Another NSD, albeit an early one, and a top 15 class in-tow. This is not going to be an account about the merits or miss of this class for this site and talented writers will do a remarkable job covering the signees. However this will be about the individuals, who for the better part of two decades, have claimed to have all the answers.
Miami continues to mire in the depths of ACC coastal **** with no realistic stairway to climb up. So where do you start construction when there is a perpetuating wheel bogged down in ashes?
The athletic director and his assistant have proven one thing. They are strictly not football savvy enough to understand when the intricacies of the sport are failing them. (On field metrics/recruiting/etc) I would argue that they do not know the difference between an RPO or a ROTH IRA. Blake James and his underlings have enacted a hands off approach to coaches and staff decisions to an almost diabolically program killing fault.
That hands off construct allowed Al Golden to retain his best friend. Mark D'Onofrio's defense was allowed to be a bigger sanction then the actual one. James? He sat idly bye and said that staff decisions would be on the discretion of the head coach. Now enter Mark Richt. He was granted the ability to call his own plays and bring in a very under qualified quarterback coach in his son. The result after three years of that particular nefarious affordability didn't end well.
Once again you see how poor staff choices wrapped in nepotism and friendship were allowed to fester to the point of catastrophic field results. When you hear the phrase "inmates run the asylum" the collective choice to allow a poor defensive coordinator and subsequent offensive coordinator wallow in an ineptitude created chaos. And it is something that should at least have it's own quality control.
Manny Diaz doesn't have all the answers. He just proved it after a 6-6 record and 0-3 off bye weeks. Diaz does not have the experience needed as a head coach and cannot be simply afforded the right to make all the staff decisions without proper vetting or a sounding board. I think it is time for the University and the powers that be to look at a position where head coaches will be held accountable at the microscopic and critical levels.
Just today you have a pompous arrogant offensive coordinator who scoffed reporters saying he didn't know what a spread was. Shotgun? Quarterback runs he said. "We do that." But do you know how many designed quarterback runs the team actually ran this year? Five. (dgoould) I wonder if Jennifer Strawley knows that? Regardless of spread or not, Miami had the worst scoring output ranking nationally in over 11 years (cfb stats) But who above Manny Diaz is analyzing the trends with the ability to enact necessary change? Right now? No one.
Blake does not have an affinity in this arena. So get someone in the power structure, a director of football operations/general manager/AD of football who can. I don't want to get caught up on the semantics of the position title but rather someone who will finally know what the F they are doing. STOP allowing the head coaches to make decisions carte blanche that are detrimental to the program. Miami coaches seem to be really adapt at that sort of thing.
Blake raises money. He is good at it. So have at it. If the BOT does not want to fire the guy then so be it. But if Miami is EVER put in a situation where it needs to replace an offensive coordinator or head coach for that matter, I simply cannot say that I have faith in Mr. Blake James. I need someone better. I need someone smarter in this one area.
There are doctors and than there are doctors who specialize. When you need brain surgery you don't call the proctologist. But the way the football program has been run lately it might as well have had its head up its own ***. So go get a "football AD" that actually KNOWS football.
There is also a huge financial stake here. One that the university shouldn't ignore. The ACC championship game/New Years Bowl money is something you cannot simply write off. Why would you? The payouts are astronomical and program changing beneficial. Miami has "on paper" the second best signing class in the ACC yet it will be content to march out another 6-6 season? That isn't good enough. That means something is wrong.
This isn't simply a talent issue at Miami and it hasn't been in a long time. While they don't have the talent to knock off the big boys of the world "yet" it is grossly under-performing and losing to teams they out-recruit regularly and religiously. If Miami simply can beat the teams it is supposed to beat and best good teams merely 50% of the time it would at least allow a few steps up that proverbial ACC ladder.
So in closing go get me a carpenter. I don't trust Manny to make all the necessary decisions. He doesn't have the experience. I don't have faith in Blake James because his track record and hands off approach got us here. So here's to hoping there is someone out there who is smarter than Manny and more hands on than Blake. Oh but where could we find such a man...
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