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Myth Buster: Talent or Coaching?

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HarrietTubmanCane said:
Both sides of this classic argument has had great points, but I’ve always leaned towards coaching being the biggest issue over talent level, due to the points made and thoroughly brought out in this post.

The needed contextual factor between the talent vs coaching argument is development. Coaching and player development and retention.

And the #1 factor over both talent and coaching is CULTURE. The culture around and inside our football program has been rotten to the core. Poor culture trumps and nullifies every other factor involved. Culture is the most uniform or consistent overall message that’s being conveyed/taught and passed on (learned) as THE way of: thought, feeling, behaving, operation or function.
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I think we are heading in the right direction with culture.

If nothing else, Mario knows what championship preparation looks like and he is demanding. If the players hated him, there would have been much more attrition.

That means most of the team is bought in. We just have to develop focus, consistency, and trust.

People thought the team quit on Mario, but I don’t think that’s what happened. We got off on the wrong foot, had a series of disasters and it spiraled out of control. Things got acrimonious between Gattis and the offense and probably soured between the offense and defense. There wasn’t much hope left but the off-season allows for a fresh approach.

I liked what I saw in the spring game for a team installing new systems again. Get a strong effort over the summer and fall camp and we could be much improved.

I’m not counting wins. I just want to see the team play focused and discipline consistently. If Mario can do that, 2023 is a success in my book.
 
Rellyrell said:
In what regard, my friend? Like the entire metrics since 2007?
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I’ll cut right to it. We are of the belief that Mario stacks talent and that will get us back to greatness. And given the draft tells the tale discussion since last week, I am curious as to how that actually stacks up on the Oregon side.

We know that Oregon has gotten some strong recruiting classes, but have they translated into the draft. We know there have been some #1s a few years in a row.
 
TruCane81 said:
People keep trying to ignore me when I keep bringing up that EIGHT turnover **** we dropped against Duke.

EIGHT ******* TURNOVERS!?!?!

We never came together as a coaching staff or as a team. The coordinators weren’t good fits and egos became abrasive.

Regardless of talent, we play sloppy football with terrible fundamentals and we lack focus. There are locker room issues, but that stuff gets aggravated when you are performing well below your potential.

We keep talking about culture issues, but I have heard Mario say too many times That the guys were working hard and even said he could push this group before last season went belly up.

@Brooklyndee @Cribby @DMoney @JayCane20 is part of the problem that the guys say and do the right things when supervised, but aren’t as focused and dedicated on our own? Or are things truly rotten and he is trying to keep the mess in-house? It’s hard for me to believe the latter is the case because I can’t see a guy with Mario’s personality not showing more problem players the door.

The good news is, he hasn’t lost the team. Otherwise there would have been a mass exodus of starters. We have mostly lost guys who will never play here anyway, so the idea that they don’t want to play for Mario doesn’t hold water from what I see.

Most people don’t understand how vital and volatile the chemistry of a football team can be. I played on a team that went from state champs defeating the number 1 team in the country to being .500 just two years later with a similar talent level. Small things can snowball quickly and tear a team apart.

The transition for MARIO HIMSELF was tougher than we gave credit for. A cross country move from a successful team he loved to come home to a pressure cooker all while grieving his beloved mother.

I think Mario can do this. He has his faults, but he is still growing and most importantly, showing himself to be open to new ideas. Gattis and Steele aren’t bad coaches, but they were not what we need for where we are currently. Gattis needed more experience. Steele is a little harder to assess but he needed to be better too.

I like the direction with Dawson and Guidry. The early returns have looked solid and that is vital to building the trust we need to turn this thing around. We were not on the same page in 2022. If Mario can get us on the same page in 2023 playing focused, fundamental football, we can have a year as surprisingly successful as last year was surprisingly awful.
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It was a perfect storm of everything combined. Unless people have really gotten into some version of sports at a relatively high level they don't really understand the significance of practice. You practice to develop repetition. Repetition creates habits, habits create a normal routine. It's like when you fight. Most people when they fight panic sets in and they forget anything beyond simply doing what they have to in order to get by. When you train HARD for something you know an exact response because it's your brains natural progression. You respond in a said way. It's not some simple task to break bad habits. It takes time. Now set in the fact your breaking bad habits and replacing them with good ones & it seems a lil more logical. Y'all always thought it was taking a knock at someone when we'd say how the young kids were playing the best cause they didn't know better. Then you'd see regression at certain positions the longer they were in the system. Well sports fans that's the perfect example of coaching letting them down and bad habits taking over... You can come in with a solid base but now we gotta build on that core.
 
