Miami was built on the Dline not the the WR's sorry but it's the big boys that put UM on the map. We need get back to bring in and turning loose War Daddy types that hate everyone. Then sprinkle in the speed guys, because you can run for a TD if your QB is sacked or pressured. And your Running back can't have a 100yd day if he is getting hit in the back field for a loss an almost every play.
Go Canes
That's not really true.
That's the conventional wisdom, but it was not how Howard Schnellenberger conceived our teams overcoming what was a consistent disadvantage we had at the LOS physically. Our guys were smaller and not as physical, especially on the OL, but on both sides. On the offensive side, since we could not overpower physically, he conceived he passing game as the great equalizer against physically superior defenses.
He called it the great equalizer, I'm not. Rather than try to overpower stronger, bigger defenses, he called it a "divide and conquer" offense. Rather than having our OLs trying to "lean", he wanted to force the defense to try to run like **** to get to the QB. Then it was the QB and WRs against the defensive back. Our smallish OL's back then were hellaciously good pass blockers, but they were not overpowering run blockers. (Christ Vagotis, our OL coach back then, said it was very hard to teach college OLs to be equally effective at both.)
The quoted words above were his words, not mine. I remember the full statements very well. He realized we were physically inferior, so he conceived a way to overcome it. I'm not as sure how he and Tom Olivadotti did it on defense, especially because Tom ran a read-and-react 5-2 defense which was very effective. I think he used kids who were tough, with high motors, and very, very determined. They were well-schooled, and did not miss assignments. His defense was called the "gap control rover" defense. He wrote a book on it. (Look it up).
You might find an explanation of Schnellenberger's "divide and conquer" in Jim Martz's history of Hurricane football.
By the way, if you guys saw us running Olivadotti's defense these days, you'd probably dislike him as much as Coach D'Onofrio. Of course, offenses were not as good as they are now. His defense was pretty effective, especially against the run.
But the statement about dominance at the LOS is not really true. It's conventional wisdom, but not true.
