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Good stuff @DMoney - Fair assessments across the board.

Although I cannot say I share the opinion about Zion nelson. I found him unimpressive physically. The talk of him being a high round draft pick is silly to me.

Lashlee is the most concerning to me. I dont have a problem with a somewhat simplistic schematic approach but the complete lack of creativity is inexcusable to me. Where was the trick play? Where was the wrinkle? The shine is quickly falling off of this guy. He needs to be better.

As for King, I agree he's about 90%. I've had this discussion with a few here who complain that the coaching staff said he's 100%. Its important to note that he's 100% medically cleared but only about 90% of where he was pre-injury. He doesnt seem to have the burst that he had pre-injury. It could take another 6 months or so before he regains that last 10%. Sadly, his playing career will have ended by that point.

I was calling for TVD with 8-9 minutes remaining. Putting him in with 4 minutes remaining was meaningless. The kid should have gotten some quality playing time in a game like that.

I'll see everyone at The Rock next Saturday. Im expecting a big bounce back game.
 
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Tried to tell guys, these players are who they are by year 3/4.. You dont become some super senior when you been a scrub/jag for 4 years.. Also tried to say dropoff at DE is tremendous when you go from Major nine, Garvin, Jackson, Rousseau, Phillips to freaking jag extraordinaire McCloud, this guy been playing DE for like 8 months and he straight houses a a starting spot with ease?! WTF these other guys been doing, we should have 3-4 5star types waiting in the wing ready to ball out.. Position is barren if McCloud is starting, do we have any commits, we should have FIVE 4/5star types to throw at the position..

When I saw our lb get trampled and then dragged on first carry of game I knew the under 5'10 experiment wasnt ready for big time, these lb might be good enough to play against famu and duke but you cant come against bama with this **** scheme and then a bunch of undersized players and expect this crap to work..

I remember bama oline coach when he was head guy at BC on a thurday night game laughing about zone blitzes yearsssssss ago and saying they eat those for breakfast, him and his old oline coach at the team were playing tenuta and GT and tenuta was known as zone blitz guru, they picked that **** apart with ease.. Dont know why I remember that **** but did even saban was too giddy about playing that **** zone with freshman qb.. That defense has not worked against real offenses that can pass I dont think ever..


Oh and Kam do what he gonna do, since optimist my dude has found his way on field when he was a rb.. came to a stacked safety roster and was on the field by bama, LAWD
 
Cribby said:
A small , fast lb that had ol on the second level eating him alive? Miami will never be Miami until the trenches look like a Miami ol/dl. When those areas are rolling everything else is easy for lb’s, db’s, skill guys and coaches. Until then we’ll be a 8–11 win team. Never contending for the playoffs. Everything else is just semantics.
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I don’t know that the DL problem was on the interior yesterday. It’s at DE.
 
DMoney said:
- This loss cannot beat us twice. App State and Michigan State are coming down with confidence and momentum. They expect to win and they can. Bama openers can ruin seasons. Ask FSU and Louisville. We need to respond like we did last year after Clemson, or this season can become a nightmare real fast.
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Oh!, We don't need to ask FSU. I pointed out in another post: the last two SEC Opening losses were followed by 6 & 7 loss seasons.
 
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I haven’t watched expecting anything from this program since LSU 2018. I’ll always watch and root for our team but it’s over. We have a great legacy that we get to talk about as we grow old. Tons of HOFers for a school for a period 25 years scared the CFB world.
 
ChinstrapCane said:
Great post, DMoni! I had very similar thoughts. The Harris/Mallory play looked like something you’d see in a Pop Warner game between Liberty City and Aventura.
Breaking out the Turnover Chain with the score 27-0 was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. You can’t overstate how pathetic that was.
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Embarrassing
 
Walsh5 said:
One observation I saw, and please refute me if I'm wrong, is that Alabama players will lay it all on the line to make a play. Ours don't. Not talking about the diving missed tackles or the stupid targeting by Bolden. It's like they play scared.

It seemed like Too’Too was willing to literally separate his shoulder to make a tackle on Don Chaney as he was heading out of bounds in the midst of a blowout. Whereas Don Chaney turtles and tries to shoulder block into a blitzing linebacker instead of squaring him up and using his hands. And it's not like Chaney is small dude either. Is he worried about getting hurt or something?

Even on Xavier's TD it was impressive to see how the Alabama DB laid his entire body out to where he was parallel to the ground to try and make that play. I think that DB got hurt on that play too.

They do that because they know that behind them another 5* is going to replace them if they don't give the effort.

Seeing Scaife's hands get slapped away so easily on the sack he allowed was just a horrible effort.

Seeing Mallory get blown up on that bubble screen was disgusting... especially when their TE catches a ball over the middle breaks a tackle and trotzes into the endzone.