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Rellyrell said:
For the record, and u can verify this w/ both @TimeBum & @crossover22[]_[] I’ve defended Mario & tried to justify & reason upon the 2022 season to the best of my abilities, white knighting the chit out of this platform. However, what I’ve been noticing is this built in excuse in case next season is the same chit.

This “not enough talent” b.s have got to stop at a certain point. I feel in my plums that Mario can turn it around, but if I’m being frank, most of that is based upon fan-believe vs. a tangible fact.

We need to continue to stack talent to get to the mountain top, but in the ACC? Nah; we’ve had more than enough talent to win the Coastal more than once.
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We actually won the coastal twice... Lol
 
Rellyrell said:
I don’t think it’s out of the realm to look at our classes & the teams we play and conclude we should win 9/10 games annually.

OK, how does Harbaugh step in to a volatile situation like Michigan where fans, students, & alums gathered in front of the mutha fonky AD’s house demanding to fire Hoke, & be successful? He takes over a program that got drastically worst ever yr under his predecessor:

11-2 (yr 1)
8-5 (yr 2)
7-6 (yr 3)
5-7 (yr 4)

He takes over a roster that was composed of the 30th, 6th, 4th, 20th, & 37th ranked classes (for context during this time: we had 32nd, 10th, 15th, 13th, & 26th ranked classes). Yet, immediately he comes in & turns around a 5-7 roster and goes 10-3?

Bro, at a certain point coaching & development HAS to be held to a standard. It’s like it’s ground hogs day w every coach.

“Just wait til Coach A, B, C, D get their players.”

I agree w/ that premise, but any coach worth a **** can make the best of what they have & turn it around.
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Lol brodie let’s start by agreeing Harbaugh is an elite coach & even as an elite coach he was on the hot seat prior to the 2021 szn. Those 10 w szn was followed by a 8 win year..but he had a plan and recruited well throughout the roster..starting at the LOS. bro from 2015-2021 go look at the classes we brought vs theirs.. again the ratings do matter. But the way you build a roster has to be balanced as well. You can’t have the amount of mis evaluations we’ve had. You have to stack classes and have a plan. If u Look at our classes from 2015-2021 they didn’t really make much sense from a roster building standpoint..that’s how you end up with a 260 lb TF LT starting vs FLA to open a season. Or 3 TF LBs starting. Or a 3star TF C starting.

At the end of the day that is a coaches job at this level to assure the ingredients make sense. But in our situation we’ve had good coaches come through here. Guys who we call “corches” based on W/Ls. The common denominator has been Miami lol..annually winning 9/10 games annually goes beyond the Xs & Os..you drop UGAs, Bamas or OSU coordinators in Miami in 2022 they go from cooking with crisco to cooking with great value vegetable oil..lastly I’ll add, programs who annually win 9/10 games and compete for Conference titles are well represented in the draft during those years . Rather that be programs who had runs like Wisconsin, TCUs, Utah etc..we about to see the difference in the way Mario and co recruits and build rosters. It will look different on the sidelines and the W column
 
Rellyrell said:
⚠️ Lengthy Post‼️‼️ ⚠️

There’s a lot of myths that’s plagued our society: The Lockness Monster, Big Foot, Kim Kardashian’s *** being real; but, no myth has divided the CIS society into factions none other than the debate of Miami not having enough talent vs. coaching. This subject is as divisive as if Miami should have its own stadium, Miami is broke, & if Miller Lite is truly less filling or if it indeed taste great.

I wanted to examine this notion from several angles, looking at polar opposite ends of the spectrum regarding top tier programs who are flushed w/ talent (e.g Bama) and successful programs without the same caliber of talent (e.g Baylor) to see where we fall. I will also look at how we’ve faired when it comes to blue chip success, and finally I will take a look at how we compare to our contemporaries in the woeful ACC Coastal.

The starting point I’ll use is 2007; why? B/c in 2007, two seismic hires took place that changed two historic programs’ fate, Miami & Alabama.

BLUE CHIP ACQUISITION-

Let’s first examine 6 programs in regards to blue chip acquisition since 2007 - present: Alabama, UGA, Clemson, Utah, Baylor, & TCU. (Please note: I did not take into account player attrition for any program since it all washes it out, but I did take in consideration transfer-in from The Transfer Portal).

