The narrow path for Canes to return to greatness. And personnel notes, fallout after loss
A 12-pack of Miami Hurricanes notes/thoughts on a Monday:
▪ The saddest reality about Saturday’s 44-13 drubbing by Alabama is that anyone whose judgement was not impaired by emotion could have seen this coming.
That Alabama remains miles ahead of UM (and most FBS teams) led many Canes fans to ask these questions in the burning rubble of the aftermath:
Should the talent gap still be this enormous in year 3 of the Manny Diaz regime? And can UM ever return to Alabama’s level?
That the talent disparity hasn’t closed is disappointing, though not surprising. Alabama has 14 five-star players on its roster.
UM had three five-star players in uniform on Saturday. Two - Mark Pope and Leonard Taylor - didn’t play a single snap on offense or defense. The third, safety James Williams, played 24 snaps and likely would have played even fewer than that if Bubba Bolden hadn’t been ejected for targeting.
ESPN’s Mel Kiper has nine Alabama players in his list of the 10 best draft-eligible prospects at every position. UM has three (Bolden, Zion Nelson and punter Lou Hedley).
The view here is that there are three paths - at least in the next few years - that would allow UM to return to national championship contention, and they’re all narrow:
1)The Canes are smart enough and lucky enough to find a bunch of underrecruited gems (such as three-star Greg Rousseau) that become elite players and help them become an 11- or 12-win team.
Remember, on-field success breeds recruiting success in this business. Most of the best players want to play for the elite teams.
Though UM will continue getting the occasional elite recruit (such as Williams and Taylor), it won’t be able to compete with Alabama and Clemson and Ohio State to snag a large volume of the best of the best until it wins big.
And that’s why the Canes need to find a bunch of three- and four-stars who play like five-star talents and lead this team to legitimate national playoff contention.
Only then would more recruits take notice and start saying no to Alabama and Clemson and picking UM instead.
As an example, it wasn’t a surprise that four-star Class of 2023 Plantation American Heritage running back Mark Fletcher told Canesport’s Matt Shodell that the Canes’ poor performance on Saturday affected his thinking about attending UM.
“This did affect me with Miami most definitely,” Fletcher said. “Because I want to go somewhere they’re great in the trenches.”
So UM isn’t going to snag enough elite recruits to make a big difference until they start winning the type of games that lure the blue-chip recruits.
2) Find a special coach who can lead this program from Top 15-to-25 caliber to something far greater. I view that as unlikely.
UM’s Board of Trustees isn’t motivated to spend $10 million a year for an elite coach with championship pedigree. And even if the Hurricanes could land, say, a Jimbo Fisher, there’s no assurance he could make the Canes elite again.
The sense here is that the administration will stick with Manny Diaz - who’s in year three of a five-year deal - if he wins in the range of nine games a year and keeps UM generally in the top 25, regardless of whether the gap is closed with Alabama or not.
As one Board of Trustee member said, though some members have higher standards than simply being a borderline Top 20 program, president Julio Frenk isn’t a big sports fan and there’s little motivation internally to keep changing coaches until they find one to build UM back to top-five-in-the-country status.
Perhaps that view changes once a coach reaches the end of his contract; if Diaz goesn’t get an extension after year 3 or 4, that would be telling.
The Hurricanes simply aren’t going to spend the money on an Urban Meyer-type unless there’s a dramatic change in philosophy.
3) UM is both lucky and very good during a particular season when it has a fairly easy non-conference schedule. Unfortunately, there’s a Southeastern Conference opponent on every schedule the next six years (Texas A&M the next two, then UF for two years, then South Carolina for two).
During one of those years (perhaps the 2027 season when South Carolina visits Hard Rock Stadium), perhaps the Canes could be good enough to win all or nearly all of their games, win the Coastal and then somehow capitalize on turnovers or some other factor to win the conference title game. Having an elite quarterback could mask other deficiencies in a conference title game in which the other team (say, Clemson) plays particularly poorly or is missing several of their best players due to injury or other circumstances.
But if the overall talent in the program doesn’t improve, this third scenario would be a fleeting, everything-must-go-right one year scenario, not a permanent path back to greatness.
▪ Some veterans who have had average careers here have seen their roles lessened.
It was notable that Pope played no snaps, Dee Wiggins eight and Al Blades Jr. 16 on Saturday.
But cornerback DJ Ivey started and played 50 snaps and didn’t play well, allowing five of seven targets in his coverage area to be caught for 112 yards.
Safety Gurvan Hall played 66 snaps and didn’t play well, either; he made wrong decisions on two TD passes, including Jameson Williams’ 94-yard TD catch-and-run, a play on which Hall mistakenly offered no help to Ivey.
The question is whether freshmen Kamren Kinchens - who forced a fumble in the game - or James Williams ultimately overtakes Hall, who has never reached expectations as a Hurricane. With Bolden ejected, Kinchens played 38 snaps, Williams 24.
