Yesterday afternoon, Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal was live on ESPN with Pat McAfee, reflecting on the Hurricanes win over the Stanford Cardinal, Darian Mensah, and Malachi Toney.
Check out everything he had to say down below:
On the message to the team: The flat-out truth, brother. Go right at the film, find all the things that we could do a **** of a lot better, which we can, even though it was a solid start. After two and a half quarters, we pulled most of the guys that started the game, and a bunch of guys went in there that we are expecting to play and help us win football games. And just all in all, there is a lot of progress, but brother, we got a ways to go, man, and we're looking forward to attacking that. We did all week in practice, and we got suited up in about 48 hours here.
On what he learned from Darian Mensah first game: Yeah, I learned that we're still learning, right? That game one is chapter one of a season. I don't think you ever judge it right till you get to the very end. But as it relates to the quarterback, it's what we saw in practice every single day: elite talent, elite human being, awesome leadership skills, precision, pocket presence, accurate balls, right, can extend plays and just improvise, and his juice is awesome. I love being around this guy, man. He brings so much energy to the table and impacts those guys around him. So all in all, just a very positive step, and the best part, the guy came in here hungry as **** to go get better. So we love that.
On how he hits on the quarterback position: I think, everything here is we collaborate, man. We get together, we put our eyes on things, get our ears out there to the ground, see what people are all about, what they're made of, and then probably the most important part, we provide them with the right supporting cast, not only football players and teammates, but also schematically and from a coordinator and coaching standpoint, mentorship standpoint, that it all fits together. Because you look at our team, like every team, you're made of high school players, veterans, rookies, portal guys, guys that come in from the JUCOs, guys that come in from Canada. So yeah, you got to have, again, the right common mindset, DNA to make it all work, and we've been very fortunate to have the right people here.
On what Malachi Toney has done to improve his game: Well, 12 to 14 pounds of muscle, man. He can accelerate and decel at higher rates. His stop and go has taken another step. His flat-out top-end speed. His durability. His entire body just looks different. He is stronger. He is faster. And then the time he puts in, it's never changed. He always tries to push the envelope with that. So he's just bringing in more teammates with him now. So when the coin toss is going on out there, he's at the forefront out there with the rest of the team captains.
On the offensive line in the first game: Offensively, I thought pass pro was really good, and then in the run game we hit miss a few times, but overall, concerned that they were in a loaded box playing man coverage, handled some things pretty well and have to work a lot on some other things. On the defensive side, the same way. We held to six points, but there's a lot of things that we got to work on and get better. Just the basic principles of getting our feet in the ground, coming off with a flat back, getting our hands inside, going low to high, lifting people, right, knocking the line of scrimmage back. So those are the things that we pride ourselves on and we have to get better at.
On developing Miami's roster: You have to develop your football team. So when, in my view, you get guys in the game that have earned the right to play. I really don't believe that we just throw guys in there because maybe you build a comfort lead or whatnot. It still has to be guys that you're developing because they are going to have to play. They're going to have to help your team win football games. So that's what we did. Again, we don't... that has to happen. You have to work that into existence on a play-by-play basis and not look beyond that. So, but that's our philosophy: develop your roster. We had practice today, and at the end we, sent everybody to the sidelines and brought out all the guys that need developmental work and ran another extra 20 plays of live ball to see who else we can get on the field for this coming Thursday. I love it.
Check out everything he had to say down below:
On the message to the team: The flat-out truth, brother. Go right at the film, find all the things that we could do a **** of a lot better, which we can, even though it was a solid start. After two and a half quarters, we pulled most of the guys that started the game, and a bunch of guys went in there that we are expecting to play and help us win football games. And just all in all, there is a lot of progress, but brother, we got a ways to go, man, and we're looking forward to attacking that. We did all week in practice, and we got suited up in about 48 hours here.
On what he learned from Darian Mensah first game: Yeah, I learned that we're still learning, right? That game one is chapter one of a season. I don't think you ever judge it right till you get to the very end. But as it relates to the quarterback, it's what we saw in practice every single day: elite talent, elite human being, awesome leadership skills, precision, pocket presence, accurate balls, right, can extend plays and just improvise, and his juice is awesome. I love being around this guy, man. He brings so much energy to the table and impacts those guys around him. So all in all, just a very positive step, and the best part, the guy came in here hungry as **** to go get better. So we love that.
On how he hits on the quarterback position: I think, everything here is we collaborate, man. We get together, we put our eyes on things, get our ears out there to the ground, see what people are all about, what they're made of, and then probably the most important part, we provide them with the right supporting cast, not only football players and teammates, but also schematically and from a coordinator and coaching standpoint, mentorship standpoint, that it all fits together. Because you look at our team, like every team, you're made of high school players, veterans, rookies, portal guys, guys that come in from the JUCOs, guys that come in from Canada. So yeah, you got to have, again, the right common mindset, DNA to make it all work, and we've been very fortunate to have the right people here.
On what Malachi Toney has done to improve his game: Well, 12 to 14 pounds of muscle, man. He can accelerate and decel at higher rates. His stop and go has taken another step. His flat-out top-end speed. His durability. His entire body just looks different. He is stronger. He is faster. And then the time he puts in, it's never changed. He always tries to push the envelope with that. So he's just bringing in more teammates with him now. So when the coin toss is going on out there, he's at the forefront out there with the rest of the team captains.
On the offensive line in the first game: Offensively, I thought pass pro was really good, and then in the run game we hit miss a few times, but overall, concerned that they were in a loaded box playing man coverage, handled some things pretty well and have to work a lot on some other things. On the defensive side, the same way. We held to six points, but there's a lot of things that we got to work on and get better. Just the basic principles of getting our feet in the ground, coming off with a flat back, getting our hands inside, going low to high, lifting people, right, knocking the line of scrimmage back. So those are the things that we pride ourselves on and we have to get better at.
On developing Miami's roster: You have to develop your football team. So when, in my view, you get guys in the game that have earned the right to play. I really don't believe that we just throw guys in there because maybe you build a comfort lead or whatnot. It still has to be guys that you're developing because they are going to have to play. They're going to have to help your team win football games. So that's what we did. Again, we don't... that has to happen. You have to work that into existence on a play-by-play basis and not look beyond that. So, but that's our philosophy: develop your roster. We had practice today, and at the end we, sent everybody to the sidelines and brought out all the guys that need developmental work and ran another extra 20 plays of live ball to see who else we can get on the field for this coming Thursday. I love it.
