Déjà vu

View as article
Re: the talent spin job from the media.

My only rationale is that they, like us, want to believe so badly that Richt is the guy, they’re willing to look past the obvious signs that he’s not. Denial is a powerful thing.

The last decade of Canes football has been so painful from a fan’s perspective. I can only imagine how bad it’s been for the media, who’s job it is to dive head first into this steaming pile of **** on a daily basis.

We all want so badly to not find ourselves back where we were: embarrassed, frustrated, ****ed off, humiliated...

The sooner they come around to reality, the sooner this situation can start correcting itself. Once the fans AND the media turn on a coach, it’s only a matter of time...
 
Advertisement
Problem with journalists and media types is they never played this game and/or understand it enough. They think its just a brute gladiator sport with big dumb fast kids just running into each other.
 
I didn’t expect to be here this fast. Richt isn’t Golden, but this is a Golden season. We just flipped sides of the ball.

What hurts the most is hearing the spin regarding talent. It sounds like the Golden era, minus the sanctions excuse. The class is collapsing and a quick fix (i.e. an offensive version of the Manny hire) is unrealistic. Richt came here to call plays and he is going to see it through. This is a bad time to be a Hurricane fan.

Some scattered thoughts:

- Richt has botched the QB position, and we shouldn’t be surprised. That’s what got him fired. Personally, I focused on his prior successes and hoped the way it ended in UGA (with Greyson Lambert and Faton Bauta) was an aberration. It wasn’t. This might just be who Richt is in 2018. When I watched Cam Newton and Deshaun Watson win games on Sunday, it only drilled home that point. There is a disconnect between Richt and the modern game.

- It’s even more concerning to hear Richt talk about Jarren’s redshirt. Now, Jarren isn't going to save the offense. He might not even be ready to play. We don't know. But the redshirt shouldn’t be entering Richt’s mind. If Jarren is good, he won’t be here in five years. If he’s bad, he won’t be here in five years. Or he’ll be Malik. Either way, the fifth year should be irrelevant. I’m worried Richt’s mind is stuck in another era that no longer exists.

- The fans have been screaming for more motions and jet sweep action since last year. Richt dismissed it. But in Week 10 of the season, there it was. He is reacting, as opposed to getting ahead of the trend. And as you'd expect, everything looks haphazard and thrown together. Darrell Langham, who can't run, faked the jet on multiple snaps. Why not use Homer, Dallas, Harley, or Pope? We have guys that can scare people, but we don’t use them in a manner that scares anyone. And when we lined up for a jump ball to end the game—the classic Langham scenario—we pulled him and sat him on the bench. I just don’t see any reason or rhyme to what we do.

- Deejay Dallas is another example. Duke scored on us with a jump pass. Meanwhile, we have one of the most versatile players in the country being utilized like a one-dimensional runner. Where is the throwing threat? Where is the receiving threat? He might as well be Gus Edwards.

- Much has been written about how we ran out of time with four minutes left and two timeouts. It was an embarrassment. And it’s just a continuation of what we’ve seen the last two games. Why is there no urgency coming from the QB position? Can you imagine Drew Brees or Baker Mayfield carrying themselves like our guys? It’s not an experience thing, because Malik is even less urgent than Perry. It is coming from the head coach and the quarterback coach.

- We need to do a better job of self-scouting. Everybody knew Malik’s limitations going into the year. And on our pre-camp podcast, me and Lu spent a good chunk of the time describing how Mahoney and Jones were not talented enough to start for us. We had an absurdly easy stretch after the LSU game. Why didn’t Scaife and Perry start until conference play? Why were so consistent with our first-team offensive lineup early in the season? If the upperclassmen aren’t talented enough—which was obvious before the season—we need to fast-track the young talent and takes our lumps early. That did not happen.

- One last thing on the talent spin job. You are seeing it all over Twitter from the media and staff. The New Orleans Saints played the LA Rams yesterday. Biggest game of the year. The Saints have one of the best QBs of all time, the best OL in the league, and two RBs that combined for 3,000 scrimmage yards last year. If anybody can line up and “out-dude” the opposition, it’s them. But on a crucial fourth and one, Sean Payton called a reverse pass to put the ball in the hands of Taysom Hill. It worked. Nobody is just lining up and beating guys man-on-man. The state of football is too advanced. You need to always be looking for an edge. We aren’t looking for that edge right now. We are just looking for excuses.

Anyways, I'll be watching on Saturday. This November, like so many other Novembers of the past decade, is about seeing young talent develop and learning from failure. I thought we were past this stage.


If changes arent made this offseason in my opinion Richt is done here at Miami staying the course will just demonstrate the fact that his ego and blind belief in his offensive system are going to be his demise. If a business is failing the leadership of the business needs to evaluate which employees are earning there salary and providing value. Is Searles earning his salary here? with the woeful performance of the offensive line and lack of development of his recruits i would say not. Is Thomas Brown earning his salary here? his bogus OC title withstanding i think he is more of a hindrance than a help on the offensive side of the ball. A new oline coach and a new play caller are obvious needs here and if Richt fails to make these changes (which he will) then i think its a matter of time before he is fired while we suffer through another 3 years of losing and irrelevance
 
Advertisement
At this point, Richt is a bigger fraud than...

giphy.gif
 
Was hoping for a discussion on J Coles hit... love that track big ups to honey remembering his boy.
 
