I was able to speak to a very relaxed and confident Mario Cristobal on Monday night. Here is everything he had to say:
CANESINSIGHT: The 10-2 Miami Hurricanes are coming off their best month of November in two decades. Coach, how are you feeling?
CRISTOBAL: Feeling strong, eager, looking forward to our next opportunity to play again. The boys are fired up, really enthused, and had a great lift today, so fired up, man.
CANESINSIGHT: Four wins in November, average margin of four touchdowns. You guys are Top 10 pretty much across the board in all stats for November performance, whether it's touchdown passes, completion percentage, turnover margin, yards per game, allowed sack rate, there's too many to list.
But this has been a month where going back to 2003, it has been a problem for the Miami Hurricanes. What has allowed you guys to not only survive the month 4-0, but also dominate the way you have?
CRISTOBAL: This thing all started a few years back, right? And it was about creating a culture, creating a mentality, and recognizing that the month of November had been a really tough go for the University of Miami.
Our guys just kind of had enough. We made a decision to go in there and make sure that we approach every single thing that we did with the best energy, the best enthusiasm, work our butts off. And make sure that when we got on the field, we were the most excited team, the most physical team, and the most disciplined team. The guys that executed the best. And it showed up. It showed up strong. A dominant month for us.
We’re starting to click on all cylinders now, man. The committee, a little over four weeks ago, said we want to see a more consistent Miami. We didn't want to disappoint them, so we got it done.
CANESINSIGHT: One play that I want to ask you about, a spectacular play to end the game. There was a coach who, we don't have to say his name [Steve Sarkisian], but his team struggled to block the University of Florida as well as your guys did when they played.
He talked about the last play, and the way it was described was a little different than I remember with the flow of the game. This is the touchdown to CJ Daniels. So walk us through that last play.
CRISTOBAL: I heard that reference earlier today, but I get it. Everybody's trying to posture themselves for their programs, and I get it. But there’s the fact of a common opponent between us and that particular coach. We had the opportunity to really dominate that opponent, while that opponent dominated them. So that's pretty easily put to bed.
But for us, we're playing football and it's 31-7. We had done a really good job controlling the game. And the opponent calls a timeout, and also is playing plus-one concepts. It's not my job to stop our offense. It's not.
We were in the same boat on the other side four years ago in ‘22 when we were playing Pitt. And, man, they had a lot of fun scoring a lot of points on us when we were really outmanned. So it's never anything personal.
Carson had had an interception the previous drive. CJ had just come back from injury. Those guys had an opportunity to connect and get better as we go forward and get ready for our next opponent. So that's what we did. We played Miami Hurricane football and that's that.
CANESINSIGHT: The youth on offense, you see Malachi Toney taking a bigger role, Girard Pringle, his speed and what he brings. How has the offense evolved into what it is right now?
CRISTOBAL: We're always assessing, man. We're always self-scouting ourselves and making sure that if there's anything that can complement what we have done, if there's wrinkles that we can add, things that kind of start the same but end different, that's what we want to do. We take our tendencies and we try to break them every single week.
Sometimes it doesn't look as successful as other times. Obviously, the last four weeks it's really picked up. But it's never been a lack of effort or adjustments or whatnot. Sometimes you just get rolling and clicking. And when you do, it just adds a lot of juice, man.
The guys started playing with a lot of enthusiasm. The more you feed those guys, that's advantageous, that kind of energy that comes with it. So it's been an absolute blast watching our offense. If you take just our last month's metrics, just about everything is Top Three, Five, or Ten in the country. And, again, a lot of freshmen out there.
Carson was funny, man. He says, “I'm here, I'm a six-year quarterback. I look behind me, there's a true freshman. I look to my right, there's two freshmen. I look to my left, there's one. I'm like, wait a second. I'm in a time warp here, right?”
So it's great to see senior leadership like that.
CANESINSIGHT: Carson Beck, #1 in passer rating over these last four weeks (195.1). He didn't have spring, really most of the summer. Now seeing him at this level, what do you see with Carson Beck and how much has he evolved over the course of the season?
CRISTOBAL: He's the hottest quarterback in the country. He is brilliant. Like his football IQ is off the charts. His level of competitiveness, his eagerness to be able to help teammates find a way get better is awesome.
I've never been around a more misunderstood guy. He's absolutely awesome. And he's the hottest quarterback in the country at the right time when you want to head into the playoffs.
You combine him and the Malachi Toneys of the world and some of the other guys you mentioned and these trenches that we have, it's an exciting group. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a team that's more fun to watch, especially what we've done this past month.
CANESINSIGHT: Going back two decades, people talk about the SEC and some of the disparity between the SEC and other conferences. But I look back at your last three games against the SEC, you’ve won by an average of 19 PPG in those games. You look at a Florida State winning by two touchdowns over Alabama. You beat Florida this year. Do you think that the ACC needs to get a little more credit when it comes to some of these cross-conference matchups and the athletes and the physicality that they can bring to the table?
