A very special Fireside Chat with a Living Legend

[HurricaneHauk]

For the 5-1 sunshine pumpers, the games we’ve won were the games we won last year in the same exact manner. Pitt and UVA were yet another dogfight while it looked like we were on another level against FSU and UL.

Manure celebrating and sliding around is just pathetic. There is no accountability on this team. Mandy is a fan, not a coach. Blake Shames made his dreams come true. We’re like the make a wish foundation.

Outside of Clemson we have trailed for exactly one minute the entire season

 

[U Wouldn’t Understand]

I hate to say I told you so, but I've seen enough of this program to know what's going on. Let's get right to it, shall we?

I had this revelation while watching Diaz continue to flounder. Diaz reminds me of Don Jr. Looks polished. Yaps a good game. Zero substance. He's a fake manly nerd who talks about manly stuff. His idea of hunting would be to stay in a 5 star hotel in Dubai and be taken to an air conditioned shooting range where they line up a bunch of animals chained to a post 30 feet in front of him and give him a machine gun. It's the nerd life. The difference between the two is Diaz is trying to accomplish something, but he's simply clueless on how to lead.

I've harped on this fact forever, and the nerds don't get it, but you can tell everything about a football team by their focus and effort level. We are devoid of either. Of course, the dopes on here will litter my thread with "we played hard, but Lashlee sucks." We neither played hard or played focused.

We have a few players who give effort, but, overall, we're a lazy skinny jeans group. We're the guys with the tight pants that stop at the bottom of the calves with designer loafers we can't afford and a backpack that costs more than we make in a month.

Let's discuss some specifics in the pros and cons section of this incredible blog.

Pros:
This won't be popular for the guys looking for a scapegoat, but King played a great game. He was on target with some absolute darts. Yes he missed Harley to ice the game, but this game never should have come down to one pass at the end.

Harley. That's by far the best game he's played. He is a hard working kid, who took the criticism of the WRs personally. Good for him.

Chaney. He's our best RB right now. Yeah I said it. He's tough fast and runs harder than a 14 year old boy watching his mom's hot friend, Nancy, paint her toe nails in her bikini.

Pope showed some life and made a great acrobatic catch. Yeah he had another drop, but expecting Pope not to drop an easy pass every game is like expecting me not to ram my Pickett/Yellen takes from last week down your faqquit throats until your mascara runs.

And...that's it.

Cons:

Scaife set the tone early for the type of tenacity and the mental toughness that we have when he got bullrushed like the ghey fat kid whose dad forced him to play Pee Wee football even though he'd much prefer to be playing with his Barbies. This dude's been a major bummer.

Cam. He ran like he didn't want to be out there. I don't know if he's hurt or what, but I'm glad they finally yanked him. On that stretch play he looked like he was carrying a piano on his back. Weak effort last night.

Bolden on the TD to the TE gave a feeble effort. All he had to do was carry the guy out of bounds, and that stops the TD.

Carter needs to get a Target ad at this point. I can see him with the Target bullseye painted on top of his head saying "I love Target!" while running head-first into a wall like the Kool Aid pitcher dude.

Lashlee needs to realize you don't have to force balance for the sake of balance. King had a hot hand, and, in case Lashlee didn't notice, UVAG was without their best defender, Blount, and their other starting S Nelson. Run them ragged with the throw game. Throw it 80% of the time if you have to. UVAG is horrible against the pass and pretty good against the run, so what does Lashlee do? Yep. Force that ******* read option inside zone all night long.

What's with our new habit of running give up handoffs on 3rd down in our own end? We're just giving away series regularly every game with that ****.

Our pass rush was supposed to be a huge strength. It isn't. Phillips is a great effort guy, but if he's even thinking about leaving early, he needs a lobotomy.

Did you see the play where Ivey gave a huge cushion to a QB playing WR for pretty much the 1st time? Yeah, so did I. He let a QB run him off for an easy pitch and catch 1st down on 3rd and 11. That play summed us up. 3rd and 11 and he's bailing against a QB playing WR.

96 yard drive in 2:40 when we should have been icing the game. That drive speaks directly to the mindset of this team and why I have dwindling hope for Diaz. We were celebrating a win up 13 with 10 minutes left instead of bearing down and trying to open it up on them.

We let a 3 QB rotation control us for much of the 1st half. Keep in mind none of those 3 can throw the ball. Then, Diaz tells the halftime reporter "We need to make them beat us throwing it." Yeah no **** Don Jr. That should have been the idea from the beginning.

Gurvan Hall looked like he didn't even care on that coverage bust for the late TD. We were already in "we won, let's start taking pics for the gram" mode.