Obviously there are exceptions on our team ie: Couch is a smaller DB but plays bigger. Kinchens and J Williams too. But I saw too many Tarzans that played like Jane.
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That could relate to way they regress, still living off the past thinking they will get to the league??? Amazing. Sans an injury prone de from Cali and a db from texas we just don’t develop our players wow!!!
 
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Cribby said:
We don’t have one game changer on the dl. Zero.

Taylor is the guy that can be.
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Ford was our best player according to PFF and Nesta was 4th. They also had McCloud in our top 10 yesterday. How does that work?
 
DMoney said:
This was the same game as Clemson and UNC last year. Or LSU in 2018. Nothing felt different. Forget the opponent for a second. We didn't play well. The takeaway for the rest of the country is that Manny can’t compete in these games. There is no evidence otherwise.

On to specifics:

- The physicality gap was expected, but still deflating. The two plays that stick out to me are Navaughn Donaldson getting spun into Cam Harris and Will Mallory getting bullied into Rambo on a bubble screen. Men against boys.

- The area that scares me the most going forward is our pass rush. No length or explosiveness. We relied heavily on blitzing Amari Carter and he was handled by their RBs. Overall, Bama toyed with our blitzes. It’s a cruel joke that the one position where we were top-level (DE) goes barren right before we play Bama.

- Giving back the Turnover Chain down a million was a low point in the history of the program. Either shelve the chain or put on a point limit where we can’t give it away.

- This loss cannot beat us twice. App State and Michigan State are coming down with confidence and momentum. They expect to win and they can. Bama openers can ruin seasons. Ask FSU and Louisville. We need to respond like we did last year after Clemson, or this season can become a nightmare real fast.

- I saw a national 247 guy say this on Twitter and it’s true—the simplicity of Lashlee’s offense is great when Miami has a talent advantage, but gets exposed against equal or superior talent.

- Bama will blow out almost everyone this year. The front seven is NFL, Young can run their offense and their two transfers (Williams and Too’Too) are difference makers. The rest of our schedule is playing a different sport.

- Stevenson and Couch are the two starting corners going forward. They were two of the only guys who competed physically.

- Given the enormous talent disadvantage, the OL competed better than I thought upon rewatch. The major exception is Navaughn Donaldson. He had no balance or bend and was the cause of the majority of our negative plays. He has no chance of going pro this year so he may as well do some Yoga and come back.

- Don Chaney needs to be the starter going forward. He’s gotten even bigger. If he doesn’t get hurt during his dominant spring, he would have been the bellcow already. He’s healthy now.

- Justice Oluwaseun looks like a good pickup. He moved very well in space and he has some pop. He knocked a moving target on a Cam screen and knocked over Will Anderson while looking for work. He needs to start somewhere.

- The talent gap was most profound at LB. Miami can’t be Miami without Miami LBs. Even a guy like Shaq would’ve made a huge difference—when he tackled guys, they stayed tackled. The one guy who did flash true talent was Keontra Smith. He will be even better against smaller teams.

- Jalen Rivers, Xavier Restrepo, James Williams , Andres Borregales and Kam Kinchens all flashed. Kinchens was very physical and actually knocked back #4 on a blitz to force an incompletion. I want to see Leonard Taylor going forward. I get playing older, bigger DL against Bama, but don’t keep a 5* talent sulking on the bench against the rest of the schedule.

- King looked about 90%. The opponent had something to do with it. Interested to see how he looks next week. TVD has had very limited opportunities but has yet to flash. I would love to see some Garcia during this homestand. Obviously, too early to judge either guy.

- The tackling has dropped off considerably since 16-19. I don’t know why. Losing elite tacklers like Shaq and Jaquan Johnson hurt, but it shouldn’t be this drastic.

- Zion Nelson played a good, clean game but I still think he should come back. His strength isn’t all the way there yet if he’s going to be a first round, instant NFL starter. In fact, everyone on our line should come back except Jarrid Williams.

Overall, it sucked. Nothing to get excited about. Best case, this is an exhibition game which showed us the level we need to reach. Worst case, it ruins our season and we kill our home crowd the next two weeks. See you at the Rock on Saturday.
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I'll piggy bac on this thread for a couple reasons, I'd like to talk about what everyone think is our schematic disadvantage. I'll talk about both offense and defense.

First I'll begin with defense:

- What Saban described and everyone saw on ESPN (Now everyone thinks they understand this coverage) is clamp coverage, which is what is normally called match coverage. This coverage 'Bama used to run almost exclusively 5 to 7 years ago. There's not wrong when ESPN described it as Cover 2-4 type of coverage.
The bare bones of it is, if you has two receivers vs two DBs, (i.e., twins on field side) both DBs are taking deep but one is assigned flats, essentially you are ensuring no one beats you vertically and you can rally to the flat and make a tackle for as minimal gain as possible. This is the quintessential bend but don't break defense on the backend of a defense.

