Let's be honest, this is exactly what the University of Miami was hoping for—the perfect smoke screen to buy more time.
With both D'Eriq King and Jake Garcia now out for the season, the Canes now have one lone option at quarterback—providing the perfect scapegoat for a double-talking head coach, say-nothing AD and spin-city athletic department.
Any offensive regression this year will now be blamed on King's fluke injury—not a makeshift offensive line, or bad play calling by Rhett Lashlee. Tyler Van Dyke will subconsciously become the fall guy—post-game pressers where Dead Manny Walking praises his young quarterback's effort, while making it clear that Miami got a bad hand this year by way of the injury bug. Guys are trying, but we're undermanned out there—which is part of college football—but still, we've got it worse than most, at crucial positions. Blah, blah, blah.
Meanwhile, the fact the defense has regressed—under a long-time coordinator turned head coach, who wanted to go back to do his old job, instead of focusing on his new CEO role—it'll get swept under the rug. The Canes missed 30 tackles against Michigan State and are one of the worst-tackling teams in the nation—under Diaz, no less—but they keep ignoring that storyline and will make it about King's injury during UNC week.
This is some political-level strategizing here out of UM and the Diaz camp; the timing of everything. Miami played Michigan State 22 days ago—it really took over three weeks to determine that rehab wasn't the answer and King needed surgery?
Conspiracy theorist in me believes this would've been announced the Friday after Virginia, had Miami won that game—feeling good about the win and Van Dyke's second half rally—but once UM slipped to 2-3 going into the bye week, everything went dark until Monday of this week; official news it'll be a freshman out there for North Carolina and North Carolina State these next two weeks—subliminally telling folks not to expect much, without the heart and soul of the transfer quarterback under center.
All this in effort to stave off an in-season firing—as it's not Dead Manny Walking's fault that these injuries happened—and if they can salvage 6-6 and make a bowl, they'll get healthy in the off-season, try to land another solid class and will get 'em in 2022!
On a macro-level Miami's only hope (for the fan base and state of the program) is that the Canes take a few colossal beatings at the hands of the Tar Heels and Wolfpack—the type of losses that can't be blamed on a play here or there, an injury or a few unlucky bounces.
Miami needs to get wrecked over the next few weeks so the heat get turned up proper. The ****block-At-Hard-Rock was a good start; a comeback falling short, with a thud—and the national / local spotlight has been on the program since the ESPN callout after the Michigan State loss—but it needs to pile-on from here, not let up.
If the Canes are 2-5 in ugly fashion, Sunday October 24th could be be all she wrote for Diaz.
#DeadMannyWalking