A head coach in his inaugural year here is expected to take the reins of a 7-5 team, coached by arguably the worst head coaching hire in Miami's last two decades, to some "realists" preseason expectation? Not only that, the demands require him to accomplish this pedestrian chore with that same 7-5 team but without Mike Harley, Jaelan Phillips, Gregory Rousseau, Brevin Jordan, Quincy Roche, and whoever else transferred out/graduated with no one worth it to backfill their positions? Not sorry, that was never realistic. Consequentially, what is the 2021 Hurricanes record without the guys that left? 4-8/5-7?
We have been reduced to a skeleton crew. Just a bunch of leftover dudes, seemingly in cliques--many underserving of scholarships, that meet for practice once in a while and for 12 games each year with the hope of having an NFL career; not through their own merit but because they wear a U on their helmet. I don't care what coach you name drop--not even a Saban could come here and make this team work efficiently enough in time to make a deep run this season. That is the true realist's reality; we are not a cohesive team, our athletes are either not talented enough, incapable or willfully not performing good enough to play for a P5 team and all of them have mental problems (football-wise) likely from being so poorly coached all this time at the U. You can either coach bad habits out of them or replace them by recruiting--both take time to accomplish. To ask of a new head coach to turn around two decades of mediocrity ('17 withstanding) in less than a year is a lot. If you can internally simplify our dilemma down to that it frames this season and all these forum discussions going forward well.