-Alabama: 342 blue chip players (71 Five-Stars)
-UGA: 268 blue chip players (54 Five-Stars)
-Clemson: 188 blue chip players (28 Five-Stars)
-TCU: 58 blue chip players (1 Five-Star)
-Baylor: 41 blue chip players (2 Five-Stars)
-Utah: 37 blue chip players

How does Miami compare? 179 blue chip players (12 Five-Stars).

Conclusion on talent acquisition: While we have not hoarded the same amount of blue chip talent as three of the most dominant programs since 2007, it was interesting to see how we’ve been fairly on par w/ Clemson in regards to acquiring total blue chips during this time frame.

With that being said, let’s see what we’ve done with such acquisitions, comparably, with the draft (to gage why we may struggle to get high end blue chips to consistently consider us).

THE DRAFT (I’ll only focus on the top 3 teams compared to Miami in this exercise, since we love to blame bags for everything as an excuse)-

*The classes of 2007-2020 are the only ones that have been drafted or draft eligible since 2010-2023.*
-Bama had 259 blue chips (50 Five-Stars)
-UGA had 202 blue chips (40 Five-Stars)
-Clemson had 142 blue chips (22 Five-Stars)
-Miami had 132 blue chips (7 Five-Stars)

-Bama:
38% of Bama’s total blue chips were drafted (99)
68% of their 5* were drafted
72% of Bama’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

-UGA:
33.6% of UGA’s total blue chips were drafted (68)
67.5% of their 5* were drafted
48.5% of UGA’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

-Clemson:
31.6% of Clemson’s total blue chips were drafted (45)
77% of their 5* were drafted
60% of Clemson’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

Miami:
28% of Miami’s blue chips drafted (27)
86% of our 5* were drafted
32% of our drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

Conclusion on The NFL Drafts: This could explain why high end players are not beating down our doors with consistency; the blue chip players we’ve acquired, we’ve done far less in not only getting them drafted, but the draft position for our blue chips have been well below sub-par.

RECORDS SINCE 2007 (Let’s deep dive in the notion of talent vs. coaching)-

-Bama: 194-27
-Clemson: 173-46
-UGA: 166-49
-TCU: 142-63
-Utah: 138-64
-Baylor: 114-88

Miami? 116-84

In this example, Miami has the 6th worst record out of two polar opposite ends of the spectrum. We can reason why Miami would have a worst record than Bama, UGA, & Clemson due to a talent discrepancy, but Utah, and TCU??
-We’ve acquired 300% more blue chips than TCU
-We’ve acquired almost 500% more blue chips than Utah
-We’ve acquired about 430% more blue chips than Baylor;

Yet, since 2007:
-TCU has won 10+ games 8x (including 4 Conference Titles, 9 bowl games {3 NY6 bowls}).
-Utah has won 10+ games 7x, (including 3 Conference Titles, 10 bowl games {1 NY6 bowl})
-Baylor has won 10+ games 5x (including 3 Conference Titles, 6 bowl games {1 NY6 bowl})

Miami? One 10 win season, and one bowl victory since 2007.

Utah, TCU, & Baylor are also doing this as under dogs, having far less talent than the likes of USC, Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma or equal talent as the likes of UCLA, Washington, Iowa St, & OK St. Which brings me to

THE ACC COASTAL AND HOW WE COMPARE-

Unlike TCU, Utah, & Baylor, we’ve out recruited every single team in our division since 2007.

Blue Chip Acquisition during that time:
-UNC: 107 (6 Five-Stars)
-VT: 69 (2 Five-Stars)
-UVA: 35 (2 Five-Stars)
-GT: 33
-Pitt: 25 (since joining the ACC in 2013)
-Duke: 11

Yet, here’s our record against said opponents:
UNC: 6-10
VT: 9-7
UVA: 9-7
GT: 10-5
Pitt: 7-3
Duke: 12-4

So is this a talent issue, or have something else been going on?

Final Conclusion: Yes, we have experienced a plethora of attrition; however, if u compare our attrition and stack the remaining roster talent/season to the majority of the teams we’ve faced annually, on paper, we’ve still had more than enough talent.

The NFL draft agrees with that assessment:
Since 2007-
-Miami: 57 Players Drafted (19 in first 3 rounds)
-UNC: 43 Players Drafted (20 in first 3 rounds)
-VT: 34 Players Drafted (11 in first 3 rounds)
-Pitt: 29 Players Drafted (7 in the first 3 rounds)
-GT: 19 Players Drafted (4 in the first 3 rounds)
-Duke: 9 Players Drafted (2 in the first 3 rounds)

Imo, the fate of Miami’s program is all cumulative. It’s not a coincidence that programs like Baylor, Utah, & TCU have thrived in a CFB world filled w/ handlers, w/ big fish choosing bigger programs; that’s coaching. Then again, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that programs like Bama, UGA, & Clemson are thriving w/ the shear amount of 5 stars & blue chips they’ve acquired; we can say that’s talent.

