Why the undefeated Miami Hurricanes held a players-only meeting during their bye week
The Miami Hurricanes’ leadership council — a group of veterans and highly respected players on the team — met after practice last Monday during their bye week like they do every Monday. The team was 6-0. The team was ranked No. 6 in the country.
But they didn’t want their grander goal to get lost in the midst of their early success, especially since their path to 6-0 hasn’t been the prettiest. Two come-from-behind wins to begin conference play didn’t aid in that.
So they set up a players-only meeting for later in the week. It wasn’t contentious. It wasn’t meant for finger-pointing.
It was, as fifth-year senior wide receiver Xavier Restrepo put it, an opportunity to review “what’s important to this team.”
“Everybody’s just hungry,” senior linebacker Francisco Mauigoa added. “Everybody buys into the culture, and I think leaders on this team are stepping up to really lead everybody towards the right mindset to get better every single day. ... Just getting everybody on the same page.”
Now, players-only meeting usually surface when a team is trying to get out of a downward spiral. Teams that are struggling will use them to hash out problems and clear the air.
So what does it mean for a team that’s undefeated and in the mix for a spot in the College Football Playoff to hold one of these meetings at this juncture?
“That’s why this year is different,” Restrepo said Tuesday ahead of the Hurricanes’ road game against the Louisville Cardinals (4-2, 1-1 ACC) on Saturday. “Guys on the team are not satisfied with 6-0. I’m gonna say it over and over again, we haven’t played our best ball yet. There’s a very, very long way to go, definitely reachable, and it’s right in the palm of our hands. We just have to execute better, and everybody knows that. That’s why we keep striving for better and better.”
By the sight of their record, the Hurricanes couldn’t have asked for better. They are one of 11 Football Bowl Subdivision teams that are still undefeated. The Pittsburgh Panthers are the only other ACC team that has been perfect so far.
But a season is not defined by the first six regular-season games. The Hurricanes have six more conference games to play. They need to keep going full throttle through this next month-and-a-half to put themselves in position to compete for their first ACC championship and get into the 12-team College Football Playoff.
And it’s not lost on them that they needed to rally from multiple 10-point deficits to defeat Virginia Tech and rip off a miraculous 25-point second-half comeback to beat Cal before the bye week.
So Restrepo, Mauigoa and Co. took advantage of the bye week to remind the team of what lies ahead and reinforce that the team still has so much more to showcase than what they have done in the first half of the season.
“We have high standards for ourselves,” defensive tackle Simeon Barrow said. “We want to go 1-0 every week and at the end of the day, we want to put our best foot forward. We know we can do, know what we got, and what we’re capable to do. We want to win every game and be 1-0 every weekend. So that just shows that we got great guys with us with great heads on their shoulders.”
Added center Zach Carpenter: “I thought it went well. The team was very receptive. Yeah, we’ve been winning, but there’s a lot of meat left on the bone. We all know that, so it was important we got together and we figure out what our goals are, what our identity is. Come together coming into the last half the season. We don’t want to fall apart.”
Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal called the players’ innate decision to hold the meeting “a natural progression of a team that’s really working hard to reach a certain level of expectations that we have for ourselves.
“It’s encouraged and pushed that you become a player-led team, like true ownership — having a complete and utter ownership of our actions, our choices, our decisions, how we practice, the intensity,” Cristobal said. “The level of expectation for everything we do has to be one to know, to stay restless in our pursuit for progress and getting better and winning. It’s the right thing. I trust that they did an awesome job.”
Restrepo said he can already sense the meeting paying off.
“Guys are being more involved inside the building,” Restrepo said. “Guys are just really showing that they want to be better, showing that they want to take the next step into becoming a championship team. You can definitely see it. You could smell the air, you could feel the energy around the building.”
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