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In the loss to the Tigers over the weekend, defensive coordinator Manny Diaz did not feel like the team ever bounced back after LSU’s long touchdown run.
“We made a mistake on a long run and we didn’t respond to it,” Diaz said. “The whole football team. We dropped our gloves in the second quarter - offense, defense, special teams - and that to me was the most disappointing part. We didn’t look like we were very mentally tough. … In these games there’s going to be give and take. You’re not going to lose a game because you give up a touchdown in the first half to make it 10-3, but we did.
“Because after that point we did not respond. Above everything from the game that was the most disappointing part. For us to accomplish anything we have to show some resilience. Not the resilience to not surrender, and yes we made it a little of a game in the second half. But to respond right then and to punch right back when you get punched in the mouth. We didn’t have that. Of all disappointments, that was the biggest disappointment.”
Diaz pointed out some of the defensive players he felt played well in what was for many their first real action.
“I think some of the new guys that had to play inside - I thought Pat Bethel did a good job in his first test,” Diaz said. “Obviously everybody saw what Gerald Willis did. I thought Tito [Odenigbo] did a nice job in there, Jon Ford did a nice job in there. Anytime you have a performance like that, which you’re disappointed in, there’s always going to be some bright spots. But not nearly enough, and not enough where anybody really would be satisfied with our performance.”
The Canes rotated on defense a lot against LSU, and many of the backups struggled to play at the same level of the starters. Will Diaz shorten his rotation in the future?
“It might be the opposite,” Diaz said. “How many guys do have that have proven they can play at a high level? If anything, we need to reduce the feeling of entitlement…we need a good old competition to find out who our best guys are, now that the games are here and we’re not reading about ourselves, to find out who’s really serious about this.”
On the play of senior DB Jhavonte Dean: “They only completed three passes of over 10 yards, and three of them, were essence, his responsibility,” Diaz said. “The more disappointing part was two of them were coverage checks – it’s the idea of being able to answer a question on a motion before the play, where you’re not just leaving a guy wide open because they put a guy in motion. That’s all part of maturation of a player.”
On the freshmen who played in the season opener: “The freshman worth highlighting is Al Blades,” Diaz said. “When we lost Trajan [Bandy], which is another whole topic, we lost two players, because not only our starting corner, but we lost our starting nickel on third down. Al came in there and did not blink. It was not too big for him. He covered maybe their best guy, foot for foot. Al was very encouraging, the way he played in there. And then DJ Ivey played the majority of the last third of the game, and we kind of had the same feeling with DJ. It didn’t seem too big for DJ. He did a nice job. He wasn’t challenged with a pass, but kind of did his job and looked like he knew what he was doing.”
While LSU is in the past, Diaz said the game did take an emotional toll on his players as the Canes attempt to bounce back from the loss.
“Everybody is hurt and we’re still hurt,” Diaz said. “Even today’s practice there’s still rawness out here. Guys invested a lot in that game and they’re not happy about how it went. But maybe that’s the thing that’s going to get this chip back on our shoulder. Look, no one on the outside will care. But on the inside we have to come back from this thing. And we have to get ourselves to when we play it looks like the way we want us to play.”
**Tight ends coach and special team coordinator Todd Hartley mainly rode his starting tight end in week one against LSU. In freshman Brevin Jordan’s first career game, he barely stepped off the field and did an overall excellent job for what UM asked him to do.
“Brevin played 71 out of, I believe, a potential 78 snaps,” Hartley said. “First game, that atmosphere, to be able to go that long without having to come out – we hardly had to [substitute] him – I thought he did excellent, what we asked him to do. He graded out very high. He graded out almost [Chris] Herndon-level, trying to compare some things.
“Assignment-wise, I think he might have had two plays where he didn’t quite do what he was supposed to do. But two out of 71, I’ll take that all day. What he showed me was, he can handle the atmosphere. He can handle that quality opponent. He can handle the blocking, the protection. He didn’t bust one protection. He finished every play. He put his hat on people, he ran his feet, he competed. He didn’t back down. The moment wasn’t too big for him. So I was very, very impressed.”
