In the Hurricanes’ pass game, ‘the ball finds you.’ It’s only finding two players
As the Miami Hurricanes were wrapping up fall camp in August, offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said he felt the Hurricanes were “deeper there than we’ve been” at wide receiver. This despite the team having to replace its top five pass catchers from a season ago in receivers Xavier Restrepo, Jacolby George, Isaiah Horton and Sam Brown plus tight end Elijah Arroyo.
There was optimism surrounding the transfers they brought in (CJ Daniels, Keelan Marion and Tony Johnson), the up-and-coming players returning (Joshisa Trader, Elija Lofton, Ny Carr and Ray Ray Joseph) and a stout freshman class (Malachi Toney, Joshua Moore and Daylyn Upshaw).
“Deep in a way where I feel very comfortable with looking out there and seeing a whole lot of different people out there,” Dawson said then.
About that...
The Hurricanes are six games into the season, and their passing attack has essentially been a two-man show with Toney and Daniels.
The rest of the group, this supposedly deep pass-catching corps, has been relatively quiet, with no one else having more than 16 catches or 158 yards as the No. 9 Hurricanes (5-1, 1-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) get set to host the Stanford Cardinal (3-4, 2-2 ACC) on Saturday at Hard Rock Stadium (7 p.m., ESPN).
Why is that?
“I think the ball finds you in this offense, right?” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “This is the way that we run our offense. It’s not designed for one guy to get the ball all the time. It is designed to attack coverages, covered structures, what the defense is giving and taking away. If you do what you’re supposed to do in this offense, the ball finds you.”
Yet in an offense “not designed for one guy to get the ball all the time,” only two players are consistently getting it.
Now, Toney and Daniels are each having stellar seasons that shouldn’t be discounted.
Toney, who reclassified to enroll at Miami a year early, is second among freshmen nationally in receptions (38) and receiving yards (510) while tied for third in receiving touchdowns (three). He’s on pace to break Miami’s freshman records for both receptions and receiving yards held by Ahmmon Richards (49 catches, 934 yards in 2016).
Daniels, a sixth-year senior who came in from LSU, has 30 catches and 343 yards and is one of 45 players nationally — one of just five in the ACC — with at least five touchdown catches.
That said, Toney and Daniels’ combined stats of 68 catches, 853 receiving yards and eight receiving touchdowns account for 49.6% of the team’s catches, 53.6% of its receiving yards and 72.7% of its touchdown catches.
Beyond them...
- Marion, the BYU transfer and the third-starting receiver known for his breakaway speed and big-play ability in the return game, has 16 catches for 158 yards for a 9.9 yards per catch average.
- Lofton, the sophomore tight end expected to have a jump in production after Arroyo left for the NFL, has 12 catches for 104 yards.
- Johnson, a slot receiver who transferred in from Cincinnati, has three catches for 84 yards, all of which came against Bethune-Cookman and USF.
- The trio of Trader, Carr and Joseph have three catches for 38 yards. Trader, who sat out four games, doesn’t have a catch and has been targeted twice. Carr and Joseph both caught their passes against Bethune-Cookman.
“This year, certain guys have more statistical impressive games than others at different times of the year in different games,” Cristobal said. “We’re not concerned about that. I think the players understand that that’s the way this offense is structured, and that as long as they bust their butts and do the right things and play really, really hard, which we have to, we have to play harder and get better, that the ball will find them. And it’s all about doing your job, man. Doing your job and making routine plays work out in a big way.”
Dawson said the discrepancy in production from Toney and Daniels and the rest of the group can be attributed, in part, to the amount of plays the Hurricanes are running each game. Ideally, Dawson said, UM would have about 80 offensive snaps per game.
Overall, Miami is averaging about 68 plays on offense per game this season, down from 74.5 last season.
Miami only ran 63 plays on offense in the loss to Louisville on Friday. The Hurricanes only ran 61 against Florida State the game prior. Of UM’s 21 drives in those games (not including one-play drives to end each half against FSU), nine were four plays or fewer — including a pair of one-play touchdown drives after getting short fields following turnovers.
Of Miami’s 407 total offensive snaps this season, Daniels has been on the field for 292, Toney for 289 and Marion 246. The next most for a wide receiver? Moore at 89.
“We need to run more plays,” Dawson said, “which means we need to get more first downs and we need to not give possessions away. ... If we can get to running more plays, I think we’re going to see a lot more people in there and their opportunities will come. The starters are starters for a reason, and when you’re not running a lot of plays, then the flow of the game is not dictating to play a lot of people.”
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