Advertisement
I would not shed a single tear for any offensive coach not retained.
Dugans? Hartley? Both have been excellent recruiters and appear to be coaching up their players well. Both turned down offers in the off season to join other programs. Both had have to deal with massive injuries to key starters and work with what they have. No reason to get rid of talented coaches, especially since they have shown loyalty to Miami.
 
I didn’t expect to be here this fast. Richt isn’t Golden, but this is a Golden season. We just flipped sides of the ball.

What hurts the most is hearing the spin regarding talent. It sounds like the Golden era, minus the sanctions excuse. The class is collapsing and a quick fix (i.e. an offensive version of the Manny hire) is unrealistic. Richt came here to call plays and he is going to see it through. This is a bad time to be a Hurricane fan.

Some scattered thoughts:

- Richt has botched the QB position, and we shouldn’t be surprised. That’s what got him fired. Personally, I focused on his prior successes and hoped the way it ended in UGA (with Greyson Lambert and Faton Bauta) was an aberration. It wasn’t. This might just be who Richt is in 2018. When I watched Cam Newton and Deshaun Watson win games on Sunday, it only drilled home that point. There is a disconnect between Richt and the modern game.

- It’s even more concerning to hear Richt talk about Jarren’s redshirt. Now, Jarren isn't going to save the offense. He might not even be ready to play. We don't know. But the redshirt shouldn’t be entering Richt’s mind. If Jarren is good, he won’t be here in five years. If he’s bad, he won’t be here in five years. Or he’ll be Malik. Either way, the fifth year should be irrelevant. I’m worried Richt’s mind is stuck in another era that no longer exists.

- The fans have been screaming for more motions and jet sweep action since last year. Richt dismissed it. But in Week 10 of the season, there it was. He is reacting, as opposed to getting ahead of the trend. And as you'd expect, everything looks haphazard and thrown together. Darrell Langham, who can't run, faked the jet on multiple snaps. Why not use Homer, Dallas, Harley, or Pope? We have guys that can scare people, but we don’t use them in a manner that scares anyone. And when we lined up for a jump ball to end the game—the classic Langham scenario—we pulled him and sat him on the bench. I just don’t see any reason or rhyme to what we do.

- Deejay Dallas is another example. Duke scored on us with a jump pass. Meanwhile, we have one of the most versatile players in the country being utilized like a one-dimensional runner. Where is the throwing threat? Where is the receiving threat? He might as well be Gus Edwards.

- Much has been written about how we ran out of time with four minutes left and two timeouts. It was an embarrassment. And it’s just a continuation of what we’ve seen the last two games. Why is there no urgency coming from the QB position? Can you imagine Drew Brees or Baker Mayfield carrying themselves like our guys? It’s not an experience thing, because Malik is even less urgent than Perry. It is coming from the head coach and the quarterback coach.

- We need to do a better job of self-scouting. Everybody knew Malik’s limitations going into the year. And on our pre-camp podcast, me and Lu spent a good chunk of the time describing how Mahoney and Jones were not talented enough to start for us. We had an absurdly easy stretch after the LSU game. Why didn’t Scaife and Perry start until conference play? Why were so consistent with our first-team offensive lineup early in the season? If the upperclassmen aren’t talented enough—which was obvious before the season—we need to fast-track the young talent and takes our lumps early. That did not happen.

- One last thing on the talent spin job. You are seeing it all over Twitter from the media and staff. The New Orleans Saints played the LA Rams yesterday. Biggest game of the year. The Saints have one of the best QBs of all time, the best OL in the league, and two RBs that combined for 3,000 scrimmage yards last year. If anybody can line up and “out-dude” the opposition, it’s them. But on a crucial fourth and one, Sean Payton called a reverse pass to put the ball in the hands of Taysom Hill. It worked. Nobody is just lining up and beating guys man-on-man. The state of football is too advanced. You need to always be looking for an edge. We aren’t looking for that edge right now. We are just looking for excuses.

Anyways, I'll be watching on Saturday. This November, like so many other Novembers of the past decade, is about seeing young talent develop and learning from failure. I thought we were past this stage.

Good stuff...add to this the dynamic of the Florida vs Georgia discord and the offense vs defense discord = major strife in the locker room...we are a disaster.
 
Dugans? Hartley? Both have been excellent recruiters and appear to be coaching up their players well. Both turned down offers in the off season to join other programs. Both had have to deal with massive injuries to key starters and work with what they have. No reason to get rid of talented coaches, especially since they have shown loyalty to Miami.
That’s for the next HC to decide.
 
@DMoney How would you fix this? What would be your 3,4,5 step plan on fixing the offense starting this week and into the offseason?

There is no way to fixed unless you go out and sign a top of the line OC that can attract some guys on offense and defense. The team is done, Richt is done as a coach, blood is in the water the shark smelled and recruits don't want any part of it including legacies.
 
