It’s true that it might just be a matter of time and no changes are needed. It’s also important to pay attention to certain indicators to see if there’s any actual progress being made during that “it takes time” period.
One such indicator is how you do against a poor team with less talent than you have. We didn’t do well with that indicator.
Yes, agree with this very much. I think that anyone calling for firing Diaz at this point is either unrealistic or just trying to be someone who can one day say that "I was one of the first to say Diaz should have been fired." As frustrating as the last 15+ years have been, it only makes it more unrealistic to expect us to have transformed into what we want in one offseason.
However, with that being said, I do think it's fair to judge progress towards where we do expect to reach. Sure, the fact we didn't quit, and came back to take leads in the 2 games, look like signs of a team that is committed and improving, but we've also cited the "not quitting" as a sign of progress under the past few coaches as well. To me, this was more of a sign of progress against UF (as painful as it is to lose to them), but not against UNC. To me, progress against the UNCs on our schedule is to treat those teams like true opponents, and to beat those teams, which is why the UNC game really frustrated me - to come out flat, look unprepared, and then not be able to make the plays we needed to win, that is not making progress towards what we want to be.
One other point on the time needed to reach the program's goals - the way college football recruiting is now, especially for us, is that the ability to land the type of class we want, especially the top end players, is based on our success on the field. I'd think that most fans recognize that while we have the talent to play better than we've been the past several years, it's still not at the level where we need it to reach where we want to go. To get that talent, we need to convince kids that we're relevant, and to do that we need to win and hold that relevance.
Playing on the big stage and beating UF would have put us in the national conversation from the start of the season, but even the close loss at least showed we weren't all that far behind. But losing to UNC is damaging to that goal. The way our schedule seemed to set up, even with a loss to UF and one other loss, to be a 10-2 team, even against a weak schedule, would likely land us in the ACC championship game again, making us a much more relevant program nationally. A 10-2 Miami team in the ACC championship game in the first year under a new coach is a story kids can get behind, and may be enough to hold on to elite talent. An 8-4 Miami team ending up in the Pinstripe Bowl is not likely to attract the types of players we will need to reach the goals we want the program to achieve. Until we can break the cycle of mediocrity on the field, it seems unlikely we'll be able to reach the level of elite recruiting classes off the field to fuel the program going forward.
