Miami Hurricanes coaches take pay cuts, partake in town hall. And recruiting, lineup news
A six pack of Miami Hurricanes notes on a Friday:
▪ University of Miami football coaches have agreed to take pay cuts that range from 3 percent to 10 percent, according to a source who was briefed on the situation by the UM administration.
A second source, a UM employee, said the pay cuts were accepted by football coaches with multiyear contracts, which includes Manny Diaz and his assistants. Most Power 5 assistant football coaches have two-year contracts, according to a person who has negotiated dozens of those contracts.
Men’s and women’s basketball coaches have not yet been asked to take pay cuts, according to one source.
The Miami Herald recently reported that most members of the UM athletic department have been instructed to take two unpaid weeks this summer. But coaches were not included in those two-week furloughs.
Asked this week by colleague Susan Miller Degnan if UM coaches took a pay cut, Diaz said: “It’s a difficult question to answer. What I’ll say quite broadly is sacrifices have been made.’’
UM gave Diaz a five-year contract when Miami named him head coach following Mark Richt’s retirement in late December of 2018. According to a source, the contract started at $3.1 million, with modest annual increases.
▪ Kudos to UM athletic director Blake James for arranging a Thursday night town hall meeting of UM coaches and athletes from all sports to discuss race relations and anything else they wished to talk about in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the subsequent worldwide protests.
Several UM coaches referenced the Zoom session on social media.
“Proud to work in an athletic department that gives its student-athletes a real voice,” Diaz tweeted. “Great testimony by [UM players Zach McCloud, Al Blades Jr., Dee Wiggins and Amari Carter] in addition to leaders across many sports. Special thanks to [UM senior associate athletic director of student athlete development] Shirelle Jackson and her staff!”
Safeties coach and co-defensive coordinator Ephraim Banda tweeted: “My wife & I were truly moved “LISTENING” to [Carter, McCloud, Blades Jr. and Wiggins] & our other UM student athletes in tonight’s Town Hall. The courage shown to step up, take the mic & allow yourself to be vulnerable but speak strongly is what the world needs. #BlackLivesMatter”
▪ With Hollywood Chaminade-Madonna’s Thaddius Franklin considered a soft commitment, UM wants to take a second running back in its 2021 recruiting class, and Miami is targeting — among others — Miami Central’s four-star Amari Daniels (UM, Penn State, Georgia, Nebraska and Texas A&M are his top five), Michigan-based Donovan Edwards, Texas-based Ahmonte Watkins, Carol City’s three-star Katravis Geter and Orlando-based Christian Leary.
▪ Because UM has 37,000 season ticket-holders — fewer than other big-time programs — a UM official said the loss of revenue that would result from not having fans at games wouldn’t be as hurtful to the Canes as it would to some other programs. James said this week that his gut feeling is that fans won’t be at Canes football games to start the season.
▪ ESPN’s Bill Connelly wrote an interesting piece about what 18 teams need to do to be a national championship contender. Among his requirements for Miami:
“Blitz downs [must be] less disastrous. Miami was a bit too all-or-nothing defensively, ranking 10th in blitz down sack rates but 101st in blitz down success rate. This must obviously improve even despite all the turnover up front.”
Blitz down success rate measures how frequently you are beating the defense on blitzes, and that speaks to a point I discussed with former UM All American defensive end and former Canes defensive line coach Greg Mark recently.
Adding Temple grad transfer Quincy Roche to play opposite Greg Rousseau was critical, because as Mark explained: “You don’t have to bring pressure; you don’t have to blitz and sell out [as much]. You don’t have to sacrifice coverage to get pressure on the quarterback. And that’s the key. You want to pressure, throw a blitz, but then it’s not an expected thing. The Temple kid is what we’ve been missing.”
▪ UM faces interesting decisions during the next six months about how to allocate playing time among its safeties and strikers.
UM’s safety room is rich in talent and depth, with Gurvan Hall, Bubba Bolden, Amari Carter and well-regarded incoming freshmen Avantae Williams, Jalen Harrell, Brian Balom and Keshawn Washington. Conversely, UM has only two strikers on its official roster — Gilbert Frierson and Keontra Smith.
When UM plays a lineup with a total of five defensive linemen and linebackers, the question becomes this:
Along with your starting boundary cornerbacks and your nickel corner (potentially Te’Cory Couch), do you want your three other players on the field to be Hall, Bolden and Carter (or Williams, who might be the nation’s top Class of 2020 safety recruit) or two among Hall/Bolden/Carter/Williams and either Frierson or Smith?
A case could be made to move Carter to striker if you believe Hall, Bolden and Carter should be on the field for the majority of snaps.
That’s why the play of Frierson and Smith will be very important to monitor in August practices and scrimmages; either one needs to prove worthy of being on the field ahead of a more experienced third safety.
A case also could be made to play four cornerbacks in six-defensive back packages against pass-heavy teams (Blades, D.J. Ivey, Couch and Christian Williams) and two of the safeties if Christian Williams continues to display the improvement he made this spring.
Here’s my Thursday in-depth look at the Hurricanes’ local recruiting for the 2021 class.
Here’s my Friday Tua Tagovailoa-six pack with lots of nuggets.
My Canes posts will return when I return in a couple of weeks.
This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 3:53 PM.
