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Thin line between success and failure

streetja said:
OldhamA said:
I don't see this massive talent disparity everyone harps on about.

We have quite a few good starters. We don't have anyone behind a lot of them though.

Who do we have behind Elder? Who do we have behind Richards and Coley? We're starting Jenkins and Carter at S.

These are key positions that we're paper thin at.
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And yet our defense managed to improve from 28 PPG allowed to 18 PPG allowed. Our biggest shortcomings talent-wise came on the defensive side and yet Diaz was able to defy Golden and the Richt apologists by proving Miami has enough talent to hold down coastal opponents.

So why, on an offense with a Junior QB, a solid Senior receiver, a freshman phenom WR, a freak of nature for a TE, and three solid RB's did we only see marginal improvements? And why was there such a night and day difference for the offense when comparing first half of the season to second half of the season?

If your answer is not Richt dropped the ball, then stop going to games and cut your cable because you obviously can't recognize what you see and your opinion is worthless.
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The difference is we allowed our front 4 to get after the QB rather than play patty-cake with the OL.

Our third down percentage didn't dramatically improve - that's because our secondary is so thin.
 
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OldhamA said:
streetja said:
OldhamA said:
I don't see this massive talent disparity everyone harps on about.

We have quite a few good starters. We don't have anyone behind a lot of them though.

Who do we have behind Elder? Who do we have behind Richards and Coley? We're starting Jenkins and Carter at S.

These are key positions that we're paper thin at.
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And yet our defense managed to improve from 28 PPG allowed to 18 PPG allowed. Our biggest shortcomings talent-wise came on the defensive side and yet Diaz was able to defy Golden and the Richt apologists by proving Miami has enough talent to hold down coastal opponents.

So why, on an offense with a Junior QB, a solid Senior receiver, a freshman phenom WR, a freak of nature for a TE, and three solid RB's did we only see marginal improvements? And why was there such a night and day difference for the offense when comparing first half of the season to second half of the season?

If your answer is not Richt dropped the ball, then stop going to games and cut your cable because you obviously can't recognize what you see and your opinion is worthless.
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The difference is we allowed our front 4 to get after the QB rather than play patty-cake with the OL.

Our third down percentage didn't dramatically improve - that's because our secondary is so thin.
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And the difference between the offense succeeding in the second half of the season is Richt recognizing our OL can't handle being being a run first offense and Kaaya can't run the RPO. What's your point? The defense improved, and the offense improved once Richt recognized how best to run our offense like Diaz did but before the season even started.
 
We should have beat FSU. We should have beat ND. We are better than UNC we just did not play well. VT beat us in their house but we did not get embarrassed. We should be 10-2. We competed in every game and did not get blown out like we did with Golden. I think that is is a very positive sign. Richt improved with Goldens players and Goldens croots. Now lets see what he can do with his own guys and all of the Golden graduates moving on.
 
The Franchise said:
For the guys claiming it's a Folden season, the main difference I saw was that Rick managed to keep the team together and invested after 4 straight losses. Folden teams died down the stretch. This team played its best ball down the stretch.
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I can agree with this. The most maddening part (well maybe) of Golden's tenure was the refusal to admit he was wrong and try something else. Then tell everyone how dumb they were for not seeing it the way he does.

Thats all gone. We talked many times about having faith that Richt could admit he was messing up and try and fix it and we saw that.

Im really interested to see how we prepare for the Bowl. Golden's teams were so outgunned in preparation it was pathetic. I feel better about our chances regardless the opponent.
 
We also beat like three 8+ win teams--I think we beat one TOTAL under Golden. Under Golden and Randy we had terrible first years and they "built up" the roster for a whopping nine win season by their third year. We can do that in Richt's first year and win a bowl game for thefirdt time in ten years. Plus we havent won four games to close out the year since 2002.


So it wasn't a great season and I see some glaring problems. The FSU loss was absolutely atrocious. But if we bring just about everybody back (including Kaaya) there is a lot to look forward to. We are primed for a 10-11 win season next year so we will see what we got.
 
Tony Perps said:
We also beat like three 8+ win teams--I think we beat one TOTAL under Golden. Under Golden and Randy we had terrible first years and they "built up" the roster for a whopping nine win season by their third year. We can do that in Richt's first year and win a bowl game for thefirdt time in ten years. Plus we havent won four games to close out the year since 2002.