On Jordan’s role in the offense: “He is definitely a weapon in our offense,” Hartley said. “We had some things called for him in the game, [LSU] just did some things defensively that kind of took that away, and took the look elsewhere. I thought he handled it well. I really did. Going forward, he’s going to get his touches. He’ll get his touches.”
As the special teams coordinator, Hartley had another freshman starting under his command: kicker Bubba Baxa.
“You’re all nervous when you’re starting three freshmen – two freshman tight ends and a freshman kicker,” Hartley said. “You don’t know how they’re going to react until they get on that stage, and Bubba comes out, that first [field goal], sticks it. Second one was a little longer and it got tipped…that’s why it came off a little like that.
“I thought Bubba handled it well. He had two kickoffs we asked to kick normal – one was a touchback and one was two or three yards deep [in the end zone] and they actually brought it out. The other two, we were trying to strategically place the ball at the end of the game. One we wanted to kick it high to make them return it and the other one, we tried to get it to where they weren’t and it ended up going out of bounds. He did exactly what we thought he would do. Obviously, we’d like him to make all field goals, but that one got tipped and we have to make sure we shore up our protection a little bit better.”
At punter, sophomore Zach Feagles had a whirlwind game, seeing his first punt almost blocked by a rusher that came through untouched up the middle, and then shanking his next punt off his foot.
“With ‘Feags,’ it’s very disappointing the first punt of the year, we have an issue with protection. We have a guy come scotch free, right through the ‘A’ gap. If you watched the film, he actually did an unbelievable job of not getting the punt blocked. The guy is literally from me to that microphone, and he was able to punt it to where the guy didn’t block the punt.
“Because of that, he had pressure his first time, I thought he thought he was going to have pressure the rest of the game. What he did was, he tried to speed his process up. He tried to speed his steps up. With punters, it’s all about rhythm. With that rhythm, our goal is to get that ball punted in two seconds or less. With him, because of that protection issue, he’s trying to get it off as fast as he can and it took him off rhythm. He had a couple after that that weren’t where we wanted them, but towards the end of the game, he ended up having some punts that were a lot better.”
“We made a mistake on a long run and we didn’t respond to it,” Diaz said. “The whole football team. We dropped our gloves in the second quarter - offense, defense, special teams - and that to me was the most disappointing part. We didn’t look like we were very mentally tough. … In these games there’s going to be give and take. You’re not going to lose a game because you give up a touchdown in the first half to make it 10-3, but we did.
“Because after that point we did not respond. Above everything from the game that was the most disappointing part. For us to accomplish anything we have to show some resilience. Not the resilience to not surrender, and yes we made it a little of a game in the second half. But to respond right then and to punch right back when you get punched in the mouth. We didn’t have that. Of all disappointments, that was the biggest disappointment.”
Diaz pointed out some of the defensive players he felt played well in what was for many their first real action.
“I think some of the new guys that had to play inside - I thought Pat Bethel did a good job in his first test,” Diaz said. “Obviously everybody saw what Gerald Willis did. I thought Tito [Odenigbo] did a nice job in there, Jon Ford did a nice job in there. Anytime you have a performance like that, which you’re disappointed in, there’s always going to be some bright spots. But not nearly enough, and not enough where anybody really would be satisfied with our performance.”
The Canes rotated on defense a lot against LSU, and many of the backups struggled to play at the same level of the starters. Will Diaz shorten his rotation in the future?
“It might be the opposite,” Diaz said. “How many guys do have that have proven they can play at a high level? If anything, we need to reduce the feeling of entitlement…we need a good old competition to find out who our best guys are, now that the games are here and we’re not reading about ourselves, to find out who’s really serious about this.”
On the play of senior DB Jhavonte Dean: “They only completed three passes of over 10 yards, and three of them, were essence, his responsibility,” Diaz said. “The more disappointing part was two of them were coverage checks – it’s the idea of being able to answer a question on a motion before the play, where you’re not just leaving a guy wide open because they put a guy in motion. That’s all part of maturation of a player.”