Defensive backs coach Travaris Robinson said Monday that Williams has earned more reps moving forward.
As for Ivey, the fact he started ahead of Tyrique Stevenson was surprising, though Stevenson ended up playing more snaps, 52 to 50. The other starting cornerback, Te’Cory Couch, played 44 snaps.
▪ Because neither Stevenson nor defensive end Deandre Johnson earned starting jobs, UM on Saturday had only two new starters who weren’t on the team in 2020: former Oklahoma receiver Charleston Rambo and freshman kicker Andres Borregales.
Johnson ended up playing 32 snaps, which was fourth among defensive ends behind Zach McCloud (44), Jahfari Harvey (43) and Chantz Williams (35). Williams had a strip sack in the second half, the only sack by a UM player.
The Canes blitzed Alabama quarterback Bryce Young on 23 of 40 passing plays but still couldn’t get to him.
▪ One other lineup surprise was Nesta Silvera playing behind both Jon Ford and Jared Harrison Hunte at defensive tackle. But all played similar snap counts - Ford 39, Harrison-Hunte 38 and Silvera 37. Jordan Miller played 32.
It will be interesting to see if Taylor surpasses Miller at some point.
▪ Positives Saturday? Corey Flagg (42 snaps) has a chance to be a very good middle linebacker and new weakside linebacker Keontra Smith (50 snaps) had some good moments, though he was beaten on one touchdown pass against a much bigger Alabama tight end.
UM needed Flagg and Smith to beat out Bradley Jennings (27 snaps) and Waymon Steed (24 snaps) to have a chance to field a better starting linebacker unit, and that has happened. The only other linebacker who played was Avery Huff (three snaps).
“I saw a difference at linebacker with Flagg and Smith,” Manny Diaz said. “Their speed and quickness showed up.”
Linebacker Sam Brooks remains out indefinitely with an injury.
▪ Former safety Amari Carter, who supplanted Gilbert Frierson as the starting striker, struggled in 51 snaps. Frierson played 34 snaps and didn’t play any better than Carter.
Carter allowed four of five passes in his coverage area to be caught for 43 yards. He and Smith both allowed TD passes to tight end Cameron Latu.
Frierson yielded five completions for 38 yards.
UM’s strikers should be pretty good against most teams on Miami’s schedule. But they didn’t measure up against talent-laden Alabama.
▪ Most inexcusable things on Saturday: The Canes missed 20 tackles, which were second-most over the past year, behind only the 24 in the North Carolina debacle last year. That’s a problem that simply cannot seem to be fixed, no matter how much coaches emphasize it.
And the conservative play-calling early was stunning. After picking up 14 yards on passes on the first two plays of the game, UM ran five consecutive times (including for no gain on a third and seven) for a total of 10 yards. King threw passes that traveled more than 20 air yards only twice all game.
UM offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee insisted on Monday that UM was not being conservative and blamed poor execution and offensive line breakdowns.
▪ With Alabama’s elite talent in the interior, it was dumbfounding that Lashlee kept running the ball up the gut. It was clear he didn’t believe that the Canes backs could outrun Alabama players on the perimeter.
And why didn’t UM do a better job getting the ball to tight end Will Mallory, who had two catches for 12 yards? That was a matchup that the Canes seemingly could have exploited. Lashlee said UM intended to throw Mallory more passes but “we dumped the ball to someone else earlier in the progression” or something else happened.
And also, why wasn’t the play-calling more creative? When there’s this big a talent gap, you need trick plays, misdirection and clever and innovating play-calling to bridge the gap. UM came up empty in that regard.
▪ Per Pro Football Focus, DJ Scaife, Corey Gaynor and Jalen Rivers each permitted sacks. Scaife logged only 13 snaps before being replaced by UNLV transfer Justice Oluwaseun, who played well in his 53 snaps and is now the starting right tackle.
▪ Here’s how the wide receiver snaps were distributed: Rambo (58), Key’Shawn Smith (56), Xavier Restrepo (35), Mike Harley (30 before his injury), Michael Redding (10) and Wiggins (8).
The three freshmen wide receivers, Pope and Daz Worsham received no offensive snaps.
▪ Though Diaz said before the game that UM planned to use Mallory and freshman Arroyo together, they were used in tandem on only one play. And Arroyo received just two offensive snaps.
At running back, Cam’Ron Harris played 36 snaps, Don Chaney Jr. 29 and Cody Brown 1. Jaylan Knighton’s suspension will run three more games (Appalachian State, Michigan State, Central Connecticut State).
▪ ESPNU will televise Saturday’s 7 p.m. UM home opener against Appalachian State, which began its season with a 33-19 win against East Carolina.
UM’s noon Sept. 18 home game against Michigan State will be on either ABC or ESPN.
This story was originally published September 6, 2021 at 2:07 PM.
