After disastrous offensive performance, Enos still feels good about Miami’s scheme

One-third of Dan Enos’ first regular season as the Miami Hurricanes’ offensive coordinator is over, and the results so far have been a mixed bag. There’s marked improvement from a year ago, but 2018 set a low bar to cross. There have been games when Enos needed Miami’s defense to lift up his offense, but there have also been moments when the offense has outperformed the defense.

After four games and a second bye week, Enos has a substantial sample size on which to judge his offense. The final question to end his weekly news conference Monday in Coral Gables was simple: “Do you feel like you have the right scheme?”

“Absolutely,” Enos said. “We think that these guys are really starting to understand it better and better the more we do it. The bye week was again good for us to do it. I think the more reps our quarterbacks get, the better they’re going to play and, again, I think the big thing is if plays don’t work, there’s really three reasons why: It’s a mental error, it’s a physical error or it’s a structural error.

“To be quite honest with you, whenever there’s a structural error, I kind of stand up here and tell you guys it was a structural error. We’ve got to clean up really the mental and the physical side of things, and again that’s what happens in offensive football. If you have 10 guys do what they’re supposed to do and one guy doesn’t, the play’s not going to be efficient.”

It’s a familiar refrain. Former coach Mark Richt spent 2018 preaching something similar as his offense struggled and finished near the bottom of the country in most national rankings.

Diaz hired Enos in January in part because of the assistant coach’s track record with developing quarterbacks, but also because he could make Miami’s offense more innovative and dynamic. Through three games, the overhauled offense looked the part — the Hurricanes had jumped more than 50 spots in the national rankings for total offense despite starting a redshirt freshman quarterback and two freshman offensive linemen — before it crashed apart Sept. 21, when they managed only 303 total yards against the Central Michigan Chippewas at Hard Rock Stadium. The running game, previously the Hurricanes’ strength, unraveled and Miami averaged only 1.5 yards per carry. The offensive line, already the Hurricanes’ weakness, gave up four sacks and played perhaps its worst game of the year.

More than a week removed from ugly 17-12 win, Enos addressed his offense’s deficiencies for the first time and cited the running game and offensive line as the two primary culprits for what went wrong at Hard Rock Stadium. The running backs didn’t run north the way they have most of the year, the coordinator said, and the offensive line was simply overmatched by Central Michigan’s front.

“We’ve just got to get guys to make routine plays right now back from last week that we didn’t do in the couple games before that,” Enos said. When we were making routine plays, we were moving the ball much better.”

The offensive line was the most apparent issue in the narrow win. It was obvious from the first offensive play of the game, when quarterback Jarren Williams took a hit as he connected on a 40-yard completion to tight end Will Mallory. It was obvious on the next possession, when Williams underthrew wide receiver Jeff Thomas on a deep ball in the end zone at least in part because he got drilled again.

By the end of the game, the Hurricanes had shaken up their offensive line, sending offensive lineman Jakai Clark to the bench, moving DJ Scaife Jr. from right tackle to right guard and inserting John Campbell Jr. at right tackle. By the end of the game, Enos had pretty much given up on trying to stretch the defense with downfield throws.

“We got a little bit less aggressive with our down-the-field stuff because we were trying to coach the game to win the game, and we were having a tough time at the line of scrimmage, so we didn’t want there holding the ball, trying to throw the ball downfield a whole lot,” Enos said. “We ran a lot more max protected-type things in the second half, thinking about getting the ball out quickly.”

While neither Enos nor coach Manny Diaz committed to a starting five on the offensive line for Miami’s Saturday home game against the Virginia Tech Hokies, Enos said the Hurricanes are “pretty much back to where we were” and “feel really good about the five moving forward.”

Even with the offensive line struggling, Enos said Miami plans to still “be balanced” in its usage of shotgun and under-center plays. While the Hurricanes have been more effective passing out of shotgun, the rushing attack has been better with Miami playing under center, often in I-formation packages.

“I think we’ll always be balanced in that regard,” Enos said. “There’s benefits of both, and we’ll continue to evaluate both and do both.”

As for the running game’s total collapse from averaging 176.7 yards in the Hurricanes’ first three games to just 51 yards against the Chippewas, Enos also pinned some of the blame on the running backs too often running laterally rather than going straight upfield.

For two drives against Central Michigan, Miami looked like it was expected to as a 30-point favorite, marching straight down the field against a Mid-American Conference foe. The reason? Enos said it all comes down to execution.

“We executed on those two drives,” Enos said, “better than we did any of the other drives.”

This story was originally published September 30, 2019 at 4:10 PM.