Tried to tell you guys last week we got lucky Yellen played. Nope. The CISpool clowns came for me claiming Yellen was just as good as Pickett. Then, they spent the whole week trying to be funny about how Pickett was a god. Flash forward to this week and look at what ND did to Yellen on his home field. That desultory performance against Pitt was what I feared for the remainder of the season and why last week's Fireside Chat wasn't all puppies and rainbows.

There are 2 or 3 L's left on this schedule if we play like we have the last 2 weeks.

I said it last week, and I'll stick with it. We're average. And we're average for the same reason we stunk last year--Don Jr. isn't a leader of men. He celebrates ****** efforts in wins against horrible teams like UVAG as if we just won a NC. He's not demanding enough, and it shows by the focus and effort level of his team. D$ tried to tell me we're in that next tier behind the greats, but we aren't unless that next tier consists of about 65 teams.

We are a little better than last year, and that's solely because of King. If we had Perry at the helm right now we'd be a 3 loss team. I don't know about you guys, but this game felt eerily similar to last year against a much better UVAG team with a much better QB and much better D.

Completely agree, but I respectfully believe one more pro needs added.

As any true Canes fan knows, we simply CANNOT take for granted any game that Hedley and Borregales are in the lineup. I know we had a blocked field goal last night, but the fact that we aren't EXPECTING a shanked punt or missed field goal each time those guys come out simply can't be undervalued. That is all.

 

[The Franchise]

On Tuesday, wide receivers coach Rob Likens and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee turned up the pressure, and Miami’s wide receivers needed it.

“We were always taking the shortcuts,” Harley admitted. “We weren’t staying after practice, catching Jugs — we would just do the bare minimum.”

This sums up Don Jr's leadership perfectly. You have a senior WR openly admitting that the WRs were "going through the motions" before the coaches listed them all as co-starters. It took him all year to light a fire under these guys because they didn't respect him or the team enough to play and practice hard.

The "bare minimum" is the standard under Diaz because the players know they can get away with it. Dummies will keep blaming players for "culture" but that's a HC problem. Kids will do what kids do if you let them.

 

[Hurracanes]

This sums up Don Jr's leadership perfectly. You have a senior WR openly admitting that the WRs were "going through the motions" before the coaches listed them all as co-starters. It took him all year to light a fire under these guys because they didn't respect him or the team enough to play and practice hard.

The "bare minimum" is the standard under Diaz because the players know they can get away with it. Dummies will keep blaming players for "culture" but that's a HC problem. Kids will do what kids do if you let them.

Accountability doesn’t exist with Diaz. Amari Carter is a perfect example of that. If I was the HC, he doesn’t start after the 2nd targeting against Clemson, considering his history. At this point, it’s on the staff for not getting the message across to this freaking kid.

 

[k9cane]

I hate to say I told you so, but I've seen enough of this program to know what's going on. Let's get right to it, shall we?

I had this revelation while watching Diaz continue to flounder. Diaz reminds me of Don Jr. Looks polished. Yaps a good game. Zero substance. He's a fake manly nerd who talks about manly stuff. His idea of hunting would be to stay in a 5 star hotel in Dubai and be taken to an air conditioned shooting range where they line up a bunch of animals chained to a post 30 feet in front of him and give him a machine gun. It's the nerd life. The difference between the two is Diaz is trying to accomplish something, but he's simply clueless on how to lead.

I've harped on this fact forever, and the nerds don't get it, but you can tell everything about a football team by their focus and effort level. We are devoid of either. Of course, the dopes on here will litter my thread with "we played hard, but Lashlee sucks." We neither played hard or played focused.

We have a few players who give effort, but, overall, we're a lazy skinny jeans group. We're the guys with the tight pants that stop at the bottom of the calves with designer loafers we can't afford and a backpack that costs more than we make in a month.

Let's discuss some specifics in the pros and cons section of this incredible blog.

Pros:
This won't be popular for the guys looking for a scapegoat, but King played a great game. He was on target with some absolute darts. Yes he missed Harley to ice the game, but this game never should have come down to one pass at the end.

Harley. That's by far the best game he's played. He is a hard working kid, who took the criticism of the WRs personally. Good for him.

Chaney. He's our best RB right now. Yeah I said it. He's tough fast and runs harder than a 14 year old boy watching his mom's hot friend, Nancy, paint her toe nails in her bikini.

Pope showed some life and made a great acrobatic catch. Yeah he had another drop, but expecting Pope not to drop an easy pass every game is like expecting me not to ram my Pickett/Yellen takes from last week down your faqquit throats until your mascara runs.

And...that's it.

Cons:

Scaife set the tone early for the type of tenacity and the mental toughness that we have when he got bullrushed like the ghey fat kid whose dad forced him to play Pee Wee football even though he'd much prefer to be playing with his Barbies. This dude's been a major bummer.

