Miami knows inconsistency is inevitable with young OL. Here’s why it gives UM confidence
A little more than a week after the Miami Hurricanes scraped out a 17-12 win against the Central Michigan Chippewas and reshuffled their offensive line midgame, Manny Diaz insisted his decision to remove Jakai Clark from his spot at right guard wasn’t “a benching.” The offensive lineman played through an ankle injury, but immediately after the game Diaz did say the freshman needed to see a few plays from the bench after Central Michigan time and again won the battle at the line of scrimmage.
The narrow victory was perhaps the offensive line’s worst performance of the year and led directly into a bye week, which Miami spent testing out eight different linemen. There are the five who started the last three games — Zion Nelson, Navaughn Donaldson, Corey Gaynor, DJ Scaife Jr. and Clark — plus former starter John Campbell Jr., and Kai-Leon Herbert and Ousman Traore, neither of whom have played significant snaps on offense.
While they haven’t outright committed to sticking with the same starting five they used for all of September, the Hurricanes have uniformly express confidence in the alignment.
“We’re pretty much back to where we were and we feel really good about the five moving forward,” offensive coordinator Dan Enos said Monday. “We’re going to just keep coaching them to play hard, play with great effort and toughness and get better every week.”
Managing this particular offensive line is a delicate balancing act for Enos, coach Manny Diaz and offensive line coach Butch Barry. Miami (2-2, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) currently starts two freshmen, both of whom have sometimes looked overwhelmed and other times proved why the Hurricanes trusted them as starters so quickly. Clark and Nelson, neither of whom have been in Coral Gables even a year, can both be fixtures of the offensive line for years to come, but sometimes — like against the Chippewas — a more steady, veteran hand might be the better option in the moment.
“Every week, you’re trying to get your best team to the field,” Diaz said Monday, “so what we’ve been able to do during the bye week — and we’re still doing now — is getting our guys to play as good as they can to give us the best lineup.”
Sometimes it means changing the lineup, but, for this offensive line, the ideal path is for Nelson and Clark — and sophomores Scaife and Gaynor — to grow up fast.
As part of the Hurricanes’ preparations for their game against the Virginia Tech Hokies on Saturday, Diaz has spent time watching film of Miami’s 2016 loss to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Linebackers Shaquille Quarterman and Michael Pinckney were freshmen then, and they didn’t exactly play a clean game, even more than halfway through impressive debut seasons.
Diaz said it serves as a reminder: Even the best freshmen will struggle sometimes, just because they’re freshmen.
It was only two weeks earlier when the Hurricanes traveled up to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and mowed through North Carolina for 488 total yards in a close loss. On Saturday, the Tar Heels nearly sprung the biggest upset of the season by holding the then-No. 1 Clemson Tigers to 331 yards in a 21-20 loss at Kenan Memorial Stadium.
“Let’s take confidence from this: ‘Wow, did you see the way they ran the ball against North Carolina?’ ” Diaz said. “Did you watch North Carolina’s defense this weekend? All of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Well, jeez, but wait, no, they played like this against Central Michigan.’ Well, that must be who they are. Well, wait a minute: Do we get to choose who they are?
“Are they the team that ran the ball all over North Carolina, that Clemson struggled to do this past weekend or are they the team that struggled to run the ball at all against Central Michigan? The reality is they’re none of those people. They’re the people that are going to show up this Saturday and our job as coaches is to get the version that shows up this Saturday to be as good as it can possibly be.”
Although Clark was the one who finished the win against the Chippewas on the sideline, Nelson is the player whose mistakes are most clearly of the freshman variety. At least three times this season, Nelson allowed a sack simply because he was slow getting off the ball at the snap.
It was a focus point for him and the Hurricanes throughout the bye week, and fixing it is the quickest way to start cleaning up some of the offensive line’s most glaring issues.
“I feel like that just comes with the cadence. It’s not that he’s slow or anything like that because he’s very capable of making those blocks every play, but sometimes I feel like he doesn’t hear the cadence or the ball snaps and he just stands there, he didn’t know it snapped,” quarterback Jarren Williams said. “But he’s been doing a lot better with that, really focusing on just kind of timing it better. He’s been doing a lot better with that.”
This story was originally published October 2, 2019 at 3:12 PM.