So it wasn't a great season and I see some glaring problems. The FSU loss was absolutely atrocious. But if we bring just about everybody back (including Kaaya) there is a lot to look forward to. We are primed for a 10-11 win season next year so we will see what we got.
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Corn is gonna be a huge loss but an aggressive defense can mask DB problems. Interesting to see if Jaquan takes the next step. He could be a big upgrade back there.

Im really interested in the LSU transfer. LT is such a massive problem for us, especially against FSU.
 
JHallCanes said:
Tony Perps said:
We also beat like three 8+ win teams--I think we beat one TOTAL under Golden. Under Golden and Randy we had terrible first years and they "built up" the roster for a whopping nine win season by their third year. We can do that in Richt's first year and win a bowl game for thefirdt time in ten years. Plus we havent won four games to close out the year since 2002.


So it wasn't a great season and I see some glaring problems. The FSU loss was absolutely atrocious. But if we bring just about everybody back (including Kaaya) there is a lot to look forward to. We are primed for a 10-11 win season next year so we will see what we got.
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Corn is gonna be a huge loss but an aggressive defense can mask DB problems. Interesting to see if Jaquan takes the next step. He could be a big upgrade back there.

Im really interested in the LSU transfer. LT is such a massive problem for us, especially against FSU.
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On the corn thing, I remember everyone even the coaching staff talking how they needed more from Corn and wasn't sure what he was going to bring. Now we are talking about missing him big time. Richt seems like a guy that's going to get it done!
 
TimeB0mb said:
I give you a team that has spent a decade plus demonstrating nothing but underperformance and quitting in the face of adversity. I thought of this year as year zero. It's gravy if we make a run at the ACC championship game, but it wasn't a make or break for me. We have the talent, I just didn't think we'd have the mental readiness you need from a champion in Richts first year. Yup October sucked. Compare this with Adam Gase, started 1-4, but Fins fans knew the team was filled with softies since Philbin ran out any alpha males who dared challenge him (you can see this yourself On Hard Knocks) . Took a few games, but players finally stopped fighting Gase and they went on six game win streak. We turned it around too. Everything looked better in November: play calling, qb play, run game, defense, and most importantly ol blocking. We are trending in the right direction. In any case, even if we went 10-2, we weren't making playoffs this year, and I care about national championships, not ACC championship appearances (where we likely get blasted by Clemson). So whether we go 8-4 and miss playoffs or 10-2 and miss playoffs, end result is the same, no national championship. All I care about year zero is whether the young guys who will form the foundation of the championship run are developing. Richards, the Lb trio, the DL, the answer is 1000% yes. I'd go so far as to say we have the most talented core of freshman in the country right now. This season was just to just shake out the mediocrity, get non hackers to transfer early to open up scholarships for truly productive players. We are well positioned for next year.
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sho-nuff
 
The last time we won 8 games by at least 2 TDs was 2002. That makes the season a disappointment, but has the arrow pointing straight up.
 
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A lot of the best coaches have even worse first years than what Richt's had at Miami. There definitely has been improvement even though it didn't show up in the W-l column. Richt in year 1 basically has us where his 2 predecessors had us in their 3rd years. (Before they both regressed in year 4 and got fired.) Although frankly Golden's 9-4 team in 2013 was a lot worse than the nominal record stated.

Next year's team is all on Richt and that is when the excuses need to end.
 
Speaking Coastal championship only, the loses to FSU and UNC didn't matter.
If we showed up in Blacksburg, the Coastal would have been ours.

The ND loss still baffles the shet out of me.
 
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JHallCanes said:
The Franchise said:
For the guys claiming it's a Folden season, the main difference I saw was that Rick managed to keep the team together and invested after 4 straight losses. Folden teams died down the stretch. This team played its best ball down the stretch.
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I can agree with this. The most maddening part (well maybe) of Golden's tenure was the refusal to admit he was wrong and try something else. Then tell everyone how dumb they were for not seeing it the way he does.

Thats all gone. We talked many times about having faith that Richt could admit he was messing up and try and fix it and we saw that.

Im really interested to see how we prepare for the Bowl. Golden's teams were so outgunned in preparation it was pathetic. I feel better about our chances regardless the opponent.
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Golden was that guy who thought he was the smartest guy in the room where he clearly wasn't. I hope his ****** freezes in Minnesota.
 