CRISTOBAL: Without a doubt. You just mentioned a couple games that we have played. Week One where Florida State really controlled and dominated the game against Alabama, and the way that Louisville really dominated Kentucky this week. Pretty sure Texas played an overtime game against them, or was it Mississippi State? I think it was both, actually.
So there's a lot of great football being played in this conference. And I think it's showing. Football is cyclical. In conferences sometimes they take command in certain times. I worked at Alabama. Nick Saban has retired. There's a Portal. And there's also NIL. So parity is real. It's a real thing.
And we have built this team not like any conference’s type. We built this like what Miami is supposed to be. A really physical team on both sides of the line of scrimmage and filled with explosive playmakers everywhere.
So, yeah, the ACC, hard-pressed to find more elite quarterbacks than what you find in the ACC. And it all starts there.
CANESINSIGHT: Opening weekend, Miami against Notre Dame. Notre Dame had their worst pass blocking grade since they started tracking it. Offense, their worst game of the season. Defense, second worst. Special teams, worst. When you're building this team, are you building it but to be able to step toe-to-toe with those playoff type teams and control the game the way you did opening week?
CRISTOBAL: You’ve got to build it from the inside out. It's got to start up front, man. It has to.
That's a great part about playing these games. The field test, right? You get to test your guys against other people's best. And the results allow them to speak for themselves.
I think the best part about our team is that it's structured and layered to get better and better as the years go on. Last year, we were continuing to put the roster together. In Year Three, it's really two recruiting classes. Year Four, your third recruiting class is true juniors.
At the end of last year when Cam Ward was was leaving, everybody's like, “Man, that's the best player in the country. What's Miami going to do now?” We're like, well, we're going to be better. Not because he left, obviously he's awesome, but because of recruiting, development, high-quality people, high-caliber coaching, all that stuff. Stacking those things up.
And so we're excited. We feel like we're just getting started. We're nowhere near as good as we're going to be. But it's great to see that all the metrics, all the numbers show that we have played ourselves into a Top Five, Top Ten performance-type team.
CANESINSIGHT: What does that say about the health of the program that you can lose a guy that is so special and improve overall as a program?
CRISTOBAL: That's what you want to do. You always want to make sure that year-in and year-out you have an opportunity to compete for championships and win championships.
And the only way to do that is to always do it two and three and four years out. That requires a ton of meticulous planning, getting after roster management and figuring out this fits, this doesn't fit, we gotta add here, we gotta subtract there. We need to develop in this part, we gotta coach this part better. This particular scheme, well, we have to adapt because what we recruited doesn't quite fit that scheme.
Things like that are an ongoing, 24/7-type of conversation and adjustments. From our recruiting department to development, strength and conditioning, nutrition and the ball coaches, And most importantly, the players, just a really, really good job of continuing to evolve and develop so that we can put together back-to-back 10-win seasons.
CANESINSIGHT: Coach, your phone's buzzing, so I don't want to keep you too long. But since Signing Day is on Wednesday, I imagine part of your recruiting pitch is that Miami's played true freshmen at a rate that’s pretty unusual for your caliber of team. And the contributions they're making are not minor. These are major players on your team.
How important is that not only for your team, but to sell it when you're talking to these great high school athletes?
CRISTOBAL: Well, the best part about that is that we're doing it every year. It's not just this year. Every single year we've had multiple freshmen All-American on our team. And we have probably had the most of any year this particular year. We think this next class is even going to be better.
It all starts with the caliber of people, though. I got to be honest with you. We're recruiting great athletes, but they're great people. And you know what they do? They're able to block out the noise and focus on our Miami Hurricane family. Because this sport is still noise and clutter.
These guys, they want to be Miami Hurricanes. And Coach Johnson, Coach Erickson, they'd always hammer that to us. You've got to want to be a Miami Hurricane. And we want not only players, but our people, fans. We want people that really want to be in there, in the trenches, as Miami Hurricane family. Because when Miami comes together, we all know, man, there's nothing like it.
CANESINSIGHT: Coach, we've got a ton of Canes fans on. There's like three thousand people jumped on the second that they heard you were going to be on the thing.
CRISTOBAL: You should invite me more often, man. We appreciate you. And here's the thing. Like we go 24/7. We do. That’s the job. No one should receive a pat on the back for that. I don't believe in sugaring up somebody because they're working on it. That's part of it.
But people like yourself, people that are really invested in the program, being truthful, being honest, getting after the things that need to be, we love that kind of stuff. So it's an honor to be on this show with that.
And please know this man, what we're doing over there in Coral Gables brother, we're just getting started. We have a lot of work to do, but my Lord, we've come a long, long way. And this is a College Football Playoff team that is ready to play really, really well in front of the national audience.
And I think the best part about it is that 10.8 million viewers, plus seventy thousand in that stadium, saw a great head-to-head event on August 31st, not to mention a lot of other common opponent games throughout the season. So that being said, I appreciate you and go Canes.
