Curley, Special to The Advertiser)

When UL faces Tulane at Saturday’s Cure Bowl in Orlando, Florida, it fittingly will be one year to the day that athletic director Bryan Maggard’s hiring of Billy Napier as the Ragin’ Cajuns’ new head coach was announced.

What Napier has done to get the 7-6, Sun Belt Conference West Division-champion Cajuns from there to here largely is a product of getting one very vital contingent to buy his vision.

That group: UL’s seniors.

Seniors like quarterback Andre Nunez and safety Corey Turner. Seniors like tight end Matt Barnes, who after medical setbacks is finishing up his sixth season as a Cajun. Seniors like snapper Jackson Ladner and linebacker Justin Middleton and defensive lineman LaDarrius Kidd.

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“They basically gave us a chance,” Napier said of the mix of junior-college transfers and graduate transfers and ones who’ve been at UL from the get-go, a class totaling 26 in all. “That’s all we asked for.

“They didn’t know us; we didn’t know them. We asked for a chance. ‘Give us a chance.’ And they did that. They bought in.”

But how?

And why?

Appreciating the present requires understanding the past.

Initially, especially on the outside, doubts from some about how the year would go were aplenty.

More: Win against Tulane in Cure Bowl would secure winning season for Cajuns

At 5-7, UL was coming off its third straight losing season in the last of seven years under ex-head coach Mark Hudspeth.

After opening with four straight on-the-field New Orleans Bowl wins from 2011 through 2014, and going 9-4 each of those years, Hudspeth’s hyper enthusiasm had lost some effectiveness.

The Cajuns had gone bowling just once — in 2016, losing to Southern Mississippi in New Orleans to cap a 6-7 season — from 2015 through 2017, and in that ’15 season they finished a dismal 4-8.

The change was made, but not everyone expected to see UL bowling again so soon, let alone appearing in the inaugural Sun Belt Conference championship game, as it did with a 30-19 loss at Appalachian State back on Dec. 1.

But the believers believed, and in due time — sooner, actually — hope morphed into reality.

The feeling-out process went from a couple dates to almost instant move-in status.

“To be honest,” team captain Turner said, “I wouldn’t think we would be here right now if we had (even) a little doubt in January.

“Everybody was against us. And while everybody was against us, me and my teammates and coaches, we just stayed together.”

‘THERE WASN’T ANY BACKTALK’

But the question persists:

What was it that made UL’s seniors — a group at some programs more apt to check out mentally for the final season rather than accept the sales pitch — trust sooner than later all that Napier and his new staff was telling them?

As it turns out, it was Napier himself.

“I think it’s the way he came in,” said Nunez, another Cajun captain along with Turner, junior safety Deuce Wallace and junior offensive tackle Robert Hunt.

“He came in genuine and real about it, so it was easy for us to buy in … and stand behind what he’s trying to do here.

“I’ve said it many times before: I think he’s gonna do something special around here,” Nunez added, “so I stand behind him 100 percent.”

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The seniors, Turner said, saw right away “just the togetherness, and the way that he was putting things together when he came here.”

For a team whose locker-room members in years gone by weren’t always on the same page, and whose defense at times was fighting against — instead of for — its offense, that was important.

“You could see the process, and you could see the mission that he was bringing along,” Turner said. “That made all the seniors really trust, and buy into, the process.”

With them on board, and setting the refreshed tone, Cajun underclassmen jumped on the same ship, most of them sans hesitation too.

“He (Napier) came in and he defined the standard for us,” junior receiver Bam Jackson said.

“When he (did that) … all of us looked around in the room and we said, ‘Well, fellas, it looks like we’re gonna be a good ball team.’

“There wasn’t any backtalk, any resistance, or nothing like that,” Jackson added. “Whatever he said to do, we’re gonna do. We are his soldiers, and he is our leader.”

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Related: Current UL commits list

‘WE JUST LOVE THAT DUDE’

The loyalty came quickly even from those not recruited by Napier and his new assistants.

It’s largely because the first-time head coach — Captain Chill, as he was referenced shortly after his arrival following stints as an offensive coordinator at Arizona State and Clemson and four seasons spent coaching receivers at Alabama — developed an instant rapport with those under his command.

“We just love that dude,” Jackson said back in October — before the title game, before the bowl bid — with reference to Napier, who calls Cajun plays himself from the sideline.

“You know, he came in with a swagger about himself — and he came in with a swagger about our offense, how he was gonna get our offense to be explosive, which he has done.”

More: UL’s Napier ‘not the rah-rah, yelling coach’

At 32.5 points and 437.1 yards per game, UL indeed heads into the Cure Bowl with the No. 2 offense in the Sun Belt in both statistical categories.

“He’s a man of his word — and almost everything he says we’re gonna do, we do,” Jackson said. “That’s something that we love about him.”

The affair, however, might not have blossomed nearly as fast as it has if there had been a mass of seniors intent on sabotaging the relationship.

There wasn’t, and Napier knows it.

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“And Coach Napier,” said safety Turner, UL’s No. 2 tackler this season, “recently thanked all the seniors for buying in.”

He did.

Napier is genuinely appreciative that his roster holdovers — especially the ones with just one season to play under him — didn’t undermine that aforementioned mission.

“These guys have been great examples in terms of their approach, their buy-in,” he said. “And there’s something to be said for that, you know?

“I think when you take over a team that maybe has been through some difficult times …”

Napier didn’t finish that particular thought.

But it seems easy to tell what he meant, and how easily the seniors could have pulled the plug early.

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In the latter years under Hudspeth, UL endured the impact of an NCAA recruiting-related scandal, and some black-eye controversy off the field.

Accordingly, it struggled on the field too.

“This is the group that’s been here in the good ol’ days — some of those runs where you won nine games, you were in the New Orleans Bowl,” Napier said.

The tail end, at least.

“I think their experience with the positive was critical for our team, because they knew,” Napier said.

“They were here when it was going well, and then they saw what the issues were when it went south — both at the player level, staff level, whatever the case may be.

“And their ability to lead, and learn, and say, ‘Hey, this doesn’t work; we’ve got to fix this; we’ve got to change that,’” he added, “I think, was critical for our team.”

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