Cam. He ran like he didn't want to be out there. I don't know if he's hurt or what, but I'm glad they finally yanked him. On that stretch play he looked like he was carrying a piano on his back. Weak effort last night.

Bolden on the TD to the TE gave a feeble effort. All he had to do was carry the guy out of bounds, and that stops the TD.

Carter needs to get a Target ad at this point. I can see him with the Target bullseye painted on top of his head saying "I love Target!" while running head-first into a wall like the Kool Aid pitcher dude.

Lashlee needs to realize you don't have to force balance for the sake of balance. King had a hot hand, and, in case Lashlee didn't notice, UVAG was without their best defender, Blount, and their other starting S Nelson. Run them ragged with the throw game. Throw it 80% of the time if you have to. UVAG is horrible against the pass and pretty good against the run, so what does Lashlee do? Yep. Force that ******* read option inside zone all night long.

What's with our new habit of running give up handoffs on 3rd down in our own end? We're just giving away series regularly every game with that ****.

Our pass rush was supposed to be a huge strength. It isn't. Phillips is a great effort guy, but if he's even thinking about leaving early, he needs a lobotomy.

Did you see the play where Ivey gave a huge cushion to a QB playing WR for pretty much the 1st time? Yeah, so did I. He let a QB run him off for an easy pitch and catch 1st down on 3rd and 11. That play summed us up. 3rd and 11 and he's bailing against a QB playing WR.

96 yard drive in 2:40 when we should have been icing the game. That drive speaks directly to the mindset of this team and why I have dwindling hope for Diaz. We were celebrating a win up 13 with 10 minutes left instead of bearing down and trying to open it up on them.

We let a 3 QB rotation control us for much of the 1st half. Keep in mind none of those 3 can throw the ball. Then, Diaz tells the halftime reporter "We need to make them beat us throwing it." Yeah no **** Don Jr. That should have been the idea from the beginning.

Gurvan Hall looked like he didn't even care on that coverage bust for the late TD. We were already in "we won, let's start taking pics for the gram" mode.

Tried to tell you guys last week we got lucky Yellen played. Nope. The CISpool clowns came for me claiming Yellen was just as good as Pickett. Then, they spent the whole week trying to be funny about how Pickett was a god. Flash forward to this week and look at what ND did to Yellen on his home field. That desultory performance against Pitt was what I feared for the remainder of the season and why last week's Fireside Chat wasn't all puppies and rainbows.

There are 2 or 3 L's left on this schedule if we play like we have the last 2 weeks.

I said it last week, and I'll stick with it. We're average. And we're average for the same reason we stunk last year--Don Jr. isn't a leader of men. He celebrates ****** efforts in wins against horrible teams like UVAG as if we just won a NC. He's not demanding enough, and it shows by the focus and effort level of his team. D$ tried to tell me we're in that next tier behind the greats, but we aren't unless that next tier consists of about 65 teams.

We are a little better than last year, and that's solely because of King. If we had Perry at the helm right now we'd be a 3 loss team. I don't know about you guys, but this game felt eerily similar to last year against a much better UVAG team with a much better QB and much better D.

As the late, great Walter Cronkite would say -- ''and that's the way it is...."

 

[U Wouldn’t Understand]

This sums up Don Jr's leadership perfectly. You have a senior WR openly admitting that the WRs were "going through the motions" before the coaches listed them all as co-starters. It took him all year to light a fire under these guys because they didn't respect him or the team enough to play and practice hard.

The "bare minimum" is the standard under Diaz because the players know they can get away with it. Dummies will keep blaming players for "culture" but that's a HC problem. Kids will do what kids do if you let them.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that they were doing the bare minimum or the fact he felt comfortable enough to publicly admit it.

 

[Lance Roffers]

View attachment 134322

I am so absolutely embarrassed by this picture. Saban gets suspended by the FDIC if his team put an effort like this on the field and our HC is doing slip n' slide stuff.

Yes, you've gotta build up their psyche, but that's after you've tore them down.

 

[Mandingo]

I hate to say I told you so, but I've seen enough of this program to know what's going on. Let's get right to it, shall we?

I had this revelation while watching Diaz continue to flounder. Diaz reminds me of Don Jr. Looks polished. Yaps a good game. Zero substance. He's a fake manly nerd who talks about manly stuff. His idea of hunting would be to stay in a 5 star hotel in Dubai and be taken to an air conditioned shooting range where they line up a bunch of animals chained to a post 30 feet in front of him and give him a machine gun. It's the nerd life. The difference between the two is Diaz is trying to accomplish something, but he's simply clueless on how to lead.

