Mario Cristobal’s totalizing conservatism is suffocating the program he so desperately wants to return to its former glory.
I’d like to be clear, it’s not one thing, it’s everything. I’ll start with the eye test:
The team plays a tentative, nervy brand of football—so concerned with avoiding negative plays in the run game, no one on the staff has stopped to consider that explosive plays might be a benefit in equal measure. Who among us, does not feel haunted by this conservative brew of language and football philosophy: “tight splits,” “time of possession,” and “field position.” Except, in the most important games and moments, the team possesses the ball for long stretches and fails to score touchdowns.
Offensive possessions that show promise continuously get snuffed out like a snub cigarette due to penalties, untimely drops, and all manner of cookie-cutter playcalling. CJ Daniels' fourth-down drop against Stanford in the second quarter felt like the physical manifestation of collective unease permeating Hard Rock Stadium, a post-traumatic hangover from the end of the Florida State and Louisville games. That’s on Cristobal.
As Julius Campbell (Wood Harris) said in Remember the Titans: “Attitude reflects leadership, Captain.” That this team lacks confidence, plays nervy, and only looks comfortable with a two-score lead reflects Cristobal’s coaching and culture.
Yet, despite all of Cristobal’s messaging about how hard his team practices during training camp, despite his ground-and-pound mantra acted out on the sidelines (amid another unnecessarily close game), despite his incessant calls to address a situation like “a man,” this team, like all his Miami teams before, is the antithesis of military discipline. Maybe white-knuckling your way through a 60-minute football game isn’t the best way to get explosive or disciplined offensive play?
Now let’s get to the stats.
The 2025 University of Miami offense is averaging 32.3 points per game (44th in the country). Miami is 76th in the country, averaging 4.2 rushing yards per attempt. Miami is 70th in rushing yards per game at 155.
Miami is 35th in pass yards per game at 258.9. For reference, here are some ACC teams ahead of us in the rankings: Georgia Tech (32nd), Florida State (28th), SMU (24th), North Carolina State (23rd), Clemson (13th), Pitt (9th), and Duke (4th).
We’re 131st in the country, averaging 8 penalties a game (105th in penalty yardage at 63.4 per game).
All told, it’s an average, plodding offense, without a discernible strength or identity. We’re a better passing team than run team, but we don’t trust the quarterback enough to air it out consistently, even though the offensive line is better at pass blocking than run blocking.
Somehow, it gets worse.
Even more troubling than Cristobal’s middling record in the ACC (14-14), his poor and worsening record in November (4-9), and the level of success of the coaches passed over for the University of Miami job in favor of Cristobal (Lashlee is 12-1 in regular season ACC play and Manny Diaz is 9-4 at Duke after being 16-9 at Miami), is the odd couple of ineptitude he’s struck up with yet another offensive coordinator.
Shannon Dawson is clearly an upgrade over Josh Gattis, as reflected by the year-over-year numbers, but both Cristobal and Dawson like to peddle the same airy bits of coach speak. After every loss as a double-digit favorite, they pull out familiar phrases and go on long, circular diatribes about “execution,” “the small details,” “playing to the standard,” and so much “errant gunfire in the foot [not a direct quote].” When will the results mirror this empty rhetoric?
This pattern of bloviating after losses continued immediately after the SMU game and at Monday’s media availability. After this most recent loss as a heavy favorite. Both Cristobal and Dawson found it necessary to emphasize that they had “overcome” the surfeit of pre-snap penalties mostly brought on by this “elite” offensive line, but not the drops by, presumably, their running backs and receivers.
Curious logic, at best. At worst, it seems like a blatant admission that Cristobal is overly protective of his own ego vis-à-vis the offensive line—HIS and Alex Mirabal’s unit, the so-called identity of this team. During media day, everyone from Cristobal, to Dawson, to Beck was in lockstep with the party line about this being an offensive line led team. Where has that leadership taken this offense?
Call me crazy, but the offensive line seems to be a protected class in Mario Cristobal’s football ecosystem, shielded in the media, and going backwards on the field. Maybe, just maybe, a brief shakeup of the lineup should be in order, like a factory reset for your cellphone after a bad update?
