The specifics on what’s ailing UM defense. And the narrative Canes coaches must change
The criticism, given UM’s record this season, seemed overly harsh at the time.
“Miami is a very poorly coached team,” Booger McFarland groused on ABC on the day the Canes lost to Georgia Tech to fall to 9-1. “Mario Cristobal has to answer for why Miami is never prepared.”
ESPN’s Louis Riddick, in criticism that seemed more reasonable, said defensive coordinator Lance Guidry was outschemed by Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner.
But if UM coaches, starting at the top, are exhausted by the narrative that they’re skilled recruiters but not difference makers on game day, here’s their chance to disprove the narrative.
A strong argument could be made that these next two games -- Saturday against Wake Forest and Nov. 30 at Syracuse -- are the most important in the Cristobal era, with so much on the line.
Win those two, and the Dec. 7 ACC Championship game in Charlotte, and you make the College Football Playoffs and secure a first-round bye.
Lose either and the odds are slim that the Canes will make the ACC title game or the College Football Playoffs --which would be a bitter disappointment considering they have a transformational quarterback in Cam Ward.
It’s fair to say UM’s overall talent on defense isn’t exceptional, a major factor in the Canes permitting 31.7 points per game in six Atlantic Coast Conference games.
But it shouldn’t be this bad either, not with four potential NFL draft picks on the defensive line (led by Rueben Bain), an experienced safety with four interceptions (Mishael Powell), the nation’s best freshman cornerback (OJ Frederique) and a 2023 second-team All ACC linebacker (Francisco Mauigoa).
So the next two weeks will be every bit as much about Guidry finding a solution - any solution - for his unit to do enough to win two games. It’s also about Cristobal making sure Guidry has a plan, and makes proper adjustments, to avoid another debacle like the Georgia Tech game.
It’s about offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson (who has had a very good year) and Cristobal and position coaches crafting something that makes a difference in a tight game.
Guidry admitted this week that against the Yellow Jackets, “We didn’t adjust like we needed to. I didn’t adjust like I needed to.”
So what’s killing this UM defense? We explained here how a half dozen prominent players on defense have underperformed the past six weeks, led by Tyler Baron and Bain.
Lack of speed in the secondary and at linebacker also has been damaging and must be addressed in the transfer portal and recruiting.
The inability of UM’s tightly touted defensive ends (Baron, Bain and others) to consistently set the edge has been hurtful.
Missed tackles have been an issue; Miami has 86 of them, including 16 by Mauigoa and 9 by Powell. (In fairness, other top 12 teams have similar missed tackle numbers, but UM’s seem to have been particularly damaging.)
Linebacker pass coverage has been a mess; Mauigoa has allowed three TD passes and has a 116 passer rating in his coverage area.
The defensive tackle play, very good earlier this season, has regressed.
The lack of elite talent at cornerback - beyond Frederique - certainly factors in.
But coaches and players cited other issues this week:
▪ Players taking poor angles or not being in the correct gaps.
“When you say tackling and getting off blocks, it has a lot to do with alignments, if you’re out-leveraged, if you’re not in the correct position,” Cristobal told WQAM’s Joe Rose this week.
“It’s both coaching and playing, right? You have to teach it and you have to learn it.”
Frederique said the emphasis the past two weeks is better “alignment and assignment” – the exact two words Cristobal used on his radio show. “[That’s] all we have to do.”
▪ Communication breakdowns.
That’s been a problem all season, and it shouldn’t still be happening.
“Some of the communication errors showed up, but that’s coaching and playing; it goes together,” Cristobal said. “We’ve streamlined some of the stuff to make sure we’re much louder, much clearer when we communicate so we can line up, keep our eyes on the right stuff.
“All this rocket motion, sweep motion, unbalanced sets, tackle over, if you see a little, you’re able to see what you need to see and go do what you need to do.
“If you see too much and let those eyes wander, all of a sudden you’re not moving very fast. We’ve been focusing on getting those eyes in a disciplined manner.”
Guidry said: “Whether it’s hand gestures, you’ve got to just keep the guys talking. Make sure you over-communicate. Sometimes you can communicate things, but sometimes they don’t give you a signal back. You really don’t know if they got it or not. So just some of those things, and we’ve got to do a better job as coaches making sure that we implement those things.
“Either you’re not coaching it well enough or the player is not doing what you’re asking him to do, and if he didn’t, [you ask] is he capable of it, or are you asking him to do something that he can’t do? Or did he just not perform? It’s a little bit of it all to tell you the truth, so you’ve got to take a look in the mirror and say, ‘How do we get this fixed and how do we do it’. Do we do it through the scheme, do we coach it better or just take it out?”
But shouldn’t have those questions been answered by mid-November?
Cornerback Daryl Porter Jr. cited communication as the defensive backfield’s biggest shortcoming this season but said it was addressed during the bye week.
“We have four new dudes on the back end,” he said Tuesday. “We had much more time to work on shifts, motions. I feel we will be much better this week.”
▪ Teams doing things offensively that they hadn’t shown on tape previously, and that UM didn’t expect.
Guidry said “different pictures” from teams have confused players at times.
“You try to adjust, make sure you know what you’re doing,” he said. “Just have to do a better job.”
Guidry said in previous games, when Georgia Tech went empty in their backfield, the Yellow Jackets typically passed. But Tech often ran out of that formation in its 28-23 win against Miami, and that caught the Canes off guard.
“They ran 50 times and it really became an option offense, a lot of empty sets, motioning and you had to account for the quarterback,” Guidry said. “They didn’t really knock our defensive line off the ball; we didn’t fit gaps.”
UM’s struggles defending the pass (50th overall but much worse than that in conference play) don’t bode well for the final two games.
Among 137 FBS teams, Wake Forest is 35th in passing offense (257.5 passing yards per game) and Syracuse is third (350.7 yards per game), behind only UM and Mississippi.
And if the Canes make the ACC title game, they’ll likely face an SMU team that is 40th in passing offense at 254.4 yards per game.
Miami, on paper, will be the more talented team against Wake Forest and Syracuse and SMU, should the Canes and the Mustangs meet in the ACC Championship.
Yes, it all starts with the players; let’s be clear about that.
But it’s also incumbent on the coaches, particularly Guidry, to come up with something smart or savvy or creative to make sure the score reflects the talent disparity. And once and for all, to end a decade of losing too many games to teams with less talent, an exasperating trend that long predates this coaching staff.
