Every so often a random mid major will show up and shock the college football world. Teams like UCF, Cincinatti, Iowa St for example will come out of nowhere and have a great season or a great season by their standards, double digit wins, big bowl game. Then you wonder how that happened, they can't recruit with the big boys, they don't get the 4 and 5 stars. Then you take a closer look at their rosters and all you see in the depth chart are 4 and 5 year guys and some 3 year guys. Very experienced and mature teams, coached up, bodies filled out. What this gotta do with my point? For the upcoming season Miami is #1 in offensive production returning(95%), #12 in defensive production returning(86%) and #3 overall in both combined(91%). Along with 19 of 22 returning starters. I have always thought and will continue to think the only thing that has been holding us back is coaching, overall. But this season coming i have some confidence in the overall staff Diaz has put together even though they have to go out a prove it as a unit. We are not one of those mid majors who cant get 4 and 5 star guys, we have good portions of 4 stars and some 5 star players but our experience level would be prime for one of those type of teams to cause major upsets. In addition to the staff improvements i think were made as well as key recruits and transfers. Im thinking we maybe in for a perfect storm.
I have said it multiple times, im not taking us in any big game like the opener, we have laid an egg time and time again but this time there may be tangible proof that it maybe different. Bama who we play in week 1 is #110 in returning production and people will say yes but they just plug in blue chips....they will but it will not be the same. LSU plugged in blue chips off their best ever team, they lost both their coordinators and it was not pretty. They seem like they never played football before. Bama lost 11 assistant coaches this past offseason including their OC to Texas. Saban is not a magician, and i dont see Bama falling off like LSU did but im not sure people are using facts in predicting their upcoming season, the more i did research to make this post.
Final point, ESPN did a article before last season and ill take some snippets. They used different metrics to try to predict how teams would fare based on their returning production. Over the previous 6 seasons before last, teams with their offense returning 60% or above in their production averaged about 2 points per game improvement while those below regressed by about 3 points per game. Also only 1 of the 18 teams who returned 90% saw their offensive rating fall, while 9 improved by atleast 7 adjusted points per game. On D its pretty much the same thing, teams returning atleast 85% of their production averaged 5 adjusted points per game improvement, while teams returning 40% or less regressed by the same 5 adjusted points and the key unit that made the most impact on D improvement was the secondary returning players.. Bama returns 33% of their offensive production and 77% not 41 %of their defensive production. I had read that wrong, mad late and i was tired.
For once picking us to make dramatic improvements may not just be blind faith, it might just be a perfect storm.