On the other hand, Cristobal was all too eager to shine a bright light on the way Josiah Trader’s drop “turned into an interception and a touchdown for the other team.” Curious behavior, curious indeed. Maybe we should add, “so much finger pointing” to go along with all that “wayward buckshot in the feet [still not a direct quote].”
Strangest and most maddening of them all, however, was Dawson’s portion of Monday’s media day, where he professed obsequious fealty to Mario Cristobal, as if he were a feudal lord, rather than a head football coach.
In addition, Dawson let slip that his desire to “reward” the offensive line that he “loves” and “trusts” influences his decision making in short-yardage situations… This sounds less like a college offensive coordinator and more like a parent eager to show just how much he loves his kids by allowing them to eat sugary cereal for every meal and wondering, years later, why they have so many cavities. Unlike cavities, it didn’t take years for rot to set in with this offense.
While Dawson seems to be describing a strange parasocial relationship with his “trench babies,” as Cam Ward likes to say, fans of the team are forced to watch the offense repeatedly get stuffed in short-yardage situations, running an extensive play sheet of about three different versions of “run the ball up the middle.”
I’m exaggerating to some degree, of course, because I’m ****ed. You should be, too.
Cristobal asks these young men to sacrifice their bodies, to be open to change, to put the team first by playing on special teams, switching positions, by doing the dirty work of blocking down after down, and yet as the leader of the organization, he refuses to change.
When the University of Miami football program was at its best, it also had legendary coaches. The NIL era is not the roll the ball out and win era. There is too much parity, too much turnover, and the demands of the highest job mean that so many former head coaches are now in coordinator and analyst roles. Cristobal needs to raise his organization's level of schematic ingenuity and creativity so that the talent he works so hard to acquire can thrive.
If Mario Cristobal loves the University of Miami, its football program, and winning as much as he claims to, he’ll take a hard look in the mirror and make the necessary changes to see this and future teams maximize their talent, rather than relying on the incessant repetition of words like “execution,” “standard,” and “men” to act as some kind of dark magic that delivers victories to the team out of thin air.
I’d like to be clear, it’s not one thing, it’s everything. I’ll start with the eye test:
The team plays a tentative, nervy brand of football—so concerned with avoiding negative plays in the run game, no one on the staff has stopped to consider that explosive plays might be a benefit in equal measure. Who among us, does not feel haunted by this conservative brew of language and football philosophy: “tight splits,” “time of possession,” and “field position.” Except, in the most important games and moments, the team possesses the ball for long stretches and fails to score touchdowns.
Offensive possessions that show promise continuously get snuffed out like a snub cigarette due to penalties, untimely drops, and all manner of cookie-cutter playcalling. CJ Daniels' fourth-down drop against Stanford in the second quarter felt like the physical manifestation of collective unease permeating Hard Rock Stadium, a post-traumatic hangover from the end of the Florida State and Louisville games. That’s on Cristobal.
As Julius Campbell (Wood Harris) said in Remember the Titans: “Attitude reflects leadership, Captain.” That this team lacks confidence, plays nervy, and only looks comfortable with a two-score lead reflects Cristobal’s coaching and culture.
Yet, despite all of Cristobal’s messaging about how hard his team practices during training camp, despite his ground-and-pound mantra acted out on the sidelines (amid another unnecessarily close game), despite his incessant calls to address a situation like “a man,” this team, like all his Miami teams before, is the antithesis of military discipline. Maybe white-knuckling your way through a 60-minute football game isn’t the best way to get explosive or disciplined offensive play?
Now let’s get to the stats.
The 2025 University of Miami offense is averaging 32.3 points per game (44th in the country). Miami is 76th in the country, averaging 4.2 rushing yards per attempt. Miami is 70th in rushing yards per game at 155.
Miami is 35th in pass yards per game at 258.9. For reference, here are some ACC teams ahead of us in the rankings: Georgia Tech (32nd), Florida State (28th), SMU (24th), North Carolina State (23rd), Clemson (13th), Pitt (9th), and Duke (4th).
