Fixing Canes Football

[canecrazy23]

Hate to say it, but UCF is a better job right now

 

[305407cane]

Jeff Stoutland

I knew there was atleast one. But still you had to go back some years. Three regimes ago

 

[SSCane]

The UNC game was embarrassing (especially on Defense). If you're being realistic, you'd conclude that it's actually surprising that the youth at LB and lack of talent at the DB position (with 1-2 exceptions) didn't manifest earlier in the year. Losing two highly experienced LBs last year was bound to hurt us big time. Shaq wasn't Ray Lewis but he was highly experienced, intelligent and pretty physical. He didn't get caught in the wash on every single play and there's no way UNC would have run for over 500 yards with last year's LBs playing.

We have some young talent at LB but they need to get much stronger, play more physical and gain experience. Not having top notch experienced LBs ready to go after Shaq and Pinck's departures cost us big time in the UNC game. Our lack of talent at the DB position was also exposed. Couch will be a baller for us. A couple of the others are pretty good (Bolden in particular earlier this year).

The main issues the program has are:

1) Lack of elite talent at the LB and DB positions.
2) Not enough elite talent on the DL (Jaelan is very good and Nesta has played hard but he isn't Wilfork or Cortez Kennedy). Roche is pretty solid overall but had a poor game against UNC.
3) We lack elite talent on OL as well.
4) We have a major talent deficit compared to 1999, 2000 and 2001. Coaching is important for sure but Recruiting is the thing in CFB. We've got to recruit more elite talent.
5) The coaches on D are not up to snuff. Look at the stout coaching talent Butch had around him at Miami. I think Manny is a very good DC. His staff on D is nowhere near as good as Butch's was when he was here. Not even close.

Recruiting (and changes to the Defensive staff) will likely dictate the success or failure of the Manny Diaz era.

Manny has been here for 6 YEARS and has yet to recruit a single linebacker that can play at a P5 level. So, I don’t trust him or this staff to upgrade the LB.

 

[Consigliere]

It is always a race to the bottom on CIS.

 

[77cane]

CMR left this team with less talent then he started with. There is a reason why we had so many portal signings. It's not only a major talent upgrade we need, but talent with an attitude. I can see that with the incoming class , providing it sticks together.

Also, our defensive philosophy must change.
I remember when Diaz took over he emphasized
11 guys after the ball. To do that as aggressively as they want, requires players to continually vacate areas of responsibility ,thus leaving large gaps in the defense. That is a recipe for disasters against balanced offenses, especially those with talent. Yesterday a Saints player (on a very good defense) instead of trying to force the runner inside, tried to loop around from the inside leaving a gaping hole to his right. 82 yards later the runner was standing in the endzone. We lost our gap integrity all game long and watched long run after long run. NC simply schemed against a fatal flaw in the defense. We must also have linebackers with no eye discipline. Flagg seems to be the only one out there with a clue.