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Dawson is ultimately Cheeks.

Playoff defenses faced:

Texas A&M - #18
Ohio State - #1
Ole Miss - #48
Indiana - #4
(Yards allowed per game)

www.espn.com

2025 College Football Defense Total Team Stat Leaders - ESPN

ESPN is the place for NCAAF stats! Find a list of the Defense Total team stat leaders for the 2025 NCAAF Postseason.
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Texas A&M - #36
Ohio State - #1
Ole Miss - #37
Indiana - #2
(Points allowed per game)

www.espn.com

2025 College Football Defense Total Team Stat Leaders - ESPN

ESPN is the place for NCAAF stats! Find a list of the Defense Total team stat leaders for the 2025 NCAAF Postseason.
www.espn.com www.espn.com

3/4 playoff games we played poorly on offense in the first half and one of those three was played away and with howling winds. Guess who we put up 17 on in the first half? Coincidence?

Here is the fair criticism - Dawson's game planning is questionable and needs improvement.
Here's what's not fair - He's cheeks. He's gotta go. He sucks.

We had the #48 offense overall (Yards per game) according to ESPN. However, they don't offer yards per play on their chart which I think would be a significantly more accurate representation of our offense, especially given we were #35 in scoring offense (points per game).
www.espn.com

2025 College Football Offense Total Team Stat Leaders - ESPN

ESPN is the place for NCAAF stats! Find a list of the Offense Total team stat leaders for the 2025 NCAAF Postseason.
www.espn.com www.espn.com

According to this, we were tied for #30 in yards per play: https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/stat/yards-per-play

Is top 30 in offense good enough? Not really, but it's also not cheeks. I'm not here to cape for Dawson - if that's your takeaway, you're wrong. He's not the greatest. He's also not the worst. He's somewhere in the middle and the data suggests he is top 1/3 (or better) based on this year alone. Last year we had the best offense in the nation - and people (correctly) point to Cam Ward.... but doesn't Dawson get at least a little credit? If we are going to put some blame on him for coming up short a few times this year, we better at least give him a little credit for when things went right last year. That's my point.

I'm still hurt (dawg). Hoping this pain will leave soon.
Go Canes.
 
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flips said:
I did not. We had 4 drives in + territory against Ole Miss that we got 0 total points on.
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Fumble
Missed FG
Interception on a batted pass
2 sacks that ruined the drive

I might put 1 of those 4 on Dawson. Dawson didn't fumble, miss a FG, or throw a pick. Maybe the play calling led to the two sacks - I would have to rewatch that series to say for sure or not. So while the stat you cited is true, like most stats used for narratives, it lacks perspective.

If you don't like Dawson, you're certainly entitled to that opinion. The facts are the facts though.
 
TaylorWalls said:
So instead of settling for 31 points, you think we should have put up a nice 50+ spot on Ole Miss in a semi-final game.
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We only averaged 3 ppd on drives that crossed the 50 against Ole Miss. Not sure we should have expected to score 50+ against them, but their defense stunk, not unreasonable to have expected us to score 40+ against them, which would have meant averaging a minimum of 4.1 ppd on those 8 drives instead of 3.

We averaged just 2.95 ppd on 22 playoff drives that we ran an offensive play in + territory. IU averaged 5.94 ppd on such playoff drives.

This is slightly different than what I'm pointing out, but our OSD (points per drive on drives starting less than 60 yards away from the end zone) for the whole year was 3.34 which was 76th best in the country. In the playoff we had 4 such drives and scored 0 total points on them.

If you'll want to die on this hill, and claim well ackshully we were efficient at scoring points in + territory in the playoffs go ahead.
 
If you read my Stat Roll threads every week, I said since about Week 3-4 that this was a national championship defense, and I was unsold that the offense could hold up its end of the bargain.

Well.....21 points wasn't good enough. And for those who say it would have without the punt block, because they only scored 20 on offense, we can't play butterfly effect. How different would they have played on offense had they not got the punt block TD? Nobody knows. All I do know is we only scored 21 points, and zero of those were in the first half. That's not good enough. We had some spikes on offense this year, but overall, it wasn't very good against teams with comparable talent. That mostly comes back to the explosives discussion we've had eleventy billion times on here.
 
flips said:
We only averaged 3 ppd on drives that crossed the 50 against Ole Miss. Not sure we should have expected to score 50+ against them, but their defense stunk, not unreasonable to have expected us to score 40+ against them, which would have meant averaging a minimum of 4.1 ppd on those 8 drives instead of 3.

We averaged just 2.95 ppd on 22 playoff drives that we ran an offensive play in + territory. IU averaged 5.94 ppd on such playoff drives.

This is slightly different than what I'm pointing out, but our OSD (points per drive on drives starting less than 60 yards away from the end zone) for the whole year was 3.34 which was 76th best in the country. In the playoff we had 4 such drives and scored 0 total points on them.

If you'll want to die on this hill, and claim well ackshully we were efficient at scoring points in + territory in the playoffs go ahead.
Click to expand...
I just want to make sure I understand the standard. 2001 level offense.
 
RaisingCane26 said:
Should the goal be to dominate? Or should the goal be to lean into other teams lack of efficiency and make it acceptable for Miami to be the same?
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The reaction should be realistic. You can have some "WE DA CANES BAYBEE" mindset, but what you're expecting isn't realistic.
 
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TaylorWalls said:
40+ points in a semi-final game is 2001 offense.
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When I watched UGA score 43 points against Ole Miss during their first game the first thing I thought was, "Wowee Zowee that offense looks just like Miami's from 2001."
 
Hoyacane1620 said:


TENDENCIES..... Have to change it up.....
No wonder they seemed to "know" what was coming.
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I thought this play was there but Toney didn't see the hole. He should have stayed to the right of Brockermeyer and he had a clean lane. 91 was not fast enough to catch up to him.

1769024174455.png
 
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flips said:
When I watched UGA score 43 points against Ole Miss during their first game the first thing I thought was, "Wowee Zowee that offense looks just like Miami's from 2001."
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Right, we should be relentless like Georgia, who scored 16 against Georgia Tech and 20 against Auburn.

Thank you for proving that no one just shows up and scores 40 at will every night.
 
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