We’re 131st in the country, averaging 8 penalties a game (105th in penalty yardage at 63.4 per game).
All told, it’s an average, plodding offense, without a discernible strength or identity. We’re a better passing team than run team, but we don’t trust the quarterback enough to air it out consistently, even though the offensive line is better at pass blocking than run blocking.
Somehow, it gets worse.
Even more troubling than Cristobal’s middling record in the ACC (14-14), his poor and worsening record in November (4-9), and the level of success of the coaches passed over for the University of Miami job in favor of Cristobal (Lashlee is 12-1 in regular season ACC play and Manny Diaz is 9-4 at Duke after being 16-9 at Miami), is the odd couple of ineptitude he’s struck up with yet another offensive coordinator.
Shannon Dawson is clearly an upgrade over Josh Gattis, as reflected by the year-over-year numbers, but both Cristobal and Dawson like to peddle the same airy bits of coach speak. After every loss as a double-digit favorite, they pull out familiar phrases and go on long, circular diatribes about “execution,” “the small details,” “playing to the standard,” and so much “errant gunfire in the foot [not a direct quote].” When will the results mirror this empty rhetoric?
This pattern of bloviating after losses continued immediately after the SMU game and at Monday’s media availability. After this most recent loss as a heavy favorite. Both Cristobal and Dawson found it necessary to emphasize that they had “overcome” the surfeit of pre-snap penalties mostly brought on by this “elite” offensive line, but not the drops by, presumably, their running backs and receivers.
Curious logic, at best. At worst, it seems like a blatant admission that Cristobal is overly protective of his own ego vis-à-vis the offensive line—HIS and Alex Mirabal’s unit, the so-called identity of this team. During media day, everyone from Cristobal, to Dawson, to Beck was in lockstep with the party line about this being an offensive line led team. Where has that leadership taken this offense?
Call me crazy, but the offensive line seems to be a protected class in Mario Cristobal’s football ecosystem, shielded in the media, and going backwards on the field. Maybe, just maybe, a brief shakeup of the lineup should be in order, like a factory reset for your cellphone after a bad update?
On the other hand, Cristobal was all too eager to shine a bright light on the way Josiah Trader’s drop “turned into an interception and a touchdown for the other team.” Curious behavior, curious indeed. Maybe we should add, “so much finger pointing” to go along with all that “wayward buckshot in the feet [still not a direct quote].”
Strangest and most maddening of them all, however, was Dawson’s portion of Monday’s media day, where he professed obsequious fealty to Mario Cristobal, as if he were a feudal lord, rather than a head football coach.
In addition, Dawson let slip that his desire to “reward” the offensive line that he “loves” and “trusts” influences his decision making in short-yardage situations… This sounds less like a college offensive coordinator and more like a parent eager to show just how much he loves his kids by allowing them to eat sugary cereal for every meal and wondering, years later, why they have so many cavities. Unlike cavities, it didn’t take years for rot to set in with this offense.
While Dawson seems to be describing a strange parasocial relationship with his “trench babies,” as Cam Ward likes to say, fans of the team are forced to watch the offense repeatedly get stuffed in short-yardage situations, running an extensive play sheet of about three different versions of “run the ball up the middle.”
I’m exaggerating to some degree, of course, because I’m ****ed. You should be, too.
Cristobal asks these young men to sacrifice their bodies, to be open to change, to put the team first by playing on special teams, switching positions, by doing the dirty work of blocking down after down, and yet as the leader of the organization, he refuses to change.
When the University of Miami football program was at its best, it also had legendary coaches. The NIL era is not the roll the ball out and win era. There is too much parity, too much turnover, and the demands of the highest job mean that so many former head coaches are now in coordinator and analyst roles. Cristobal needs to raise his organization's level of schematic ingenuity and creativity so that the talent he works so hard to acquire can thrive.
If Mario Cristobal loves the University of Miami, its football program, and winning as much as he claims to, he’ll take a hard look in the mirror and make the necessary changes to see this and future teams maximize their talent, rather than relying on the incessant repetition of words like “execution,” “standard,” and “men” to act as some kind of dark magic that delivers victories to the team out of thin air.