I've harped on this fact forever, and the nerds don't get it, but you can tell everything about a football team by their focus and effort level. We are devoid of either. Of course, the dopes on here will litter my thread with "we played hard, but Lashlee sucks." We neither played hard or played focused.

We have a few players who give effort, but, overall, we're a lazy skinny jeans group. We're the guys with the tight pants that stop at the bottom of the calves with designer loafers we can't afford and a backpack that costs more than we make in a month.

Let's discuss some specifics in the pros and cons section of this incredible blog.

Pros:
This won't be popular for the guys looking for a scapegoat, but King played a great game. He was on target with some absolute darts. Yes he missed Harley to ice the game, but this game never should have come down to one pass at the end.

Harley. That's by far the best game he's played. He is a hard working kid, who took the criticism of the WRs personally. Good for him.

Chaney. He's our best RB right now. Yeah I said it. He's tough fast and runs harder than a 14 year old boy watching his mom's hot friend, Nancy, paint her toe nails in her bikini.

Pope showed some life and made a great acrobatic catch. Yeah he had another drop, but expecting Pope not to drop an easy pass every game is like expecting me not to ram my Pickett/Yellen takes from last week down your faqquit throats until your mascara runs.

And...that's it.

Cons:

Scaife set the tone early for the type of tenacity and the mental toughness that we have when he got bullrushed like the ghey fat kid whose dad forced him to play Pee Wee football even though he'd much prefer to be playing with his Barbies. This dude's been a major bummer.

Cam. He ran like he didn't want to be out there. I don't know if he's hurt or what, but I'm glad they finally yanked him. On that stretch play he looked like he was carrying a piano on his back. Weak effort last night.

Bolden on the TD to the TE gave a feeble effort. All he had to do was carry the guy out of bounds, and that stops the TD.

Carter needs to get a Target ad at this point. I can see him with the Target bullseye painted on top of his head saying "I love Target!" while running head-first into a wall like the Kool Aid pitcher dude.

Lashlee needs to realize you don't have to force balance for the sake of balance. King had a hot hand, and, in case Lashlee didn't notice, UVAG was without their best defender, Blount, and their other starting S Nelson. Run them ragged with the throw game. Throw it 80% of the time if you have to. UVAG is horrible against the pass and pretty good against the run, so what does Lashlee do? Yep. Force that ******* read option inside zone all night long.

What's with our new habit of running give up handoffs on 3rd down in our own end? We're just giving away series regularly every game with that ****.

Our pass rush was supposed to be a huge strength. It isn't. Phillips is a great effort guy, but if he's even thinking about leaving early, he needs a lobotomy.

Did you see the play where Ivey gave a huge cushion to a QB playing WR for pretty much the 1st time? Yeah, so did I. He let a QB run him off for an easy pitch and catch 1st down on 3rd and 11. That play summed us up. 3rd and 11 and he's bailing against a QB playing WR.

96 yard drive in 2:40 when we should have been icing the game. That drive speaks directly to the mindset of this team and why I have dwindling hope for Diaz. We were celebrating a win up 13 with 10 minutes left instead of bearing down and trying to open it up on them.

We let a 3 QB rotation control us for much of the 1st half. Keep in mind none of those 3 can throw the ball. Then, Diaz tells the halftime reporter "We need to make them beat us throwing it." Yeah no **** Don Jr. That should have been the idea from the beginning.

Gurvan Hall looked like he didn't even care on that coverage bust for the late TD. We were already in "we won, let's start taking pics for the gram" mode.

Tried to tell you guys last week we got lucky Yellen played. Nope. The CISpool clowns came for me claiming Yellen was just as good as Pickett. Then, they spent the whole week trying to be funny about how Pickett was a god. Flash forward to this week and look at what ND did to Yellen on his home field. That desultory performance against Pitt was what I feared for the remainder of the season and why last week's Fireside Chat wasn't all puppies and rainbows.

There are 2 or 3 L's left on this schedule if we play like we have the last 2 weeks.

I said it last week, and I'll stick with it. We're average. And we're average for the same reason we stunk last year--Don Jr. isn't a leader of men. He celebrates ****** efforts in wins against horrible teams like UVAG as if we just won a NC. He's not demanding enough, and it shows by the focus and effort level of his team. D$ tried to tell me we're in that next tier behind the greats, but we aren't unless that next tier consists of about 65 teams.

We are a little better than last year, and that's solely because of King. If we had Perry at the helm right now we'd be a 3 loss team. I don't know about you guys, but this game felt eerily similar to last year against a much better UVAG team with a much better QB and much better D.

