Recreate 2017 buzz and not look back, that’s the real question. I hear most of you when you say o-line and qb means maybe 9-3, 8-4. Newsflash: Diaz nor the program can afford that. Not when you have a first year head coach on a previous staff that he was a part of that went 7-6 where players showed disinterest. Additionally media and recruits need to believe. Yes, I know he got rid of the bad apples. Let me ask you this, those of you that say 9-3 8-4 who can we really lose to that recruits would give us the benefit of the doubt and come here over Clemson bama Georgia and to a lesser extent, the Gators?
He can’t have many missteps with this schedule. **** I’ll say it, he starts 2-0 that means he beat a hated rival and won a coastal road game, I’d expect no less than 11-1 at that point provided that the offense averaged more than say 24 ppg.
The one thing that he has to separate from 2017 if he starts say 4-0 is rescuing games like cuse gt uva. That would signal some trouble.
This frantic mindset is one fans perpetuate. It's not rooted in reality or logic.
2017 was an anomaly and in the end proved to be smoke and mirrors. Not as fraudulent as Al Golden's 2013 squad that might've been the biggest on-paper #7 team in the country, seven games into that season—but similar in the sense it needed some comebacks again good-not-great teams to stay undefeated.
In the end, hype gets exposed for substance—and by late 2017, Rosier's miracle comebacks were no more, nor did the confines of a home bowl game have the same magic it had for undefeated primetime showdown against Virginia Tech and Notre Dame.
Look at how 2017 started; Bethune-Cookman, Toledo, at Duke and at Florida State—super-slow starts against the Rockets, Blue Devils and Seminoles that would've been disastrous if facing better competition. Against Georgia Tech, a miracle 4th-and-10 needed to stay alive. Again Syracuse, a late score to pull away from a one-point lead with a few minutes remaining. At North Carolina, a forced turnover after coughing the ball up and giving the one-win Tar Heels chance at an upset.
Expecting Miami to go to Orlando to beat a Top 10 Florida team in Diaz's first game—and implying that a loss or slow start is needed for "media and recruits to believe"—that's a unfair ask based on a 7-6 season, coaching turnover and a new guy's first game. Beating Florida can't be expected. It will be a bonus should it happen—the same way everyone thought LSU was average last year, but beating UM springboarded their season.
You're really worrying about somehow starting 4-0 and then needing comebacks against ACC opponents en route to 6-0? That's way too micro a look when people need to look at the season from a macro level.
Manny Diaz is working to turn Miami into a competitor and then a champion. This isn't going to happen year one. It takes years for programs to run at the level. Dabo didn't build Clemson overnight—and he had a lot of setbacks along the way; years the Tigers looked all-world, only to get smoked by Florida State at home when #3 and the Noles were #5 (51-14 in 2013). Losing a national title game two years later, before finally winning won—and then getting run out of the Playoffs the next season. Took Swinney almost a decade to build this reloading machine he has now.
Stop focusing so intently on 2019 and trying to mirror some magical 2017. Time will tell if Diaz is the guy for Miami; not how a few games play out the first two months of the season.
I'd have loved to see how social media treated Jimmy Johnson in 1984. The man proved to be all-world decades later, but year one after taking over for the defending national champs, eked out a 20-18 win over No. 1 Auburn (at Giants Stadium), lost two weeks later at at #14 Michigan (after taking over the #1 ranking), got waxed at home by #15 Florida State (38-3) and after winning the next five (including whipping #16 Notre Dame in South Bend, 31-13) experiences a trifecta of next-level misery—blowing a 31-0 home halftime lead to Maryland, falling 42-40 .... followed by Hail Flutie the next time Miami took the field ... and then lost a shootout against UCLA in the Fiesta Bowl, 39-37—going 8-5 year one.
Johnson had a crack at a title as a one-loss squad in 1985, having beaten eventual national champion Oklahoma earlier in the year—but got smoked 35-7 in the Sugar Bowl by #8 Tennessee, as the #2 team in the nation. The following year, he ****ed away a sure-fire national title with arguably Miami's second-best team ever—falling to a slow, pasty Penn State squad 14-10, when Heisman Vinny coughed up five interceptions.
Finally got his one and only title in 1987—going undefeated against a murder's row type schedule (#20 Florida, #10 Arkansas, #4 Florida State, #10 Notre Dame, #8 South Carolina and #1 Oklahoma).
People wanted to run JJ out of town from the get-go, many feeling Tom Olivadotti should've gotten the job. To go 8-5 year one in that fashion with a defending national champ—it only made matters much worse going into year two. History won out, though—JJ revered as UM's best coach in history, while winning two Super Bowls, as well.
No head coach should be defined by his first year, or even second. Whatever Diaz does, the clock doesn't really start rolling until year three. Start thinking macro for this program, not micro.