- With the above being mentioned and understood, the problem is with the alignment, especially against a team that was a static pre-snap as Alabama (they don't really flash, other then the odd jet motion, anything different in front of you, you know what's coming).
Every play you could see our DBS lining up 5 to 7 yards off the LOS. That in itself was a little strange to me. Typically with Match coverage you also run Cover 1 and 3 (because you can disguised it with a single high safety look). With that being said, typically you line up either 4 yards off the ball all the way down the field, this include LBs and Nickel, corners strikers, whatever the eff their called, until the ball is snapped, so that you never know if you're getting Cover 1-3 or Match pre-snap, but pre-snap, we pretty much let 5 to 7 yards screens go with no problem because the Corner is at 5 and the other DB (typically the safety is 10 to 12), like the fugg is that?

- Secondly, if you saw in the run game, you saw our ends constantly line head up over the OTs or in a 4 Tech position. I'm assuming the idea is that we coach our ends to snap up hands punch the OT in the chest, peak in the backfield and pick B or C gap successfully, then our LB has to react to that and pick the other. Unfortunately what I see often is the Edge player when blocked on two way street didn't pick a side, so the LB flashed in B gap and the Tail ran outside. Our ran gam defense I will say was significantly better then I thought, but I did see the same thing as last year vs UNC. I came back and edited a small piece, but they have one end player (in American ball this is usually called the Edge player, and they play a wide set, typically a 5 or 7 tech pending if a TE is there tech). So to go back to my point the SDE is in 4 tech and the WDE is typically a 5 or 7. Which often times creates a huge gape between your NT (your weakside DT) and edge player, that's why Pinckney was so good, he could handle a BG 1v1. Kinda scared for Smith but he did well.

- Again to the run game, when Bama had any puller whether it was an H-Back OG or OT, in a Counter play, power play or variation of a split zone with a leading puller, I saw the same thing as last year, I didn't see when the defender recognized the puller was coming to wrong arm the son of a ***** and crash the gap OR decide to activate meathead mode and smash the puller right in the effing chin and knock him into oblivion.

Overall I think they look better then the score indicated to be honest, Lashlee play calling was a super big time head scratcher. His best play calling came when the game was out of reach and he said eff it and started to slinging it. For all the talk about how we need to hit deep etc, we threw what maybe 3 to 5 deep balls? Don't worry about protection with some deep balls, do a timing rhythm throw to the sideline 1-2-3 and 35 yards spot on the sideline and see what happens. 1 of 3 outcomes,1) incomplete, 2) complete or 3) DPI.

I can get more into the offensive side but this post is long enough to read.
 
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Bama DBs cant cover. We didn't even try to test them as much as I thought we would have. We should have gone down throwing on almost every play. Bama didnt kill us with physicality, people need to stop this. They are killing us with execution , preparedness and knowledge. UNC, LSU, Etc are not Bama, yet all those games went the same way, over in 10 minutes. I said before a ball was kicked off. With so many SRs and upperclassmen on the team, this season is on the coaches. It remain the same for me. For some reason teams like Tulane can go on the road and scare the **** outa OU. Dont tell me about physicality man. We are pushing a false narrative. Coaching failure continúes. We will see what the rest of the games bring because that UNC game will tell me all i need to know and before that Mich St is not gonna come down here to play
 
RVACane said:
Ford was our best player according to PFF and Nesta was 4th. They also had McCloud in our top 10 yesterday. How does that work?
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Well somebody has to be best lol. We blitzed as much as we did because our guys
can’t win individual matchups against that ol. So we used more numbers to help. Watching Bama, Clemson , Uga and Ohio State most years shows you what big boy football looks like. Winning individual matchups without having to blitz to do so.
 
supacane said:
Bama DBs cant cover. We didn't even try to test them as much as I thought we would have. We should have gone down throwing on almost every play. Bama didnt kill us with physicality, people need to stop this. They are killing us with execution , preparedness and knowledge. UNC, LSU, Etc are not Bama, yet all those games went the same way, over in 10 minutes. I said before a ball was kicked off. With so many SRs and upperclassmen on the team, this season is on the coaches. It remain the same for me. For some reason teams like Tulane can go on the road and scare the **** outa OU. Dont tell me about physicality man. We are pushing a false narrative. Coaching failure continúes. We will see what the rest of the games bring because that UNC game will tell me all i need to know and before that Mich St is not gonna come down here to play
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If they face a ol that can hold up their secondary will get lit up. They can be exposed , we had guys running open all over the place most of the game. Their front just helped cover that up.
 
