Dan Enos goes on and on about why he was ‘disappointed’ in Jarren Williams vs. Gators

The question was simple enough: Can you give us a rundown of how Jarren Williams played, how he can improve and what he did really well?

The answer was startling.

University of Miami offensive coordinator and quarterbacks guru Dan Enos said what few expected Monday at a news conference two days after the Florida Gators defeated the Hurricanes 24-20 in the Camping World Kickoff in Orlando — that Williams wasn’t good.

“The first thing is, basically, I grade the guys on either you played well enough for us to win or you didn’t,’’ Enos began. “And he did not. He did not play well enough for us to win the football game. That’s first and foremost.

“We left a lot of plays on the field. Jarren left a lot of plays on the field. I was very, very disappointed from that standpoint. He did do some good things, but very inconsistent with his pocket posture, very inconsistent with his eyes — watching the rush at times, missing throws. And very uncharacteristic of how he had practiced leading up to that.”

Williams, a redshirt freshman making his first start, completed 19 of 29 passes for 214 yards and a touchdown, with no interceptions. But he was sacked 10 times — and Enos said that half of those sacks were Williams’ fault.

“It was [in] both halves,’’ Enos said of Williams’ inadequacies, despite the young signal-caller going 12 of 14 for 158 yards and a touchdown in the opening half.

“Maybe the stats showed that he was efficient in the first half but he still missed some things in the first half and could have been even better from that standpoint.

“I think I had him down for five of the sacks [being] his fault — 100 percent on the quarterback.

“I think two times he was out of the pocket and just stepped out of bounds one yard behind the line of scrimmage which counts as a sack, which has nothing to do with the offensive line or anyone.

“He has just got to learn how to throw the ball away. He had very, very poor ball security as well. We had two fumbles where he doesn’t have two hands on the ball. One of them he should have thrown the ball away and then the other time he’s got his check-down in the route wide open and doesn’t get to him and throw him the football and ends up holding it too long.

Again, he did some good things but there’s a lot of room for improvement as far as that goes.”

So, what did Williams do right?

“One thing Jarren did do was compete. He showed some toughness, showed competitiveness.

“...There were some really good moments where you see him [with] good pocket posture, eyes good and he made good throws. So, there’s a correlation there. We just have got to get him to do that from a play-to-play basis. But it was frustrating from an offensive standpoint because we felt like our team played well enough to win and we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain.

“Certainly very disappointed there... Certainly we gotta be way, way more consistent at that position if we want to beat good teams like we played Saturday.”

Enos stressed that on “a lot of plays’’ receivers were “running wide open and either we can’t protect or we can’t get to the ball to them for some reason or another — the quarterback is not making the right decision. We’re very disappointed in that.’’

After all, Enos was told, Williams was basically playing in his first college game (after a brief stint in one game last year against Savannah State). Did Enos expect some of those problems against UF?

“Yeah, I think we did. He’s young,’’ Enos said. “First game, big environment, good football team, but certainly some of the things were uncharacteristic of what he had done in practice from a day-to-day basis as far as where his eyes are and his pocket posture and ball security, those types of things.

“Do we expect him to get better? Heck yeah, we expect him to get better... Hopefully this week off we can get a lot of good work in and he can kind of regroup, and we’ll do our very, very best to get him to play better next week.”

UM goes on the road to North Carolina at 8 p.m. Sept. 7, and Enos acknowledged that he is demanding, but that it can only help his quarterbacks.

“I’ve just always been a guy that it didn’t matter if it was your first game or your 40th game, or your first practice or your 40th practice, there’s a standard of excellence, and if we coach and teach how to do it, we expect you to do it every play, every rep, every day. That’s a coach’s job. We were striving for perfection.

“We’re never going to reach perfection. I know that... The standard is excellence and perfection, and as close as we can get to that, the better off our football team is going to be.

“I don’t see Jarren as he is. I see him as he can be.’’

▪ Coach Manny Diaz said cornerback DJ Ivey, who was suspended for the UF game for violating team rules, will be back for North Carolina.

▪Diaz remains hopeful that transfer safety Bubba Bolden will be able to play soon. The NCAA had not yet ruled him eligible in time for the opener against Florida. “We were hopeful last week,’’ the coach said. “We’re still hopeful. We’re just waiting to hear back, so fingers crossed. We’ll see.”

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This story was originally published August 26, 2019 at 4:27 PM.