forums

It occurred to me while watching the game Saturday..

McGahee2TheHouse said:
Is that not a coaching issue? Doesn't seem like that is some "systemic problem" that goes beyond coaching or admin.
Click to expand...

What was Miami before Schnelly?

What was LSU or Bama before Saban?

What was FSU before Bowden?

What was UF before Spurrier?

What was USC before Carrol? Since Carrol left?

What was Oklahoma before Stoops?

Programs rise and fall on coaches. Sometimes they get lucky and hire good ones back to back.

Every team is one hire away from the top 10. Fit matters. Coaches do lose the “it” factor. Inept administrations make it harder, but they can’t stop the right coach once hired.
 
Advertisement
Trav said:
Yeah that's a good question, a really good question. But my point is, a guy like that sees how we're playing, not physical and tough and with an edge game to game, and decides I need to go elsewhere where they play like I play.
Click to expand...
Or maybe he went to the 50 football hour a week round filled program and decided he’d like it a bit easier and came back? Lol
That comment would have sounded preposterous two weeks ago. It actually seems feasible now. I don’t believe we are putting in the work other schools do, not just SEC schools either. We don’t look like we put in that work, we do not execute like we put in that work and we wilt once punched in the mouth and that’s pretty much by any school. Because we almost never assert ourselves as the dominant team on the field, even when we should be.
Think about this, we could care less if we could play App St again. Do you think they’d love another shot at us? I’m sure they feel like they lost that game, not that we won it. I mean they basically lost by the two points of the bad snap.
Here’s to hoping this team finds that gear. But I’m not sure it’s there or will be.
 
Advertisement
Trav said:
Somewhere in the second quarter I think, I was doing what I seemingly do most games, and most seasons over the past 15 years or so. I'm waiting for this team to wake up. I'm waiting for everything to click and the team to show that they're the ones with the superior athleticism, size, talent, and will. And then just sort of occurred to me, I'm waiting for something that's not coming.

There's just something deeply wrong with the entire program. And what I do, and we all do, as is our natural inclination, is to try to look for that one thing. Well it's Diaz, we just need a new head coach. Well it's the OC, it's the DC, it's our linebackers, it's our OL, our receivers still can't catch, our quarterback is short and coming off an injury. It's our tackling. It's our preparation. It's our S&C.

But, it's all those things, and it's so much more. I get accused of being a Diaz slurper, and I'm not. I think it was another really risky higher. Another guy with no experience, and some degree of success as a coordinator, but not a whole lot to indicate that he had some kind of great coaching pedigree. But what's funny is people acting like he's suddenly the problem. As if Coker, Shannon, Golden, and Richt never existed somehow. Yea I get how things imploded under Coker and Shannon, but Golden was what half this board is clamoring for again right now. A guy who turned around a fledgling program and made them respectable. And how did Richt forget to coach? Sure UGA had a ceiling but things never imploded on him like they did here in 2018. What happened?

And how is it Lashlee forgot everything? How is it he got a bunch of guys to put up massive #s at SMU with a bunch of guys Miami wouldn't even recruit. The comp isn't THAT dramatically better here. You certainly can't say that about an App St.

I'm watching the App St game and I'm seeing a bunch of kids that Miami wouldn't have even sent a letter to pushing around our big 4 star recruits with elite offer lists.. And then rub their faces in the dirt and tell them about it. And yes we made enough plays to find a way to win, but how did we get to this level when we're life and death with a decent G5 team... Again. Yea they have chips on their shoulders, but so do all the G5 kids on teams that get served up to P5 schools early in the season before the conference schedules. And unless you're FSU, the talent disparity takes care of itself, no matter how bad those kids want to prove their worth.

But not with us. There's almost this pervasive rot that never goes away since the 2005 Peach Bowl. Like it seems they're doing what they need to do in the off-season to train and prepare but once the lights come on there's not an extra gear to meet the challenge. Yea some weeks there are, but it's never consistent. The difference in the way a Tyrique Stevenson plays, with physical abandon and toughness every play, compared to everyone else is so jarring you almost feel like he doesn't belong on the field with these guys. And then you start to realize why guys like him choose to go other places. Because kids like that are watching us play, and turnover chains and TD rings and models on the beach and everything else is nice and fun but it's gilded and these guys are football players. They're watching what's happening on the field and that edge just isn't there. It's about WAY more than scheme.

They're seeing what we see and they're just not interested. Now I think we've started to get some of those type of guys. I think James and Avante are those type of dudes. But the rot is still there. And it can't be fixed with one recruiting class. Yea these kids want to win. They want to play for championships. But want to and making it happen are two different beasts. And the former greats like Michael a Irvin occasionally in their ear or Ed Reed on staff and in their ear EVERY DAY can't just flip a switch and make it happen.

I don't know the answer, and I don't know if there are any easy ones, or any at all. And my only defense of Manny is that he tires to address the obvious problems. But he's in over his head, just like the last 3 guys. If/when we move on from the Manny regime, it'll be another top to bottom cleanse, but the cleanse will have to go so much deeper than any of these guys realized. Who's up for that?
Click to expand...
This is Greatness in posting! U touched on the essence of how I’ve felt for 15+ years and it hurts looking and seeking something that won’t come and doesn’t exist. Like a neglected child waiting bags packed for their dead beat parent to pick them up knowing that it could be yet another empty promise of renewed commitment to the relationship. This is waaaaay bigger than the things we gripe on. And not only does Tyrique’s skill level and physicality jump off the screen, but his emotions and passion for play hard does as well. He fully expects to place his will onto our opponents.