Agreed!! If King wasn’t on this squad, we would be 1-127 at week 7. We looked like utter ***** yet again. We are so fundamentally unsound - AND - our effort sucks all too often across the board. And I agree - it all starts and ends with Manny. He sucks *** as a HC. Mediocre AF and can’t even begin to understand what elite ball looks like.

He doesn’t have a critical eye for the game. We are about 5 spots away from being dead last with giving up chunk plays. And this idiot keeps lauding his ****** defense.

 

[Olema24]

I agree Manny is not the guy to take us to where we want to be. As I watch these games every week we supposedly have better talent but without effort what good is talent. Yesterday Virginia has some skinny linebacker who looks like he doesn’t know what a weight room is making plays all over the field. I know a lot is coaching but I’d rather have 3 star kids who leave it all on the field than 4 stars that feel entitled. If you work hard good things will come. It’s almost like they’re happy with mediocrity and a occasionally big win.

 

[Astcloud11]

Facts facts and more facts.....the first two years of a HC everyone wants to give them excuses. On top of that saying we are in that second tier is an absolute joke. Notre Dame and Oregon are that second tier and they would rope us easily.

Notre Dame played UGA, and lost by 1 point. That same UGA team went on to narrowly lose the Natty game to Bama off a busted coverage in over time. That same Notre Dame team got embarrassed by Malik Rosier, Mark Richt, a sophomore Zach McCloud, a freshman Trajan Bandy, Jon Richt, the same defense that allowed Alex Hornibrook to look like Tom Brady, and the same offense that needed back-to-back heroics to beat a trash FSU squad and a 5 win GT team. Btw, Alex Hornibrook went on to transfer to FSU just to not even start over a QB who's going to forever be known as the human guitar fvck boy who stood over an injured Cane but ran away from fighting Gerald Willis while also throwing 3 TDS and 4 picks in 3 games vs Manny Diaz. Oh, and that guy just lost his job to Jordan Travis who might as well be a UVA QB.

Oh, ****...that was 2017. My bad.

In 2020, this Notre Dame team that we couldn't possibly be in the same stratosphere has beaten 3 teams, 1-5 duke , and a 1-5 USF team. Wait...****...who are those 3 teams? FSU, Louisville, and Pitt. Hmm against those 3 similar opponents what happened?

Notre Dame averaged 33 and gave up an average of 12 points (21 point margin).
Miami averaged 43 and gave up an average of 21 (22 point margin).

Please show me where Notre Dame is supposedly a step above a Miami team that can't even play a complete game offensively for 3 weeks.

 

[Southcane]

Chise is right, though. Manny is a beta male and we are, again, seeing this team take on a *****-like mentality. Let’s keep **** real...all of these kids are “gender neutral “, beta males who wear tight *** clothes and “fannie packs”. The difference is that under the tutelage of real MEN as HC’s, these kids have someone to look up to like a father figure who’s teaching them a hardness that’s society has been trying to quell for more than 30 years now. Manny owns a pair of skinny jeans himself- of that I’m sure. Now, he’s tried to inject some testosterone into the program with Reed, but the problem is that Ed ain’t in a real position of power. We play like a bunch of pussies because our coaches are a bunch of pussies...Period.

The only player who looked really like an alpha male warrior was Bolden and that was during Clemson game. Manny must have sat him down after that and said: "Calm down son, that's not how we play around here" lol

 

[k9cane]

This sums up Don Jr's leadership perfectly. You have a senior WR openly admitting that the WRs were "going through the motions" before the coaches listed them all as co-starters. It took him all year to light a fire under these guys because they didn't respect him or the team enough to play and practice hard.

The "bare minimum" is the standard under Diaz because the players know they can get away with it. Dummies will keep blaming players for "culture" but that's a HC problem. Kids will do what kids do if you let them.

Chise, this says a lot about the (broken) culture that exists right now, bottom line. It's indefensible. Say whatever you want about our past greats - but they were grinders. Guys who had Hall-of-Fame/Pro Bowl talent but the mentality of a walk-on

And that's the job of the coach to instill that type of mindset. As Jimmy Johnson would tell his guys after bad practices -- 'You're guys scholarships are only for one year at a time, dont ever forget that.'

Also, in terms of our offense, the base (for this season) needs to be shotgun spread, 3, 4 even 5 wide, and just let King create and do stuff. I've said that from the first game vs UAB that the interior of our Oline isn't strong/good enough to do the inside read as it's foundation. As high as I am on Lashlee, that's on him, if he doesn't adjust

Somehow, he has to stay ahead of the chains on 1st down, and there is no rule that says that can only be done via the run game

But moving forward ,I dont see a lot of easy games, what we saw vs LVille and FSU is as good as it's going to get. From here on out, it's all-slog, all the time. I just want this program to do enough in 2020, to keep this recruiting class intact and then move forward. And in the off-season, I really want some changes on the defensive staff. Im alarmed by some of the stuff I see on a consistent basis there( and yeah, I know, Miami only gave up 14 last night).

