Miami opens at -18.5 vs USF

Our defense was completely overhauled and our offense is more balanced; we're a better football team than the one that beat USF in Tampa last season.

I like what Golesh does with spacing to create conflict and how his teams compete, but coming into HR against our DL and OL should be a challenge for them.

I don't take USF lightly at all, but Miami has the talent-level with quality-depth, coaching and maturity to separate from USF over 4 quarters of football.

We should win this game.

didn't that USF tiny receiver who destroyed us last year leave their team?
 
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Look, South Florida may totally beat us. We may pull a post 2003 Miami out of our hat, as we often do. But here's a few things worth mentioning:

I watch a bunch of Florida games and Napier plays the game he played Saturday a lot. His offense just stalls out in certain games. It's really weird to see. There is a lot of randomness to the way he calls a game. It doesn't seem like he's trying to do anything cohesive and it's as if he's spinning a wheel to pick the next play. And they're not very good plays. The INT Lagway threw was a designed roll out to the right with a deep post going the opposite way that he threw while still moving, going across his body. Like, wtf.

The defense will play well and keep them in games. And they were great at creating turnovers last year. The UGA game, the Ole Miss game, the Kentucky game, the Tennessee game, those were all multiple turnover games for them. But go look at their point totals for most of the season. They can't score. Even go back to 2023. They just have clunker games.

So it doesn't shock me that the Gators played the game they did against USF. It's very in their wheel house. And credit to USF for fighting to the end, but they did the absolute bare minimum to win that game. USF had 6 points with 2:00 left in the 3rd. The crazy thing is, if Florida doesn't get that safety on the punt then USF is driving at the end just to tie the game.

And then regarding the Boise State game. My god, I went and watched that debacle.

-Boise fumbled at the USF 39
-Boise fumbled at the USF 16
-USF's punter throws a 50 yard TD on a fake punt that makes it 17-7
-Boise then turned it over on downs at the USF 23
-Boise turned it over on downs at their own 43
-Boise fumbled at the USF 12

Again, credit USF for playing hard but Boise could not get out of their own way in this game. These are two games where USF is just kind of playing football, not necessarily great football, while the teams around them just play like dog s*** and implode.

I think they're a decent team that will lose by a few scores to Miami if Miami simply plays football the way they've been playing. If you told me we'll go out and play sound football then I think the score is probably 31-14 or something.
 
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Look, South Florida may totally beat us. We may pull a post 2003 Miami out of our hat, as we often do. But here's a few things worth mentioning:

I watch a bunch of Florida games and Napier plays the game he played Saturday a lot. His offense just stalls out in certain games. It's really weird to see. There is a lot of randomness to the way he calls a game. It doesn't seem like he's trying to do anything cohesive and it's as if he's spinning a wheel to pick the next play. And they're not very good plays. The INT Lagway threw was a designed roll out to the right with a deep post going the opposite way that he threw while still moving, going across his body. Like, wtf.

The defense will play well and keep them in games. And they were great at creating turnovers last year. The UGA game, the Ole Miss game, the Kentucky game, the Tennessee game, those were all multiple turnover games for them. But go look at their point totals for most of the season. They can't score. Even go back to 2023. They just have clunker games.

So it doesn't shock me that the Gators played the game they did against USF. It's very in their wheel house. And credit to USF for fighting to the end, but they did the absolute bare minimum to win that game. The crazy thing is, if Florida doesn't get that safety on the punt then USF is driving at the end just to tie the game.

And then regarding the Boise State game. My god, I went and watched that debacle.

-Boise fumbled at the USF 39
-Boise fumbled at the USF 16
-USF's punter throws a 50 yard TD on a fake punt that makes it 17-7
-Boise then turned it over on downs at the USF 23
-Boise turned it over on downs at their own 43
-Boise fumbled at the USF 12

Again, credit USF for playing hard but Boise could not get out of their own way in this game. These are two games where USF is just kind of playing football, not necessarily great football, while the teams around them just play like dog s*** and implode.

I think they're a decent team that will lose by a few scores to Miami if Miami simply plays football the way they've been playing. If you told me we'll go out and play sound football then I think the score is probably 31-14 or something.
You did a great job laying out why Vegas has us as 17 point favs even though at first glance that seems like perhaps too many.

You also mentioned something D$ says a lot------any team remaining on this schedule CAN beat us (probably not Stanford). Not that they are nearly as good as we are, but Boise St and FL just showed how to lose a game they should win.
 
I will guess we win 35-17, but that is being safe. I have to find another point to cover all, 42-17.
 
As a USF grad and lifelong Canes fan, the more intriguing thing to watch would be USFs defense as they are imo much better than their offense (even with Byrum Brown).

That being said, Canes by a million. USF crushes everyone else on the schedule and both teams go to the playoff
 
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Look, South Florida may totally beat us. We may pull a post 2003 Miami out of our hat, as we often do. But here's a few things worth mentioning:

I watch a bunch of Florida games and Napier plays the game he played Saturday a lot. His offense just stalls out in certain games. It's really weird to see. There is a lot of randomness to the way he calls a game. It doesn't seem like he's trying to do anything cohesive and it's as if he's spinning a wheel to pick the next play. And they're not very good plays. The INT Lagway threw was a designed roll out to the right with a deep post going the opposite way that he threw while still moving, going across his body. Like, wtf.