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JHallCanes said:
Agreed D

We will beat MSU and App State and people will fool themselves into thinking it’s a different team

but it’s not

not a mope post but it’s going to be another year where we are in maddeningly competitive games every single week

strap in
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Because that is who we are at this point. Manny isn’t creating the illusion. We are.
 
Cribby said:
Well somebody has to be best lol. We blitzed as much as we did because our guys
can’t win individual matchups against that ol. So we used more numbers to help. Watching Bama, Clemson , Uga and Ohio State most years shows you what big boy football looks like. Winning individual matchups without having to blitz to do so.
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Ehhhhh Jawja last night was absolutely blitzing like crazy on Clemson and DJ

completely overwhelmed DJ and as you can see by the final stat line got demolished worst than even us. Which is saying something… whatever confidence DJ had is shot now
 
Good points.

"Same game" in more ways than one.
Specifically Clemson.

We give up a first drive score, procedure penalty stalling our following drive, our safety getting thrown out in the 1st quarter to name a few.

The refs were "ok". A couple of bad calls each side. Rambo was not interfered on the deep ball.
A few that went against us was the fair catch interference call, one of our WR's getting mauled (and a target?) on an INT, and a facemask on King on a third down.
All meaningless though.

Young's movement in the pocket killed us. We weren't getting there.
I hope this doesn't haunt us throughout the season with QB's that can move.

Oh, and welcome back @Liberty City El .
 
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@DMoney flexing your emotional intelligence with this post, must have took considerable effort not to just go in after another Ground Hog Day like performance on national television.

In any case, thank you for chiming in. I really believed that we would be better than we were against previous top 5 teams because of the experience I thought our coaches banked from our previous games, but our coaches let us down.

I thought Lashlee's play calling was terrible, again, and that it was way to conservative to start the game. Our starting slow was on him.

We spent too much time going horizontal rather than stretching the field vertically, that we forced running plays into eight men fronts - on 2nd and 3rd and long early in the game, and lacked creativity in creating mismatches in the passing game with Mallory, Arroyo, our backs, and on the outside. Those opportunities were there early. Once we were way behind obviously your options are limited because you become predictable.

X said Patke told them not to attempt a return on kick offs. Granted most of them were deep, which I get, but not all of them were and you can't make a play if you don't make an attempt to make a play. If you're Miami, but especially if you're behind, you need to try to make a play. Again, it confirms for me the fact that we were coaching too conservatively. To beat really good teams, you have to win the game - meaning make plays. You can't defeat really good teams by trying not to or coaching not to lose the game. Seems obvious to many of us on here, not sure why Manny and Lashlee don't get that.

I thought Patke had our kick coverage where they needed to be, which is a positive.

I totally agree with the issues with tackling. Even K. Smith, who I believe has a really bright future, overran multiple runs early in the game simply because he did not break down when he got to the runner. He in fact flew past them. Kid is a blur. I will chalk that up to excitement on his part, but as a whole, when the game was not decided, as a team, we missed way too many makable tackles, and the issue was mainly technique. We came in too fast, too high, and then tried to arm tackle. Good effort though.

I watched a little of the NC State game, the App State game, and the MSU game last week, and all of them have good offensive lines with elusive running backs. NC State and App State have two good running backs. We need to fix our tackling woes quickly or we will again struggle against opponents that do not have the same amount of talent that we have.

I love what you said about the Turnover Chain. Not mad at X, but I cringed when I saw our photographer had him pose for a photo down multiple touchdowns. No reason that photo could not wait until after the game. To me it's about cultivating a culture that prioritizes excellence such that coaches and players are always focused on the mission - winning the game, especially while the game is still being played. That's on Manny.

Nothing personal against Navaughn, and I agree with what you said about how he played, which is not new, but I don't think more time is going to help Big Vaughn. I do wish the absolute best for him, he seems like a really nice young man.

Play the players that make the most plays, seems simple enough. Manny has made some strides with that, but his use of certain players continues to baffle many of us. We need him to continue to purge the ranks. Benching Scaife was a smart move.

I was happy to see Agent Zero in the game and Kam, but I was disappointed we didn't get LT some burn as our SDE. I was under the impression from practice reports here that our staff was giving him reps there. Kam and JW getting minutes will really help their confidence going forward. I thought Chantz flashed also. I think he got a sack.

I was disappointed in Bubba Bolden. From his interviews, I have come to think of him as one of our smarter and more mature players, but his foul was Carter like. I'm sure he'll rally and play smarter going forward.

TVD looked out of sorts in mop up duty. He and Jake should get meaningful minutes against some of our future opponents so that the game slows down for them.

Glad that King was able to come back and I hope Harley is ok.

We are in the familiar but irksome position of being able to lose to all but perhaps two teams on our remaining schedule in spite of our talent advantage.
 
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