 

[Southcane]

Accountability doesn’t exist with Diaz. Amari Carter is a perfect example of that. If I was the HC, he doesn’t start after the 2nd targeting against Clemson, considering his history. At this point, it’s on the staff for not getting the message across to this freaking kid.

That what Dabo would absolutely have done.

 

[Dwinstitles]

Notre Dame played UGA, and lost by 1 point. That same UGA team went on to narrowly lose the Natty game to Bama off a busted coverage in over time. That same Notre Dame team got embarrassed by Malik Rosier, Mark Richt, a sophomore Zach McCloud, a freshman Trajan Bandy, Jon Richt, the same defense that allowed Alex Hornibrook to look like Tom Brady, and the same offense that needed back-to-back heroics to beat a trash FSU squad and a 5 win GT team. Btw, Alex Hornibrook went on to transfer to FSU just to not even start over a QB who's going to forever be known as the human guitar fvck boy who stood over an injured Cane but ran away from fighting Gerald Willis while also throwing 3 TDS and 4 picks in 3 games vs Manny Diaz. Oh, and that guy just lost his job to Jordan Travis who might as well be a UVA QB.

Oh, ****...that was 2017. My bad.

In 2020, this Notre Dame team that we couldn't possibly be in the same stratosphere has beaten 3 teams, 1-5 duke , and a 1-5 USF team. Wait...****...who are those 3 teams? FSU, Louisville, and Pitt. Hmm against those 3 similar opponents what happened?

Notre Dame averaged 33 and gave up an average of 12 points (21 point margin).
Miami averaged 43 and gave up an average of 21 (22 point margin).

Please show me where Notre Dame is supposedly a step above a Miami team that can't even play a complete game offensively for 3 weeks.

Yea but a game by game comparison doesn't mean anything. We can easily say yo Syracuse beat Clemson and we beat Syracuse but then play Clemson and get destroyed. That's exactly what people did in 2017.....it's about matchups and we don't match up with those elite rosters. If NCAA football made a game right now we would not be second tier and rightfully so. That's just my opinion on it and all that this team beat that and we beat that team doesn't mean a thing to me.

 

[Allabouttheu95]

Always hope for coaches to one day “get it” but it doesn’t happen often. Same goes for employees, players, etc. 4 straight Miami coaches where average Joe fans see the writing on The wall very early. Those fans have been right 4 straight times. I’m hoping this time we’re wrong but I wouldn’t count on it. That photo of Diaz sliding in the rain is an embarrassment to the tradition of this program. He may never live that one down

 

[Astcloud11]

Yea but a game by game comparison doesn't mean anything. We can easily say yo Syracuse beat Clemson and we beat Syracuse but then play Clemson and get destroyed. That's exactly what people did in 2017.....it's about matchups and we don't match up with those elite rosters. If NCAA football made a game right now we would not be second tier and rightfully so. That's just my opinion on it and all that this team beat that and we beat that team doesn't mean a thing to me.

First, I really just used most of that post as an excuse to talk sht about James Blackman because....why not.

But really man, yeah, it's your opinion. But really... of all the teams in the nation to compare us to....You picked a team who is top 5 in the nation and played a very similar schedule than us...with very similar results. If we played their schedule, the only hiccup we would seemingly have had would be Pitt.

 

[Saviorcane]

I hate to say I told you so, but I've seen enough of this program to know what's going on. Let's get right to it, shall we?

I had this revelation while watching Diaz continue to flounder. Diaz reminds me of Don Jr. Looks polished. Yaps a good game. Zero substance. He's a fake manly nerd who talks about manly stuff. His idea of hunting would be to stay in a 5 star hotel in Dubai and be taken to an air conditioned shooting range where they line up a bunch of animals chained to a post 30 feet in front of him and give him a machine gun. It's the nerd life. The difference between the two is Diaz is trying to accomplish something, but he's simply clueless on how to lead.

I've harped on this fact forever, and the nerds don't get it, but you can tell everything about a football team by their focus and effort level. We are devoid of either. Of course, the dopes on here will litter my thread with "we played hard, but Lashlee sucks." We neither played hard or played focused.

We have a few players who give effort, but, overall, we're a lazy skinny jeans group. We're the guys with the tight pants that stop at the bottom of the calves with designer loafers we can't afford and a backpack that costs more than we make in a month.

Let's discuss some specifics in the pros and cons section of this incredible blog.