Miami has a reputation as some of the worst sports fans in the country. It is well deserved. Richt was hired in December, late in the recruiting cycle, and he held on to the recruits but hardly had a chance to recruit his type of players. Already, I read he is a "corch", incompetent, and needs a real offensive coordinator because he couldn't win the national championship with Al Golden's players. Well, NO ONE can win either the Coastal or National Championship with Golden's players. Fans demand immediate success because we suffered from Golden but we refuse to give the new coach time to get his players. Well, let me illuminate something for all of you geniuses. Saban went 7-6 at Alabama his first year. Did they run him out of town and call him a corch because he didn't win his division in the SEC? No they were real fans and let him get his guys and look what he has built.

You can have a hall of fame NFL QB (we don't) , Hall of Fame receivers (we don't) a Hall of Fame TE (we don't but he will at least have a nice career in the NFL) and Hall of Fame RBs (we don't) and still fail if your line is just average at best and below average is more accurate (we had that). Golden was clueless on offense and so he signed 2 and 3 stars on that side of the ball. Coley was a good college player but he wasn't an NFL player. And he was like our fastest guy. Richt said there was no speed here and he didn't lie. If it wasn't for AR and Nojoku we had no one else. None of those OL will play at the next level not even in the CFL. The cupboard was bare on that side. It wasn't as bare as when Shannon took over but it was not much better.

Can you all stop the BS in believing one individual whether a coach or player can overcome five years of recruiting mistakes? It takes time. I won't judge Richt before year three and you shouldn't either. By then he should be in serious competition for the Coastal. By year 4 he should be playing for the ACC championship. By year five, he should be carried off the field after winning ther ACC for sure. If he doesn't meet these benchmarks then be concerned. But expecting more with what Golden left him is to deny how horrible a head coach Al Golden was. I never did that after year two. Why they let it go on for so long is what led us to this situation. If you think otherwise you are delusional. He was a fraud.
 
streetja said:
As heartwarming of a feeling these last four games gave us, this season is ultimately no different than a Golden led season in that we didn't accomplish our manageable goal of winning the Coastal and our record did not reflect our talent.

A statistic I took away that encapsulates our season is the difference in average PPG by the offense between the first five games against a P5 opponent compared to our last four opponents. The difference is a staggering 21 POINT DIFFERENCE.

Richt took way too long to realize what type of QB he had with Kaaya and it's ultimately what cost us a chance at the coastal. People on here realized how abysmal we looked as early as the GT game and yet it took Richt another 4 games to make an adjustment. IDGAF that our last four opponents were easier, we made UNC and Notre Dame look like world beaters, and FSU and VT were there for the taking and we never even tested them. I have no doubt in my mind that if Richt failed to make the adjustments on offense we would've continued to struggle to reach that 21 point total that eluded us in the first half of the season.

Richt is unnecessarily making play calling harder on himself. If he insists on play calling, so be it, but if the university is determined on winning and willing to spend the cash, why are we settling for an OC and a QB coach that couldn't get the same jobs in any other school in the country? Spend the ******* money and lets get a proper coaching staff not filled with yes men that take A MONTH to realize our faults on offense.
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I agree with you 100%, if this was year two.....

A grace period is warrantied in year 1
 
The difference between 8 wins in 2015 and 8 (or more) wins in 2016

Scoring margin 2105: Miami 27.8 Opponents 28.2 2016: Miami 34.6 Opponents 18.9

Total offense 2015: Miami 397.0 Opponents 404.8 2016: Miami 431.2 Opponents 355.1

Rushing YPG 2015 Miami 119.9 Opponents 201.0 2016: Miami 157.6 Opponents 134.6

Passing YPG 2015 Miami 277.1 Opponents 204.8 2016: Miami 273.5 Opponents 220.4

Turnover differential 2015: Miami +11 2016: Miami +8

Improvements across the board besides turnover differential. Going by numbers, Miami was a very lucky 8 win team last year, a very unlucky 8 win team this year.
 
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I'm leery of viewing knocking over those four tomato cans to end the season as being really indicative of anything other than beating the teams you're supposed to beat after losing four games against teams to varying degrees that you should have beaten. "Al Golden's teams would have quit!" and Al Golden would have definitely lost the four games previous so I'm not sure that is any sort of ringing endorsement.