With Miami, we’re neither Bama-esque nor Utah-esque when it comes to talent or coaching. We should have enough talent to be a perennial 10 win team + winning the division (which is no longer an option), but the coaching has been putrid.

Every top program I’ve studied all have one thing in common: dedication and commitment from the top-down. With Miami, we’ve seen apathy from the admin, lazy hires filled with cronyism and nepotism, and a lack of semblance both at the AD and coaching levels. To constantly hide behind the theory of “Miami doesn’t have talent or enough talent” is foolish and disingenuous. Once upon a time, I believed that, but when I see other programs filled w/ non blue chip caliber rosters, taking down much tougher opponents, it puts things into perspective.

The hardest thing for anyone to do is face truth b/c it hurts. The NFL draft is a reminder that the program has some work to do, but with this renewed dedication, it shouldn’t take 5 yrs. There’s too many past and current examples showing that a turn around can be done in two yrs. Hopefully moving forwards, we’ll have a definitive answer vs. a theory of talent vs. coaching; I’m of the opinion we’ll have both, but this season will give me an even more definitive answer one way or another.
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Great post OP.

I’d add that TAMU is a great example of why talent is not the only factor, as is us getting beat by teams with clearly lesser talent like MTSU. You can’t view those examples (in addition to your entire post) and say with a straight face that CFB success is all predicated on talent acquisition alone.

Also, you can look no further than our own history to show that coaching matters in addition to talent acquisition. Howard, JJ, and Erickson all brought innovative schematic changes to Miami in addition to stacking talent.
 
Everything about this program has sucked for the last 2 decades. Getting the wrong “blue chip” guys. Not coaching up the really talented kids that do come here. Not putting them in positions to succeed. Every issue that plagues college football programs, we’ve had all of them.

In general there are ways to mask the lack of one of those two, but you gotta have competent coaching and a ton of talent to actually win big.

Also I’ve always wanted to see a Sasquatch, let me have hope 😂
 
TheEye said:
What was your prediction when Mizzu and the Aggies joined the SEC? Was it Mizzu winning the East or the Aggies beating Bama? $EC ratings brings new recruiting budgets and recruits know they won’t be on Bali TV.
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My friend; mon ami….r u talking about that one time when TAMU first joined the SEC in 2012 & won 11 games for the first time in 14 yrs? TAMU has been the same program in the SEC as they were when they joined the B12 in 1996; one flash in the pan 11 win season, but consistently between 6-8 wins, w/ a dash of 9. This is w/ them recruiting pretty well since 2012. That’s a weirdo program & they provide weirdo results yr in & out DESPITE the mega resources they have.

What was the other team u mentioned; Mizzou?

Missouri actually faired well in the B12 prior to jumping to the SEC. They posted 10+ wins in 3 of their final 5 seasons b4 the jump to the SEC. And like TAMU, they found early success in the SEC with 10+ games in 2 of their first 3 seasons….and wouldn’t u know, they went right back to being the perennial 5-7 win team/year just like their grand pappy’s, pappy’s Tigers have been since the inception of that program wayyyyyy back in the ripe year of 1901.

So let me ask; what or how have the SEC helped either program, besides lining their pockets w/ more $$? Their results have remained mediocre like they were prior to joining.
 
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Rellyrell said:
⚠️ Lengthy Post‼️‼️ ⚠️

There’s a lot of myths that’s plagued our society: The Lockness Monster, Big Foot, Kim Kardashian’s *** being real; but, no myth has divided the CIS society into factions none other than the debate of Miami not having enough talent vs. coaching. This subject is as divisive as if Miami should have its own stadium, Miami is broke, & if Miller Lite is truly less filling or if it indeed taste great.

I wanted to examine this notion from several angles, looking at polar opposite ends of the spectrum regarding top tier programs who are flushed w/ talent (e.g Bama) and successful programs without the same caliber of talent (e.g Baylor) to see where we fall. I will also look at how we’ve faired when it comes to blue chip success, and finally I will take a look at how we compare to our contemporaries in the woeful ACC Coastal.