Pros:
This won't be popular for the guys looking for a scapegoat, but King played a great game. He was on target with some absolute darts. Yes he missed Harley to ice the game, but this game never should have come down to one pass at the end.

Harley. That's by far the best game he's played. He is a hard working kid, who took the criticism of the WRs personally. Good for him.

Chaney. He's our best RB right now. Yeah I said it. He's tough fast and runs harder than a 14 year old boy watching his mom's hot friend, Nancy, paint her toe nails in her bikini.

Pope showed some life and made a great acrobatic catch. Yeah he had another drop, but expecting Pope not to drop an easy pass every game is like expecting me not to ram my Pickett/Yellen takes from last week down your faqquit throats until your mascara runs.

And...that's it.

Cons:

Scaife set the tone early for the type of tenacity and the mental toughness that we have when he got bullrushed like the ghey fat kid whose dad forced him to play Pee Wee football even though he'd much prefer to be playing with his Barbies. This dude's been a major bummer.

Cam. He ran like he didn't want to be out there. I don't know if he's hurt or what, but I'm glad they finally yanked him. On that stretch play he looked like he was carrying a piano on his back. Weak effort last night.

Bolden on the TD to the TE gave a feeble effort. All he had to do was carry the guy out of bounds, and that stops the TD.

Carter needs to get a Target ad at this point. I can see him with the Target bullseye painted on top of his head saying "I love Target!" while running head-first into a wall like the Kool Aid pitcher dude.

Lashlee needs to realize you don't have to force balance for the sake of balance. King had a hot hand, and, in case Lashlee didn't notice, UVAG was without their best defender, Blount, and their other starting S Nelson. Run them ragged with the throw game. Throw it 80% of the time if you have to. UVAG is horrible against the pass and pretty good against the run, so what does Lashlee do? Yep. Force that ******* read option inside zone all night long.

What's with our new habit of running give up handoffs on 3rd down in our own end? We're just giving away series regularly every game with that ****.

Our pass rush was supposed to be a huge strength. It isn't. Phillips is a great effort guy, but if he's even thinking about leaving early, he needs a lobotomy.

Did you see the play where Ivey gave a huge cushion to a QB playing WR for pretty much the 1st time? Yeah, so did I. He let a QB run him off for an easy pitch and catch 1st down on 3rd and 11. That play summed us up. 3rd and 11 and he's bailing against a QB playing WR.

96 yard drive in 2:40 when we should have been icing the game. That drive speaks directly to the mindset of this team and why I have dwindling hope for Diaz. We were celebrating a win up 13 with 10 minutes left instead of bearing down and trying to open it up on them.

We let a 3 QB rotation control us for much of the 1st half. Keep in mind none of those 3 can throw the ball. Then, Diaz tells the halftime reporter "We need to make them beat us throwing it." Yeah no **** Don Jr. That should have been the idea from the beginning.

Gurvan Hall looked like he didn't even care on that coverage bust for the late TD. We were already in "we won, let's start taking pics for the gram" mode.

Tried to tell you guys last week we got lucky Yellen played. Nope. The CISpool clowns came for me claiming Yellen was just as good as Pickett. Then, they spent the whole week trying to be funny about how Pickett was a god. Flash forward to this week and look at what ND did to Yellen on his home field. That desultory performance against Pitt was what I feared for the remainder of the season and why last week's Fireside Chat wasn't all puppies and rainbows.

There are 2 or 3 L's left on this schedule if we play like we have the last 2 weeks.

I said it last week, and I'll stick with it. We're average. And we're average for the same reason we stunk last year--Don Jr. isn't a leader of men. He celebrates ****** efforts in wins against horrible teams like UVAG as if we just won a NC. He's not demanding enough, and it shows by the focus and effort level of his team. D$ tried to tell me we're in that next tier behind the greats, but we aren't unless that next tier consists of about 65 teams.

We are a little better than last year, and that's solely because of King. If we had Perry at the helm right now we'd be a 3 loss team. I don't know about you guys, but this game felt eerily similar to last year against a much better UVAG team with a much better QB and much better D.

Only two types will understand this the really smart fans and the mopers ( which are the really smart fans ).

 

[Cribby]

We are 5-1. Virginia won the coastal last year. We sucked last year and some people expect us to be a championship program right now.

We are better than we were and we are growing and winning. We are not going to be in the playoffs this year. We need realistic expectations around here. Why people expected a blowout is beyond me. Nc state will be a struggle. We have to be happy with Ws.