One thing that is confusing to me is that we're crediting Richt for scrapping the RPO after "only" four games when he discovered Kaaya has the all the mobility and agility of a telephone pole. Shouldn't that have been apparent watching tape from past seasons? Shouldn't that have been evident when he saw him with his own eyes in the spring? So he either had no idea Kaaya possessed zero mobility and the OL was trash, or was aware and decided to implement a system that didn't suit any of the players running it anyway.
 
Republicane said:
I'm leery of viewing knocking over those four tomato cans to end the season as being really indicative of anything other than beating the teams you're supposed to beat after losing four games against teams to varying degrees that you should have beaten. "Al Golden's teams would have quit!" and Al Golden would have definitely lost the four games previous so I'm not sure that is any sort of ringing endorsement.

One thing that is confusing to me is that we're crediting Richt for scrapping the RPO after "only" four games when he discovered Kaaya has the all the mobility and agility of a telephone pole. Shouldn't that have been apparent watching tape from past seasons? Shouldn't that have been evident when he saw him with his own eyes in the spring? So he either had no idea Kaaya possessed zero mobility and the OL was trash, or was aware and decided to implement a system that didn't suit any of the players running it anyway.
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I think people are crediting Richt with scrapping the RPO at all. I hate to set the bar low, but it's been 5 years of a staff that refused to scrap anything, no matter how terribly it failed. I get why people aren't real pumped about the season, but it's year 1 so I'm choosing to look on the bright side. Since October

play calling has improved
OL play has improved
QB play has improved
RB play has improved


Basically, the whole O has been better. Sure, they shouldn't have sucked so badly in October, but they got better. And if you think that's setting the bar too low, I'd point you to the last 10 years of late season collapses.
 
Whether or not your disappointed by the record there is is a lot to be hopeful for in the future and i think that can sell well in the next 2.5 months on the trail. We now have a full season of Richt and his coaching staff on record. October sucked to be sure, but there are more than enough adjustments by a competent coaching staff, on film, to sell future croots as to why they should come here. Channeling my inner @Rokilla here are some:

-- Adjustments - I bet many people on the board cringed when teams had early success on certain plays, or let something as simple as a **** bubble screen get run over and over to great success. We have real coaches now who have seen a lot and have a counter. Throughout the year when teams would add wrinkles, we stopped them. Didn't we hold many teams under their normal outputs, with true freshman LBs no less and many more contributing. When we hit our rough patch on offense we shifted things around, scrapped what we thought we'd be good at early in the year (RPO) and totally changed how we did things to good success. Did it come late? Maybe. Was it a great offense with creativity? No, but offense isn't as easy to play as Defense and the things that Richt and staff did to help us overcome glaring deficiencies was a great piece of coaching. Some of the best hope for future is our staff and the fact that we very rarely were out-coached this year. When was the last time we could claim that...1994?

-- Conditioning & Toughness - Can we please give a huge shout out to Gus and crew. 3 true frosh LBs held up and played at an amazing level for a full 12 games. INCREDIBLE! I bet no one is going to say we are the candy canes anymore as we were very tough down the stretch and late in games. We didn't wilt in the end and i bet we were all expecting it since it was almost Deja Vu. This always defind our great generation, we were tougher and in better shape than everyone we played. We might not have started, but everyone equates the "4 fingers" with Miami's great teams. That's when we won big games cause we were in better shape and could execute late in games. Feels good to not be gassed and bullied by chit teams late in games! We were in better shape with worse depth than most of the teams we played this year. NC State game was the pinnacle of this theory. We physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually abused the best front 4 in the conference in game 11 in the second half. Mr. Felder please stand up.

These two things alone IMO are going to give us a good chance to close well on the trail. We can finally show kids that if they come here they will not be soft and won't be grossly out-coached. Kids can start believing in the guys on our sideline now, there's a full slate of game film to back it up. Cautiously Optimistic for the future. Need to close strong on trail
 
Hard to call this season Goldenesque all the way through since we finished on a four game winning streak. The patented Shannon/Golden move was to start strong and then fold late in the season. This was a ****** season but the fact that the team has improved over the last month is reason enough for some optimism.
 
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