Ed Reed, Canes’ new chief of staff, says these things must change inside the program
A six-pack of Miami Hurricanes notes on a Friday:
▪ Hurricanes great Ed Reed, UM’s new chief of staff for football, this week cited three things that must change inside the program:
A) Better use of personnel. “From a schematic standpoint, we need to do better at putting our players in position to be successful,” he told a Miami Beach audience of DirecTV subscribers on Thursday, minutes before UM named him chief of staff. “We [previously] had a great coaching staff that led men. Great coaches, Butch Davis, Chuck Pagano, Curtis Johnson.”
Reed — who reports to Manny Diaz in his new role — hopes this staff can measure up.
He did not discuss the current coaches during the DirecTV session.
B) Players must subjugate their egos. “We’ve got to put pride to the side,” he said. “When we first got there, it was a bunch of individuals. But we understood if we did it together, more of us would have an opportunity [to make the NFL]. It was about how we pushed each other.”
C) Players must confront teammates who break rules, goof off or behave immaturely. The fact that didn’t happen last season was damaging, one player said.
“It was that accountability in the locker room first,” Reed said during a Wednesday night Fox event. “You wouldn’t make it out of that locker room if you didn’t do the right thing. It wasn’t the coaches policing us. They didn’t have to, but they did their job and we had to listen. You have to be coachable. These youngsters today think just because you go to Miami these teams are going to lay down. No! They hate you. Nobody likes Miami. We knew everybody, every game was a national-championship game.”
Reed said he has been talking to Diaz “for some time here.”
▪ Canes legend Michael Irvin — during my conversation with him at an NFL Network event on Thursday — and another great Canes receiver, Reggie Wayne — during the DirecTV event — made the same point, that these UM teams must develop more of a bond.
“We did everything together when I was in school,” Wayne said. “Now, after practice they go their own separate ways. The more you know your teammate, the more you will [put it on the line] for them. There was no way I wanted to let my teammates down. I wanted to be dependable. The players have got to want to be there. You can’t just be there living on the Miami mystique. You’ve got to want to be together.”
Irvin told me that “getting better players will certainly always help, but this game is different from all other games because it requires a connectivity to be great. The level of play, your physical skill set is one thing, but your connectivity coming together, playing together, making sure everyone takes care of their individual assignment is another.
“It’s one thing to be physically gifted. It’s another thing to make a commitment — one man to the other that each man is playing for the other. That makes a huge difference. At the college level, that alone will win you six or seven games. If you put talent with that together, now you have a chance of winning a championship.”
▪ Are Canes greats pessimistic that UM will eventually return to past glory?
“I don’t want to say I’m pessimistic because I’m an optimistic guy,” Irvin said. “Let’s put in context when we say get back to that. As I sat last night [during the Fox ReUnion special with Reed, Ray Lewis and Wayne] and talked about it, we embarked on some incredible ground those years.
“As you saw those guys that stood up there last night, everybody has won a championship. Everybody will have a jacket soon, because Reggie Wayne will get in the Hall of Fame. We did such incredible things, so it’s hard to say you will ever get back to that. But if you can just work towards getting somewhere close to that, that gets you back in the arena and back in the big games, where Miami certainly belongs. Then we’ll work on doing it consistently and trying to put together 58 straight home victories, which still hasn’t been broken even with that thing they got going on in Alabama.”
Former Canes great Bennie Blades told me: “I’m hoping in my lifetime we get back to prominence. 6-6, 7-5, to me even 8-4 is not good enough. You’ve got to have double digit wins for years to say, OK the program is back. Not just one year. You’ve got to build on success. We haven’t done that back to back years yet.”
Blades spoke of how angry he was about last season’s 6-7 record: “When you lose to FIU, not saying FIU is a bad program because Butch Davis knows how to coach, but FIU, FAU, South Florida, UCF, to me, will always be the little brothers to the University of Miami. When you tell people in today’s game, that the University of Central Florida gets more notoriety than the University of Miami, I won’t ever believe that.”
Former Canes receiver Braxton Berrios told WQAM’s Joe Rose this week that “after last year, you [Canes fans] should have zero patience in relation to last year.”
▪ With UM having already announced 18 of its 21 commitments during the early signing period in mid-December, Wednesday’s Signing Day could be quiet beyond the official announcement of three-star San Diego based receiver Keyshawn Smith (already enrolled), Hollywood Chaminade Madonna three-star defensive tackle Willie Moise (a longtime commitment) and Georgia-based four star cornerback Isaiah Dunson, who committed to Miami on Jan. 19.
Four-star Deland-based cornerback Avantae Williams has said he’s still considering UM, though some consider UF the front-runner. He’s expected to announce on Wednesday in a hat ceremony at his school.
▪ It’s possible the Canes could add another player or two or three, though anything beyond one addition reportedly eats into 2021 scholarship numbers. And that one slot could be used on Williams (if he picks UM) or potentially a grad transfer offensive lineman. Two grad transfer lineman who had been talking to the Hurricanes announced they’re enrolling elsewhere; Vanderbilt left tackle Devin Cochran is headed to Georgia Tech, and Stanford tackle Henry Hattis chose Arizona State.
Offensive line coach Garin Justice told WQAM that he wants to be “very, very picky and not rush into it” with adding a grad transfer.
“I don’t know what I have, haven’t coached my guys, don’t want to just assume that Player X on the offensive line can’t get it done at position B because that’s what other people have said,” Justice said. “I want to see what these guys can and can’t do, evaluate our weakness and see what’s out there.”
▪ Quick stuff: Former UM receiver Evidence Njoku announced he’s enrolling at UCLA… Among many schools that have reached out to transferring UM defensive end Scott Patchan: UF, North Carolina and Toledo (where former defensive line coach Craig Kuligowski is coaching).
Please click here for my post with lots of Super Bowl media nuggets, including the change in Troy Aikman, who works Sunday’s game with Joe Buck.
This story was originally published January 31, 2020 at 3:03 PM.