The starting point I’ll use is 2007; why? B/c in 2007, two seismic hires took place that changed two historic programs’ fate, Miami & Alabama.

BLUE CHIP ACQUISITION-

Let’s first examine 6 programs in regards to blue chip acquisition since 2007 - present: Alabama, UGA, Clemson, Utah, Baylor, & TCU. (Please note: I did not take into account player attrition for any program since it all washes it out, but I did take in consideration transfer-in from The Transfer Portal).

-Alabama: 342 blue chip players (71 Five-Stars)
-UGA: 268 blue chip players (54 Five-Stars)
-Clemson: 188 blue chip players (28 Five-Stars)
-TCU: 58 blue chip players (1 Five-Star)
-Baylor: 41 blue chip players (2 Five-Stars)
-Utah: 37 blue chip players

How does Miami compare? 179 blue chip players (12 Five-Stars).

Conclusion on talent acquisition: While we have not hoarded the same amount of blue chip talent as three of the most dominant programs since 2007, it was interesting to see how we’ve been fairly on par w/ Clemson in regards to acquiring total blue chips during this time frame.

With that being said, let’s see what we’ve done with such acquisitions, comparably, with the draft (to gage why we may struggle to get high end blue chips to consistently consider us).

THE DRAFT (I’ll only focus on the top 3 teams compared to Miami in this exercise, since we love to blame bags for everything as an excuse)-

*The classes of 2007-2020 are the only ones that have been drafted or draft eligible since 2010-2023.*
-Bama had 259 blue chips (50 Five-Stars)
-UGA had 202 blue chips (40 Five-Stars)
-Clemson had 142 blue chips (22 Five-Stars)
-Miami had 132 blue chips (7 Five-Stars)

-Bama:
38% of Bama’s total blue chips were drafted (99)
68% of their 5* were drafted
72% of Bama’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

-UGA:
33.6% of UGA’s total blue chips were drafted (68)
67.5% of their 5* were drafted
48.5% of UGA’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

-Clemson:
31.6% of Clemson’s total blue chips were drafted (45)
77% of their 5* were drafted
60% of Clemson’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

Miami:
28% of Miami’s blue chips drafted (27)
86% of our 5* were drafted
32% of our drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

Conclusion on The NFL Drafts: This could explain why high end players are not beating down our doors with consistency; the blue chip players we’ve acquired, we’ve done far less in not only getting them drafted, but the draft position for our blue chips have been well below sub-par.

RECORDS SINCE 2007 (Let’s deep dive in the notion of talent vs. coaching)-

-Bama: 194-27
-Clemson: 173-46
-UGA: 166-49
-TCU: 142-63
-Utah: 138-64
-Baylor: 114-88

Miami? 116-84

In this example, Miami has the 6th worst record out of two polar opposite ends of the spectrum. We can reason why Miami would have a worst record than Bama, UGA, & Clemson due to a talent discrepancy, but Utah, and TCU??
-We’ve acquired 300% more blue chips than TCU
-We’ve acquired almost 500% more blue chips than Utah
-We’ve acquired about 430% more blue chips than Baylor;

Yet, since 2007:
-TCU has won 10+ games 8x (including 4 Conference Titles, 9 bowl games {3 NY6 bowls}).
-Utah has won 10+ games 7x, (including 3 Conference Titles, 10 bowl games {1 NY6 bowl})
-Baylor has won 10+ games 5x (including 3 Conference Titles, 6 bowl games {1 NY6 bowl})

Miami? One 10 win season, and one bowl victory since 2007.

Utah, TCU, & Baylor are also doing this as under dogs, having far less talent than the likes of USC, Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma or equal talent as the likes of UCLA, Washington, Iowa St, & OK St. Which brings me to

THE ACC COASTAL AND HOW WE COMPARE-

Unlike TCU, Utah, & Baylor, we’ve out recruited every single team in our division since 2007.

Blue Chip Acquisition during that time:
-UNC: 107 (6 Five-Stars)
-VT: 69 (2 Five-Stars)
-UVA: 35 (2 Five-Stars)
-GT: 33
-Pitt: 25 (since joining the ACC in 2013)
-Duke: 11

Yet, here’s our record against said opponents:
UNC: 6-10
VT: 9-7
UVA: 9-7
GT: 10-5
Pitt: 7-3
Duke: 12-4

So is this a talent issue, or have something else been going on?

Final Conclusion: Yes, we have experienced a plethora of attrition; however, if u compare our attrition and stack the remaining roster talent/season to the majority of the teams we’ve faced annually, on paper, we’ve still had more than enough talent.