He’s pumped and dudes can even really relate.

It takes a optimistic yet critical (balanced) fan to write something like this. That mindstate and space is the only way something like this can come out. The mope space is extreme and backfires causing all of these deep I’ll issues to be met with band aids.

And yes, I’m up for it!
 
Great post OP, really good point about TS. Kid plays with abandon and you can just see the difference between him and everyone else on D. The schools like UGA and Bama are loaded with kids like that, a big part of it is probably that they know there is another superstar kid behind them who will take their place if they don't perform. Our **** poor recruiting has give our supposed stars the ability to take plays off and not give maximum effort all the time.
 
Advertisement
This has been going on a long time. I was at South Bend in 2016 and they basically didn't show up until the 3rd quarter. I've seen exactly one game since then, that ND beat down the next year where a Miami team looked like it wanted to play.
 
Advertisement
TemplarCane said:
Coker proved he wasn’t the right guy, game 1. Up 30-0 at the half at Penn State, he hits the cruise control button and finishes 33-7. Yes, 24-1 with a NC and a stolen one, cannot take away from him. But twice in 2001 complacently almost cost the NC, at BC and at VT. 2001 Miami would have been the best #2 team since 2000 Miami.

2002 and near repeats against FSU and VT. Finally caught up in the Fiesta Bowl. OSU was good, but not that good. A motivated and focused Miami team wins by 14, an angry Miami team wins by 21.

Talent won a lot of games, for sure, but you could sense on-the-field leadership slip as players like Ed Reed left.

Coker hit cruise too often, and the players got the message.
Click to expand...

The funny thing is, I have always felt that Miami was a complacent team.......even in the national title contender years. JJ's 1987 team did not look great in that 24-14 win at home over a 3-7 Toledo team. One of the best teams ever assembled needed heroics to beat a very average BC team in 2001. The BYU debacle in Provo. Barely beating another painfully average team in Arizona, at home, 8-7 in 1992. Beating mighty Tulsa 23-10 in the Orange Bowl in '86. At BC in 1991. These are the ones that stand out to me, I know we've had plenty of others.

Point is, even when Miami has been good, it's still half-assed it many times in a way that a team like current Alabama doesn't. **** in the 93 Sugar Bowl against Alabama itself, we half-assed it, top to bottom. The culture of complacency has been around a long time. Of course, the difference in the old days was that they'd get ****ed off after those games and take it out on the next team they played. Now, we just let bad losses or poor performances bleed into the next game.
 
LPK2006 said:
The funny thing is, I have always felt that Miami was a complacent team.......even in the national title contender years. JJ's 1987 team did not look great in that 24-14 win at home over a 3-7 Toledo team. One of the best teams ever assembled needed heroics to beat a very average BC team in 2001. The BYU debacle in Provo. Barely beating another painfully average team in Arizona, at home, 8-7 in 1992. Beating mighty Tulsa 23-10 in the Orange Bowl in '86. At BC in 1991. These are the ones that stand out to me, I know we've had plenty of others.

Point is, even when Miami has been good, it's still half-assed it many times in a way that a team like current Alabama doesn't. **** in the 93 Sugar Bowl against Alabama itself, we half-assed it, top to bottom. The culture of complacency has been around a long time. Of course, the difference in the old days was that they'd get ****ed off after those games and take it out on the next team they played. Now, we just let bad losses or poor performances bleed into the next game.
Click to expand...
JJ said in an interview, the hardest part of coaching is maintaining motivation week in and week out when the team believes too much in themselves. That same 1987 team also struggled with a bad VT team (won, 27-13, late TD) the following week. Then spanked a good ND team 24-0.

He knew the team didn‘t believe him when he tried to tell them how good Tennessee was going in the Sugar Bowl. We remember what happened.

Had Miami not struggled at home to beat a bad La Tech team, 42-31, in 2000 they likely would have played OU instead of FSU. Point differential and strength of schedule were key ranking parameters.
 
Advertisement
k9cane said:
A soft culture, with easy practices(by relative standards of big-time programs), that really doesn't hold players accountable, will produce soft football players and teams.

Football isn't an easy game, that's why I truly respect anyone that plays at a high level. It's not always fun and it can be brutal on the body and mind

But this is what these guys signed up for. Somewhere along the way UM became a bit soft with its players (well, having Coker in charge is where it started).

This used to be a place where after bad practices Jimmy Johnson would threaten guys scholarships at the end of the semester. Bubba McDowell, when I interviewed him for Canestime way back when, flat out said it was frightening and the guys were running back to their dorm rooms to , as Jimmy said -- ''read the fine print''. He laughed when he told the story, as did Michael Irvin who said the greatest and toughest football in his life was on Greentree after Johnson's threats. But it had an impact on those guys as young men.

Now, we have a guy who does the slip-n-slide after defeating Virginia by 5 points at home.
Click to expand...
There's players here who enjoy what comes with playing football at Miami rather than taking football serious.
 
Advertisement
Back
Top