Virginia threw the kitchen sink at us and we won. Everyone wants to beat Miami. The next step for us is beating these idiot teams. 2020...so far so good

Uva **** near lost their entire team , they’re 1-4 for a reason

 

[GojiraCane]

This year’s edition of the Miami Hurricanes is a weird bunch to figure out. You look at the stats and you’ll see domination but then you watch the game and the breaks we got (fkn ineligible receiver on a 3rd & goal from the 30 for a TD) and you’re thinking how did we just win that? The truth is we’re nowhere near elite or good. We’re exactly what @The Franchise says, an average team that beats bad teams which is an improvement over last year’s outfit where it took me until the FIU loss to realize we were a straight up bad Sun Belt team. So I keep asking myself why do I keep holding out hope for a Clemson rematch like the slow, fat kid in high school challenging the state champion wrestler to a fight I know will end up in my hospitalization?

I think we've seen incremental improvement this year vs 2019. Maybe that's all we get for the next few years.

 

[Bennubird]

Guess we’ll lose every game from here then.

Question. How good did you guys think we would be? Did anyone think this roster equaled 12-0? For those of you that say we suck, what is the ceiling for this team? Are we a title contender with Saban or Dabo at the helm? I’m just trying to figure out why people are so ****ed.

I'll bite Jonnyblaze. Fair questions. But first let me be transparent and say, I agree almost point for point with what @Franchise said. We're an average team with an average coach beating below average teams because we have an above average QB. Having said that this is just Bennu's take on the questions you raise because there are other issues as well.

How good did you guys think we would be?
I felt before and feel now we'll be as good as this staff prepares us to be. They recruited these players who at almost every position are better than what Pitt or UVA trotted out against us. Because we have more highly touted rosters most years compared to our opponents, Canes on CIS wrongly assume each year that we are going to be better than we actually are. The logic is sound - more talented players than your opponents should mean victories over those opponents. I'd argue almost every coach in the ACC would trade their roster for ours based on talent/potential coming out of high school. And to your implied point, I think, we are 5-1. But clearly we're not anywhere close to being where we want to be in terms of our execution AND we don't appear to be getting better each week as good teams do.

Did anyone think this roster equaled 12-0?
Sure. Even though that's a high bar. You know some of us here thought playing in the pathetic ACC and having recruiting classes annually ranked higher than almost every team in the conference not named Clemson and perhaps FSU that we'd have a chance to run the table sans Clemson. But our major issue is not the roster. It's the culture Manny has created. It's amazing that he can't see this himself.

I'll give an example of it, obviously as I see it. Manny preaches competition, but then he undermines it by playing everyone no matter how they play including if their play hurts the team. That's self defeating and, I believe, it undermines him in the young minds that make up his locker room. I'm obviously not in the locker room, but how could it not? We're just talking here, but if you've played sports - even in Jr. High or High School - you must have a sense of this. I'll elaborate a little further.

Manny's idea of competition is whether you start or not, not whether you play or not. The one thing that coaches have that players want is playing time. That's what they have over the players. Yelling, up downs, etc. only go so far. What all real players want is to be on the field. But you MUST EARN the right to play, not just to start. We have in a literal sense become a soccer mom football program where everyone plays, gets a trophy, and celebrates average performance. When we win in spite of this it is reinforced, which is happening now. Of course, when we play teams that are above average we are exposed.

The point is our players know that know matter how they play they're going to play. Think about that. How careful would you be with your money if you had an infinite supply? How careful would you be if every dollar lost forced you to give up something you coveted?

Amari Carter is the poster child of this. Manny has named him or allowed him to be named a Captain. Who does that? Who takes a player who repeatedly hurts the TEAM and makes him a Captain? In society, we call that being an enabler. For their own benefit, if you're their supervisor, you must take them out, otherwise you are complicit in the harm they bring to the company/team. There are other players CIS members point to as well, but I'm not going to do that here. Harley's comment implicitly confirms what is evident in our play and that's that players are not being forced to be accountable.

What is the ceiling for this team?
Unless the culture of rewarding mediocrity is entirely torn down and discarded, we will continue to be who we've been the past 15 years. No need to elaborate any further.

Are we a title contender with Saban or Dabo at the helm?
I get what you're driving at Cane. Yes. We know we need better talent to compete with Clemson, Bama, o$u, etc. For sure. But it wouldn't take coaches of that caliber to take our current roster and embarrass a wounded Pitt team or punish the pedestrian UVA team we faced last night. Again, what running back on UVA's team compares to any of ours? What defensive linemen to any of ours? Etc. etc. Again, I realize we still have holes to fill on the roster.

If you want us to really become a football team that competes for championships then we've got to hire a championship caliber staff. As it is now, we've got to pray really hard that Manny comes to the realization that he's created a culture at UM that lacks real accountability, enables, celebrates, and makes excuses for mediocre performances and that he fixes that. That would be, as I see it, the most important first step in a series of necessary steps to get us where we really want to be.