On the freshmen who played in the season opener: “The freshman worth highlighting is Al Blades,” Diaz said. “When we lost Trajan [Bandy], which is another whole topic, we lost two players, because not only our starting corner, but we lost our starting nickel on third down. Al came in there and did not blink. It was not too big for him. He covered maybe their best guy, foot for foot. Al was very encouraging, the way he played in there. And then DJ Ivey played the majority of the last third of the game, and we kind of had the same feeling with DJ. It didn’t seem too big for DJ. He did a nice job. He wasn’t challenged with a pass, but kind of did his job and looked like he knew what he was doing.”
While LSU is in the past, Diaz said the game did take an emotional toll on his players as the Canes attempt to bounce back from the loss.
“Everybody is hurt and we’re still hurt,” Diaz said. “Even today’s practice there’s still rawness out here. Guys invested a lot in that game and they’re not happy about how it went. But maybe that’s the thing that’s going to get this chip back on our shoulder. Look, no one on the outside will care. But on the inside we have to come back from this thing. And we have to get ourselves to when we play it looks like the way we want us to play.”
**Tight ends coach and special team coordinator Todd Hartley mainly rode his starting tight end in week one against LSU. In freshman Brevin Jordan’s first career game, he barely stepped off the field and did an overall excellent job for what UM asked him to do.
“Brevin played 71 out of, I believe, a potential 78 snaps,” Hartley said. “First game, that atmosphere, to be able to go that long without having to come out – we hardly had to [substitute] him – I thought he did excellent, what we asked him to do. He graded out very high. He graded out almost [Chris] Herndon-level, trying to compare some things.
“Assignment-wise, I think he might have had two plays where he didn’t quite do what he was supposed to do. But two out of 71, I’ll take that all day. What he showed me was, he can handle the atmosphere. He can handle that quality opponent. He can handle the blocking, the protection. He didn’t bust one protection. He finished every play. He put his hat on people, he ran his feet, he competed. He didn’t back down. The moment wasn’t too big for him. So I was very, very impressed.”
On Jordan’s role in the offense: “He is definitely a weapon in our offense,” Hartley said. “We had some things called for him in the game, [LSU] just did some things defensively that kind of took that away, and took the look elsewhere. I thought he handled it well. I really did. Going forward, he’s going to get his touches. He’ll get his touches.”
As the special teams coordinator, Hartley had another freshman starting under his command: kicker Bubba Baxa.
“You’re all nervous when you’re starting three freshmen – two freshman tight ends and a freshman kicker,” Hartley said. “You don’t know how they’re going to react until they get on that stage, and Bubba comes out, that first [field goal], sticks it. Second one was a little longer and it got tipped…that’s why it came off a little like that.
“I thought Bubba handled it well. He had two kickoffs we asked to kick normal – one was a touchback and one was two or three yards deep [in the end zone] and they actually brought it out. The other two, we were trying to strategically place the ball at the end of the game. One we wanted to kick it high to make them return it and the other one, we tried to get it to where they weren’t and it ended up going out of bounds. He did exactly what we thought he would do. Obviously, we’d like him to make all field goals, but that one got tipped and we have to make sure we shore up our protection a little bit better.”
At punter, sophomore Zach Feagles had a whirlwind game, seeing his first punt almost blocked by a rusher that came through untouched up the middle, and then shanking his next punt off his foot.
“With ‘Feags,’ it’s very disappointing the first punt of the year, we have an issue with protection. We have a guy come scotch free, right through the ‘A’ gap. If you watched the film, he actually did an unbelievable job of not getting the punt blocked. The guy is literally from me to that microphone, and he was able to punt it to where the guy didn’t block the punt.
“Because of that, he had pressure his first time, I thought he thought he was going to have pressure the rest of the game. What he did was, he tried to speed his process up. He tried to speed his steps up. With punters, it’s all about rhythm. With that rhythm, our goal is to get that ball punted in two seconds or less. With him, because of that protection issue, he’s trying to get it off as fast as he can and it took him off rhythm. He had a couple after that that weren’t where we wanted them, but towards the end of the game, he ended up having some punts that were a lot better.”
