How have we never won the ACC?

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coaching all the way to the top of the administration. The reason we’ve never won the ACC, is because until now, the administration has not been all in, and that has reflected in our subpar coaching hires. Now, for the first time in probably our whole existence, the coaching to the top of the administration is all on the same page and bought in, so hopefully an ACC title follows.
 

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1. We don't fill obvious holes and other coaches are smart enough to exploit them. (e.g. DBs last season)
2. We rarely have depth of talent causing:
  • Failure points when injuries happen (e.g., when Ahmonn went down in 2018)
  • Lack of competition for positions which creates culture and attitude problems (e.g., the Eddie Johnson saga and other sundry problems under Golden)
  • Overreliance on young players who look great vs. weak teams but don't hold up against the better teams (e.g. early Anthony Chickillo and James Williams)
3. Coaches who don't know how to develop (Ron "the donk" Dugans)
4. Coaches who get outsmarted during games (e.g., pinching our NFL DEs down vs UNC under Manny)
5. The Shapiro and rental car scandals which marginalized multiple NFL players
 
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1. Taking too long to jump off the "All NFL players come from South Florida" train and
2. Not being able to correctly identify the right SFL players/afford the ones you do correctly identify

These numbers look a lot different if Calvin Ridley, Jerry Jeudy, etc etc etc etc etc stay home.

We couldn't afford them back then. Look no further than Sony Michel. He will tell you directly to your face he wanted to be a Hurricane, but UGA paid him WAY more, and he had to take it.

Also, our coaches have been completely unable to field a complete team. We've had enough talented players, but it's never spread out enough to actually win. Last year is a perfect example. If we have just an average secondary, we probably go 12-0. But, we're Miami fans. Nice things are unavailable here. Just not allowed to have 'em. So, we pair a very good roster with the literal worst secondary we've had since 1997.

The 2017 and 2018 defenses were EASILY good enough to win the ACC. But we paired them with Malik Rosier and N'Kosi Perry. Two kids who were FAU caliber, at best. You see what happened.

For going on 20 years, we've recruited and developed enough players in certain areas to easily win the league. But we've been completely unable to spread that talent evenly through a roster. There's always a MASSIVE hole, sometimes multiple. We took the 2014 team, that had 5 kids drafted in the first 3 rounds, and then Feliciano went in the 4th and was a very good NFL player, and we won 6 games. Why? We paired junior year Duke Johnson with Mark Onofrio, and one of the worst defensive lines Miami has ever produced. Olsen Pierre, Ufomba Kamalu, Mike Wyche, Chickilo, Calvin Hourtelou, etc. Been much of the same for a long time.
 
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Simple explanation is we joined the ACC in 04’ I believe.

We’ve been devoid of legitimate, high end talent for the most part since. There’s exceptions but it’s overwhelmingly true.

Some of those teams Duke was on wouldnt have won 5 games if not for him.
 
Problem started with the administrative higher-ups being slow to react to how the game was changing. They were spoiled because Miami went 30 years starting in the early 80s and every coach they hired was successful and they didn’t have to pay them that much, and there was no facilities arms race. When the game really started to change in the 2000s they assumed they could keep hiring whoever, invest lightly in facilities, etc., and it would work out. It didn’t, we ended up with a string of bad hires, and we fell behind. It’s only been recently that the decision was made to invest heavily in the program, and we’re just now catching up.
 
Crazy to ruminate that if the team just got back to work and worked harder, we wouldn’t be in this position.
 
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Doing less with more for years now lol. It's to the point where we expect to lose to mid-tier ACC teams every year.
 
Simple explanation is we joined the ACC in 04’ I believe.

We’ve been devoid of legitimate, high end talent for the most part since. There’s exceptions but it’s overwhelmingly true.

Some of those teams Duke was on wouldnt have won 5 games if not for him.
There’s never been high-level talent across the board though, and not with the depth needed to win championships. That’s why every coach needed to “rebuild.” Yes, there would be talent on paper, but certain positions would be stacked while others were depleted. And there was never enough depth to deal with any injuries at all. It was a mess in reality, and recruiting was not ever up to the level that Miami could and should be at.
 
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