Nothing earth-shaking, but this place is pretty slow now anyways. This player is an upperclassmen and was on Manny's teams too. Mature kid.
In no particular order:
- He said that the guys that left had to leave. We've heard that a lot. Still hard for me to digest that 1/5 of the roster had to go.
- He was "surprised" that Darrell Jackson left. He said his loss will hurt.
- He said that the team would have won more games with Manny this season, but that long term, the team is better off with Mario.
- I asked him what he thought of Mario. He said Mario is a "good dude" and "focused." And that he knows how he wants to handle things at this stage of his life. It sounds as if Mario is far more structured than Manny. No surprise there. But I did sense a little reservation re: his thoughts on Mario. Personally, I think Mario may want to dial down the drill sergeant routine, at least once he gets his fingerprints on the roster. I think that'll come with time, particularly when Mario's upper-classmen can teach the under-classmen how to do things.
- He mentioned the injuries as a wild card this year. To my surprise, since I doubt many college-aged kids are familiar with this, he mentioned that this was not S&C but rather "bone" injuries (as he put it). That is a topic I don't want to discuss again but I'm pleased to hear that.
- He said that there are some "good" rooms and some "bad rooms." I mentioned I thought TE was a good room and he agreed and said Arroyo is a beast.
- He mentioned that Will has had 4 offensive coordinators in 5 years.
- That of course led into the topic of our favorite OC.
- I told him that I didn't think Gattis did a good job of putting pressure on the defense. Little to no tempo. The "check with me" permitted the defense time to take a breather and assess the play. And that the lack of spacing precluded a lot of 1-on-1 opportunities. (I probably should have mentioned the lack of a deep ball too!)
- He said that that is kind of what he thought early in the season too, but that he spent time in the room and didn't know what else Gattis could have done.
- He said that he was able to understand what Gattis was conveying but the offense in general wasn't able to. Things were simplified but not understood.
- He said that day 1 stuff was not understood well into the season. Like foundational stuff.
- He said we ran a lot of the same stuff we did with Lashlee but with a different terminology but kids couldn't get it. Is this a result of having so much turnover in the offensive staff??
- He suggested maybe Gattis' failed in regard to communication-although he understood it. Some coaches/individuals have a way of connecting with 18-22 year old kids. It doesn't sound like Gattis was able to connect with the majority of the team.
- So, apparently, we are not talented on offense and dumb. Luckily, we're no longer broke. Because broke, dumb, and bad would be a bad combination.
That's all I got.
Appreciate the write-up. Especially with so much nonsensical, emotional-driven stuff out of fans these days.
Sounds like things are what we thought they were. Major disconnect with a lot of our kids and a roster overhaul needed as the new boss ain't the same as the old boss—and the old boss left a broken-*** program that needed rebuilding from the ground up.
As for Mario, this honestly sounds a lot like the Butch Davis era. A hard-***, my-way-or-the-highway head coach who feels he knows what it takes to win big.
Fans in 2022 are soft and after 20 years of irrelevance and incompetence, are unable to "trust the process" (a phrase Al Golden wore out en route to his failures, too.)
Mario can't dial anything back. That's not what good generals do. You have your process, you do it your way, you burn the boats behind you and you go into battle (or in his case, "back to work")—as it's all they know—and you emerge victorious, or you're defeated. But there is no in-between.
Unfortunately, we all wanted to believe that it was a just-add-water approach at Miami; that some remnants of mild 2017 success weren't a million miles away, that Manny was just in over his head and that a "real head coach" and "big money staff" could come in and fix things overnight—this mindset that the new coaches would "result in a few extra wins" and that 7-5 could turn into 9-3 or 10-2 with that addition by subtraction overhaul.
What we thought was just going to be some patchwork; instead proved to be a complete tear down when seeing water damage, termite damage and an infrastructure that was broken beyond repair.
I fully trust Miami looks like a real football program in a couple of years—just like the Oregon team Mario built and left in Eugene for Dan Lanning—but it's going to take all the work that he constantly preaches, while flushing out soft weak kids and molding real football players and winners.
Looking forward to the day not one kid from the Manny Diaz era is on this roster. Even the handful of good ones. We need upperclassmen that got their teeth kicked in 2022 and are ready to be next-level leaders by 2024—the Kam Kinchens types who will be the vocal leaders AND lead by example guys that are just getting it done at a high level, while bringing the new kids along with them.