The NFL draft agrees with that assessment:
Since 2007-
-Miami: 57 Players Drafted (19 in first 3 rounds)
-UNC: 43 Players Drafted (20 in first 3 rounds)
-VT: 34 Players Drafted (11 in first 3 rounds)
-Pitt: 29 Players Drafted (7 in the first 3 rounds)
-GT: 19 Players Drafted (4 in the first 3 rounds)
-Duke: 9 Players Drafted (2 in the first 3 rounds)

Imo, the fate of Miami’s program is all cumulative. It’s not a coincidence that programs like Baylor, Utah, & TCU have thrived in a CFB world filled w/ handlers, w/ big fish choosing bigger programs; that’s coaching. Then again, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that programs like Bama, UGA, & Clemson are thriving w/ the shear amount of 5 stars & blue chips they’ve acquired; we can say that’s talent.

With Miami, we’re neither Bama-esque nor Utah-esque when it comes to talent or coaching. We should have enough talent to be a perennial 10 win team + winning the division (which is no longer an option), but the coaching has been putrid.

Every top program I’ve studied all have one thing in common: dedication and commitment from the top-down. With Miami, we’ve seen apathy from the admin, lazy hires filled with cronyism and nepotism, and a lack of semblance both at the AD and coaching levels. To constantly hide behind the theory of “Miami doesn’t have talent or enough talent” is foolish and disingenuous. Once upon a time, I believed that, but when I see other programs filled w/ non blue chip caliber rosters, taking down much tougher opponents, it puts things into perspective.

The hardest thing for anyone to do is face truth b/c it hurts. The NFL draft is a reminder that the program has some work to do, but with this renewed dedication, it shouldn’t take 5 yrs. There’s too many past and current examples showing that a turn around can be done in two yrs. Hopefully moving forwards, we’ll have a definitive answer vs. a theory of talent vs. coaching; I’m of the opinion we’ll have both, but this season will give me an even more definitive answer one way or another.
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I’m going to make this short and simple….. Bama, UGA, Clemson, Baylor, TCU, or Utah are not sponsored by Adidas. RIP Miami 😂
 
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Brooklyndee said:
It was a perfect storm of everything combined. Unless people have really gotten into some version of sports at a relatively high level they don't really understand the significance of practice. You practice to develop repetition. Repetition creates habits, habits create a normal routine. It's like when you fight. Most people when they fight panic sets in and they forget anything beyond simply doing what they have to in order to get by. When you train HARD for something you know an exact response because it's your brains natural progression. You respond in a said way. It's not some simple task to break bad habits. It takes time. Now set in the fact your breaking bad habits and replacing them with good ones & it seems a lil more logical. Y'all always thought it was taking a knock at someone when we'd say how the young kids were playing the best cause they didn't know better. Then you'd see regression at certain positions the longer they were in the system. Well sports fans that's the perfect example of coaching letting them down and bad habits taking over... You can come in with a solid base but now we gotta build on that core.
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Appreciate the response.

A perfect storm is exactly what happened to create last year’s results.

I am optimistic about the way Mario responded and am not worried about our long term prospects. If we can land a few key targets from the portal it would be a cherry on top.

I know you try not to say too much, but as is, what do you think about this team’s ability to gel and take the next step preparation and chemistry wise?

The spring game gave me hope that these guys are getting better. With continued small successes, I can see us taking some momentum into the season if we’re relatively healthy.
 
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TruCane81 said:
Appreciate the response.

A perfect storm is exactly what happened to create last year’s results.

I am optimistic about the way Mario responded and am not worried about our long term prospects. If we can land a few key targets from the portal it would be a cherry on top.

I know you try not to say too much, but as is, what do you think about this team’s ability to gel and take the next step preparation and chemistry wise?

The spring game gave me hope that these guys are getting better. With continued small successes, I can see us taking some momentum into the season if we’re relatively healthy.
Click to expand...
When a team doesn't have tons of depth then health becomes the priority. Health and luck. A few things go our way we'll be far better. I haven't been around tons this spring. Too many things goin on. But from what I've seen the cohesion is better & far less egos involved on the coaching side of the ball. I'm not worried about us in the least. Just gotta strap up for the process.
 
Brooklyndee said:
When a team doesn't have tons of depth then health becomes the priority. Health and luck. A few things go our way we'll be far better. I haven't been around tons this spring. Too many things goin on. But from what I've seen the cohesion is better & far less egos involved on the coaching side of the ball. I'm not worried about us in the least. Just gotta strap up for the process.
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What about the development of the dline? I’d love to see Leonard Taylor, Kelly, and Bain elevate their game and not just be talented guys.
 