The defense will play well and keep them in games. And they were great at creating turnovers last year. The UGA game, the Ole Miss game, the Kentucky game, the Tennessee game, those were all multiple turnover games for them. But go look at their point totals for most of the season. They can't score. Even go back to 2023. They just have clunker games.

So it doesn't shock me that the Gators played the game they did against USF. It's very in their wheel house. And credit to USF for fighting to the end, but they did the absolute bare minimum to win that game. USF had 6 points with 2:00 left in the 3rd. The crazy thing is, if Florida doesn't get that safety on the punt then USF is driving at the end just to tie the game.

And then regarding the Boise State game. My god, I went and watched that debacle.

-Boise fumbled at the USF 39
-Boise fumbled at the USF 16
-USF's punter throws a 50 yard TD on a fake punt that makes it 17-7
-Boise then turned it over on downs at the USF 23
-Boise turned it over on downs at their own 43
-Boise fumbled at the USF 12

Again, credit USF for playing hard but Boise could not get out of their own way in this game. These are two games where USF is just kind of playing football, not necessarily great football, while the teams around them just play like dog s*** and implode.

I think they're a decent team that will lose by a few scores to Miami if Miami simply plays football the way they've been playing. If you told me we'll go out and play sound football then I think the score is probably 31-14 or something.

IMG_5469.jpeg

Here’s the full box score from their Boise game. They didn’t outplay them to the degree the final score showed. Obviously credit where it’s due. Make the other team pay for being careless.

But nothing screams they are world beaters. Just have to play our game. It’s simple.
 
Why do we act like this defense is elite ? We faced a QB making his first start ever, he hadn’t even thrown the ball. The other team we faced was Bc
Who's calling them elite? I haven't seen those posts. But after offseason reports and the first 2 games I feel confident in saying our defense will at minimum be respectable this season, and that they'll hold it down against USF.
 
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One thing I will say that hasn't been mentioned is the potential for a let down game on their side. We don't need it by any means, but watching the replay of their win against UF, they looked like they won the super bowl after the final whistle blew. They might be physically and emotionally spent after two wins like that to open season, with this last one vs UF going down to the wire.
No one ever has a let down game against us. Ever. We're everyone's Super Bowl. Even when we suck.

And these guys have a huge chip on their shoulder. They're gonna bring everything they've got.
 
Why do we act like this defense is elite ? We faced a QB making his first start ever, he hadn’t even thrown the ball. The other team we faced was Bc
I think what happened is people know Bain, Mesidor, OJ, and Lucas are good and so if the defense isn't confusing their assignments then the defense is functionally fixed and assumed to be able to play up to the talent level. But tempo and a mobile QB will test some things.


Sorry but if we are a real playoff team this game shouldn’t be close.

Oklahoma state has been a decent p5 team that got destroyed after 30 seconds by Oregon.

Anyone with half of a brain knew that uf was not gonna be better than last year based on who left and who got replaced. Again everyone falls for star ratings that don’t amount to sht especially on bad coaching staffs ( see bama).
Vernell brown was not gonna single handedly take the gates to the sec chip.
Lagway was all hype.

Boise ain’t sht.
Uf is cheeks.
We are at home. If this is less than a 14 point game then I hope your tickets to Charlotte are refundable.

Playoff teams don’t keep games with non p5 teams close unless it’s a surprise. Notre dame against LIU last year for example.

USF should not be a surprise and this staff and the team leaders should not be blindsided or taking film study lightly.
It’s a team that we had issue with last year and just won their last 2 games where they were underdogs.

But that doesn’t mean that they can walk into a playoff contenders house and keep it close. I get the respect factor. But the talent is nowhere near ours and we have advantages at key positions.

I’ll be there and it better be over before the 4th.
The way Miami messes up in this game is a bunch of long plodding drives that burn the clock but maybe Miami only get 3 Field goal attempts and 2 makes from a long stretch of controlled physical football then all of a sudden 1 BS QB run by USF puts more points on the board than Miami did while controlling everything for half the game.

Explosive plays for TDs eliminates this risk.
 
The way Miami messes up in this game is a bunch of long plodding drives that burn the clock but maybe Miami only get 3 Field goal attempts and 2 makes from a long stretch of controlled physical football then all of a sudden 1 BS QB run by USF puts more points on the board than Miami did while controlling everything for half the game.

Explosive plays for TDs eliminates this risk.

This is exactly it.

A lot of people wondered why Miami was 27 in SP+ after this past weekend.
And some of that is last year’s analytics on defense still taking up a disproportionate amount of the inputs.

But Connelly also explained it’s because Bethune had some offensive yard success in non-garbage time.

And while Miami scored every time in non-garbage time, the drives were a little more methodical than the average team would have been. The average team would have had more success absolutely gashing Bethune for more chunk plays and so would have scored in fewer plays. So SP+ from an analytics standpoint penalized Miami for needing to death march a bad FCS team, as that probably isn’t a recipe for success against other teams.

Only concern Saturday is the death march keeps happening, without a TD each time.
 
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