Advertisement
Richt is going to end up being THE most damaging hire we've made. When you factor in how much he is being paid and how much more difficult it will be to make him go away.......the 3 predecessors look like kitty cats in comparison.

Would be nice to see the BOT and/or our puppet AD take some responsibility for what has happened....but we know that will never happen.

I think the answer here for Canes fans is simple. Take a temporary break. Enjoy your wives and kids and forget about college football just for a while. Don't spend any money on tickets or merchandise. Combine that with some banners and billboards and hopefully they'll act sometime in the next century.

Self inflicted wounds. It will end up defining the last 20 + years of this program's history.

It's already is, he is keeping direct rivals like FSU and UF alive with his incompetence.
 
Very good analysis here D Money. This is what I'm talking about.

There is a huge disconnect right now between what is expected of the players and what is being coached. Those two processes aren't meshing.
The play calling seems very dysfunctional. I understand it's the Patriots, but last night against Green Bay Tom threw a TD pass by faking a bubble screen pass and finding a receiver open downfield. What you don't see is how the bubble screen was thrown several times before during the game to force Green Bay's corners to react to is thereby leaving one of the receivers wide open down field. The plays build off of one another. We don't have that. Richt seems to throw darts blindfolded at the play sheet each series with the dive being 3 out of the 6 plays available.
 
Advertisement
Good stuff D! Yall will see the people with a brain transfer this offseason. Players and coaches.
 
@DMoney - thank you for capturing a lot of the same thoughts I had driving home Saturday night... I wasn't even ****ed driving home; just numb at this point I guess. Some added notes:
The fans have been screaming for more motions and jet sweep action since last year. Richt dismissed it. But in Week 10 of the season, there it was. He is reacting, as opposed to getting ahead of the trend. And as you'd expect, everything looks haphazard and thrown together. Darrell Langham, who can't run, faked the jet on multiple snaps. Why not use Homer, Dallas, Harley, or Pope? We have guys that can scare people, but we don’t use them in a manner that scares anyone.
Not only that, but they were calling the jet sweep to JT4 in the middle of a monsoon. With 2 inches of water on the ground, Thomas had ZERO chance to cut up field. He looked like he was on ice when attempting to hit the edge. Just crazy to think that was a good idea in that environment (not quite Yearby throwing in the snow bad, but bad).

And when we lined up for a jump ball to end the game—the classic Langham scenario—we pulled him and sat him on the bench. I just don’t see any reason or rhyme to what we do.
I watched Langham argue with Brown/Richt when they pulled him off for the last play - After he pulled his helmet off he looked ready to cry. He's made two of the biggest catches for Miami in recent history and you bench him for the last pass attempt of the game?

Much has been written about how we ran out of time with four minutes left and two timeouts. It was an embarrassment. And it’s just a continuation of what we’ve seen the last two games. Why is there no urgency coming from the QB position? Can you imagine Drew Brees or Baker Mayfield carrying themselves like our guys? It’s not an experience thing, because Malik is even less urgent than Perry. It is coming from the head coach and the quarterback coach.
It looked like we had never run a 2-minute offense before. I'm ok with the run calls - they were working. However the OL and WR were completely lost between plays (at one point we were lining up to hike the ball and Cager was standing in the middle of Duke's Dline). I can't recall seeing a slower offense in a situation like that - combination of being unprepared and no urgency from the coaches. The group I sit around went absolutely ballistic during that last drive - more so than I've seen in the past.
 
I'm not an Xs and Os expert, and I don't expect Richt to step down and hire a hot spread offense name. But my general thoughts are this:

1) Identify your championship-caliber players and play them. Richt has privately told people that he expects the team to make a big jump when guys like Cleveland Reed and John Campbell are ready to play. Well, the time is now. We have Florida as the season opener next year. LSU scared him into leaning on under-talented seniors throughout camp. We can't make the same mistake twice. Same goes for Jarren.

2) Build on what worked in the second-half 2016. RPOs. Tunnel screens. Short passes into the hands of your playmakers. All of these things play into the strengths of our returning personnel. Guys like Cager and Langham not only lack threatening speed, they are bad YAC guys. The loss of Ahmmon hurt us in both areas. Let's get guys like Thomas, Pope and Harley on the field at the same time. Our returning QBs have the arm strength to make strong horizontal throws to the field side. Use our advantages and make life easier for our QB.

3) Tempo. If we are going to be static, we need to play faster. We move like Stanford without the same personnel. That doesn't fit our strengths.

Jones and Rosier should be done from here on out, they're awful. Play the young guys and get their feet wet.
 
I'll say this adding to what D$ said.


Why the **** don't we incorporate tunnel screens more often?

It would be an easier throw for Kosi to make as he's a one read guy anyway. Also, it would prevent the opposing team's D-Line from constantly teeing off on our putrid O-Line. There is no variety so the opposing team's D-Line doesn't even have to think.

Imagine getting Hightower or JT4 out in space with a tunnel screen? Crazy that we haven't done it.
 
Advertisement
Back
Top