Rellyrell said:
⚠️ Lengthy Post‼️‼️ ⚠️

There’s a lot of myths that’s plagued our society: The Lockness Monster, Big Foot, Kim Kardashian’s *** being real; but, no myth has divided the CIS society into factions none other than the debate of Miami not having enough talent vs. coaching. This subject is as divisive as if Miami should have its own stadium, Miami is broke, & if Miller Lite is truly less filling or if it indeed taste great.

I wanted to examine this notion from several angles, looking at polar opposite ends of the spectrum regarding top tier programs who are flushed w/ talent (e.g Bama) and successful programs without the same caliber of talent (e.g Baylor) to see where we fall. I will also look at how we’ve faired when it comes to blue chip success, and finally I will take a look at how we compare to our contemporaries in the woeful ACC Coastal.

The starting point I’ll use is 2007; why? B/c in 2007, two seismic hires took place that changed two historic programs’ fate, Miami & Alabama.

BLUE CHIP ACQUISITION-

Let’s first examine 6 programs in regards to blue chip acquisition since 2007 - present: Alabama, UGA, Clemson, Utah, Baylor, & TCU. (Please note: I did not take into account player attrition for any program since it all washes it out, but I did take in consideration transfer-in from The Transfer Portal).

-Alabama: 342 blue chip players (71 Five-Stars)
-UGA: 268 blue chip players (54 Five-Stars)
-Clemson: 188 blue chip players (28 Five-Stars)
-TCU: 58 blue chip players (1 Five-Star)
-Baylor: 41 blue chip players (2 Five-Stars)
-Utah: 37 blue chip players

How does Miami compare? 179 blue chip players (12 Five-Stars).

Conclusion on talent acquisition: While we have not hoarded the same amount of blue chip talent as three of the most dominant programs since 2007, it was interesting to see how we’ve been fairly on par w/ Clemson in regards to acquiring total blue chips during this time frame.

With that being said, let’s see what we’ve done with such acquisitions, comparably, with the draft (to gage why we may struggle to get high end blue chips to consistently consider us).

THE DRAFT (I’ll only focus on the top 3 teams compared to Miami in this exercise, since we love to blame bags for everything as an excuse)-

*The classes of 2007-2020 are the only ones that have been drafted or draft eligible since 2010-2023.*
-Bama had 259 blue chips (50 Five-Stars)
-UGA had 202 blue chips (40 Five-Stars)
-Clemson had 142 blue chips (22 Five-Stars)
-Miami had 132 blue chips (7 Five-Stars)

-Bama:
38% of Bama’s total blue chips were drafted (99)
68% of their 5* were drafted
72% of Bama’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

-UGA:
33.6% of UGA’s total blue chips were drafted (68)
67.5% of their 5* were drafted
48.5% of UGA’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

-Clemson:
31.6% of Clemson’s total blue chips were drafted (45)
77% of their 5* were drafted
60% of Clemson’s drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

Miami:
28% of Miami’s blue chips drafted (27)
86% of our 5* were drafted
32% of our drafted blue chips were in the first 3 rounds

Conclusion on The NFL Drafts: This could explain why high end players are not beating down our doors with consistency; the blue chip players we’ve acquired, we’ve done far less in not only getting them drafted, but the draft position for our blue chips have been well below sub-par.

RECORDS SINCE 2007 (Let’s deep dive in the notion of talent vs. coaching)-

-Bama: 194-27
-Clemson: 173-46
-UGA: 166-49
-TCU: 142-63
-Utah: 138-64
-Baylor: 114-88

Miami? 116-84

In this example, Miami has the 6th worst record out of two polar opposite ends of the spectrum. We can reason why Miami would have a worst record than Bama, UGA, & Clemson due to a talent discrepancy, but Utah, and TCU??
-We’ve acquired 300% more blue chips than TCU
-We’ve acquired almost 500% more blue chips than Utah
-We’ve acquired about 430% more blue chips than Baylor;

Yet, since 2007:
-TCU has won 10+ games 8x (including 4 Conference Titles, 9 bowl games {3 NY6 bowls}).
-Utah has won 10+ games 7x, (including 3 Conference Titles, 10 bowl games {1 NY6 bowl})
-Baylor has won 10+ games 5x (including 3 Conference Titles, 6 bowl games {1 NY6 bowl})

Miami? One 10 win season, and one bowl victory since 2007.

Utah, TCU, & Baylor are also doing this as under dogs, having far less talent than the likes of USC, Oregon, Texas, Oklahoma or equal talent as the likes of UCLA, Washington, Iowa St, & OK St. Which brings me to

THE ACC COASTAL AND HOW WE COMPARE-

Unlike TCU, Utah, & Baylor, we’ve out recruited every single team in our division since 2007.

Blue Chip Acquisition during that time:
-UNC: 107 (6 Five-Stars)
-VT: 69 (2 Five-Stars)
-UVA: 35 (2 Five-Stars)
-GT: 33
-Pitt: 25 (since joining the ACC in 2013)
-Duke: 11

Yet, here’s our record against said opponents:
UNC: 6-10
VT: 9-7
UVA: 9-7
GT: 10-5
Pitt: 7-3
Duke: 12-4

So is this a talent issue, or have something else been going on?

Final Conclusion: Yes, we have experienced a plethora of attrition; however, if u compare our attrition and stack the remaining roster talent/season to the majority of the teams we’ve faced annually, on paper, we’ve still had more than enough talent.

The NFL draft agrees with that assessment:
Since 2007-
-Miami: 57 Players Drafted (19 in first 3 rounds)
-UNC: 43 Players Drafted (20 in first 3 rounds)
-VT: 34 Players Drafted (11 in first 3 rounds)
-Pitt: 29 Players Drafted (7 in the first 3 rounds)
-GT: 19 Players Drafted (4 in the first 3 rounds)
-Duke: 9 Players Drafted (2 in the first 3 rounds)

Imo, the fate of Miami’s program is all cumulative. It’s not a coincidence that programs like Baylor, Utah, & TCU have thrived in a CFB world filled w/ handlers, w/ big fish choosing bigger programs; that’s coaching. Then again, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that programs like Bama, UGA, & Clemson are thriving w/ the shear amount of 5 stars & blue chips they’ve acquired; we can say that’s talent.

With Miami, we’re neither Bama-esque nor Utah-esque when it comes to talent or coaching. We should have enough talent to be a perennial 10 win team + winning the division (which is no longer an option), but the coaching has been putrid.

Every top program I’ve studied all have one thing in common: dedication and commitment from the top-down. With Miami, we’ve seen apathy from the admin, lazy hires filled with cronyism and nepotism, and a lack of semblance both at the AD and coaching levels. To constantly hide behind the theory of “Miami doesn’t have talent or enough talent” is foolish and disingenuous. Once upon a time, I believed that, but when I see other programs filled w/ non blue chip caliber rosters, taking down much tougher opponents, it puts things into perspective.

The hardest thing for anyone to do is face truth b/c it hurts. The NFL draft is a reminder that the program has some work to do, but with this renewed dedication, it shouldn’t take 5 yrs. There’s too many past and current examples showing that a turn around can be done in two yrs. Hopefully moving forwards, we’ll have a definitive answer vs. a theory of talent vs. coaching; I’m of the opinion we’ll have both, but this season will give me an even more definitive answer one way or another.
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Excellent write-up.

Just one minor correction - the little part where Bigfoot is a myth.

1. It's not an ape - it's a (best description) primitive cave man - butt ugly - a primitive man - but not human.

2. Bigfoot saw me - but hilariously - no one believes him!
 
Angry Ibis said:
I’ll cut right to it. We are of the belief that Mario stacks talent and that will get us back to greatness. And given the draft tells the tale discussion since last week, I am curious as to how that actually stacks up on the Oregon side.

We know that Oregon has gotten some strong recruiting classes, but have they translated into the draft. We know there have been some #1s a few years in a row.
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This one is a little more convoluted; Mario coached UO from 2018-2021. The class of 2019-2020 were apart of the draft class of 2023, but in 2022, they were coached by Lanning.

To simplify this, I’m just going to credit those players to Mario since he did recruit them.

From 2018-21:
Oregon recruited 57 blue chips (including 3 Five-Stars & the transfer of DJ Johnson).

-Only the classes of 2018-20 have been draft eligible, so far.
38 blue chips was recruited during this time frame (3 Five-Stars):
-24% of Oregon’s blue chips were drafted
-66% of Oregon’s 5 stars were drafted
-44% of those blue chips were drafted in the first 3 rounds

Record from 2018-2021:
35-13
-2 Conference Titles
-2 bowl victories (1 NY6 bowl)
 
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