What I'm seeing and hearing...

[Golsen82]

Let it rip... Right in to the A gap

Francis let's a fart rip it'll be -6 yard rush

 

[ssvir]

I’d take Cignetti as well, but Lane did not have the 2nd most talented roster last year.

Top 5 at worst and I'd argue Texas/UGA/Oregon had more drafted but had less impact players.

 

[BS85]

I think now more than ever, teams will benefit from having an X’s and O’s Head coach rather than a “recruiter”. Recruiting in NIL era has been largely neutralized by money. Teams who pay the most get the most talent.

Pair talent ($$$) with good innovative coaching and you have something

Yep, he got hired at the worst possible time

 

[Gables Canes]

Yep, he got hired at the worst possible time

We hired a recruiter during the wrong era, 10 years too late. Recruiting is still important, but with the portal and NIL, parody is at an all time high. The days of just bulldozing everyone due to significant talent advantages are over. Even the bama's and Georgia's of the world have taken a modest step down. You need more than just talent, the playing field is more even than it ever has been

 

[skyman]

The thing with Lane is he took Ole miss and the fact they have that roster and expectations AT FREAKING OLE MISS?! They had NO TALENT or standards at ole miss prior.. Ole mis was a dump and when they were in SEC west it was auto win compared to when he got there. The fact people have playoff exectation for Ole freaking Miss lets you know how successful he has been there. They never even won 10 regular season games before he got there, lol..

Ole Miss Rebels College Football History, Stats, Records | College Football at Sports-Reference.com

Check out the Ole Miss Rebels College Football History, Stats, Records, Polls, Bowls and More College Football Stats at Sports-Reference.com

www.sports-reference.com

 

[cway313]

The thing with Lane is he took Ole miss and the fact they have that roster and expectations AT FREAKING OLE MISS?! They had NO TALENT or standards at ole miss prior.. Ole mis was a dump and when they were in SEC west it was auto win compared to when he got there. The fact people have playoff exectation for Ole freaking Miss lets you know how successful he has been there. They never even won 10 regular season games before he got there, lol..

Ole Miss Rebels College Football History, Stats, Records | College Football at Sports-Reference.com

Check out the Ole Miss Rebels College Football History, Stats, Records, Polls, Bowls and More College Football Stats at Sports-Reference.com

www.sports-reference.com

I was mad at him for losing to Billy last year, but in retrospect he made sure Billy kept his job for this years game.

I'm back!

 

[TRick72]

It is not even Lofton, our TEs whiff on every run block. Bauman is horrible at run blocking. Lofton is horrible at run blocking. How is our coach Cristobal and Mirabal and we have there great offensive lines and our TEs are dog **** about hitting the guy in front of them? Do you think they could branch out and work with the TEs some?

We already have an OL coach in charge of the TE’s

Cody Woodiel

miamihurricanes.com

 

[Handsome Squidbum]

The Offensive issues start & end with SEC Becky.

The run game is struggling (Drunk Joe Namath voice), because teams are packing the box against us. We're running into 7-8+ man fronts, especially on short yardage plays. Why? Because they don't respect the QB, therefore, they can just sit back in 2-high playing Cover 3 & watch his eyes all game.

They know he's going 2 places with the ball. To Toney & CJ Daniels, and there's only 4 routes between the 2 of them that he throws;
For Toney - Drag route, Curl route
For CJ - Button Hook, Deep In

If you watch just 2 games worth of film on Becky, you can perfectly sequence when & where he’s going with the ball.

HENCE WHY HE KEEPS THROWING PICKS ON IN-BREAKING ROUTES... But alas.

The reason why he's uncomfortable when he has time to throw, is because he's not an advanced progression reader. He's a one read & throw QB. DC's since LAST YEAR, have figured out, that all you have to do is confuse Becky with coverage. It's not pressure, or disguised looks, just sit back & watch him & he will take you to the ball.

The major difference in the Offense from last year to this year, is that Defenses were scared to Death of Cam & his improvisational ability. The coverages we saw on a weekly basis were of a result of DC's biting their finger nails off in anticipation for how to stop Cam. They'd play Man, they'd play Zone, they'd give us Cover 2, 3, 5, 6, 0, they'd go presnap Blitz & drop 7, they'd go presnap Zone & come with delayed Blitzes, they tried everything & none of it worked, until FSU when our Patron Saint decided he needed a pound of flesh.

But the point is, the Offensive struggles this season are because DC's don't respect our passing attack & they see on film that they don't need to because our QB is going to give them the ball when they need it & our RB's are going to run directly to them.

A better QB = a better Offense
A better Offense = Winning games we should win

Unfortunately, the HC is a firm believer in the idea of being able to win games in spite of your QB & not because of your QB. Which is why he always loses close games against lesser opponents, because he still hasn't figured out the formula.

I’ve been saying this for weeks now- thank you for being much better at explaining it than me. “Beck is booty cheeks” wasn’t an explanation, but an observation.

 

[Glow]

The Offensive issues start & end with SEC Becky.

The run game is struggling (Drunk Joe Namath voice), because teams are packing the box against us. We're running into 7-8+ man fronts, especially on short yardage plays. Why? Because they don't respect the QB, therefore, they can just sit back in 2-high playing Cover 3 & watch his eyes all game.

They know he's going 2 places with the ball. To Toney & CJ Daniels, and there's only 4 routes between the 2 of them that he throws;
For Toney - Drag route, Curl route
For CJ - Button Hook, Deep In

If you watch just 2 games worth of film on Becky, you can perfectly sequence when & where he’s going with the ball.

HENCE WHY HE KEEPS THROWING PICKS ON IN-BREAKING ROUTES... But alas.

The reason why he's uncomfortable when he has time to throw, is because he's not an advanced progression reader. He's a one read & throw QB. DC's since LAST YEAR, have figured out, that all you have to do is confuse Becky with coverage. It's not pressure, or disguised looks, just sit back & watch him & he will take you to the ball.

The major difference in the Offense from last year to this year, is that Defenses were scared to Death of Cam & his improvisational ability. The coverages we saw on a weekly basis were of a result of DC's biting their finger nails off in anticipation for how to stop Cam. They'd play Man, they'd play Zone, they'd give us Cover 2, 3, 5, 6, 0, they'd go presnap Blitz & drop 7, they'd go presnap Zone & come with delayed Blitzes, they tried everything & none of it worked, until FSU when our Patron Saint decided he needed a pound of flesh.

But the point is, the Offensive struggles this season are because DC's don't respect our passing attack & they see on film that they don't need to because our QB is going to give them the ball when they need it & our RB's are going to run directly to them.

A better QB = a better Offense
A better Offense = Winning games we should win

Unfortunately, the HC is a firm believer in the idea of being able to win games in spite of your QB & not because of your QB. Which is why he always loses close games against lesser opponents, because he still hasn't figured out the formula.

Bad eval if they paid big $ for a turnover prone non-mobile QB who can't run and can't punish stacked boxes

 

[cookies]

Give Pringle some run

This.

Also, Jojo did well filling in for CJ Daniels but he makes up for the lack of depth behind him. Idk if “explosive,” is the right word but he is a Hankerson/Hurns esque talent.

 

[Calinative]

The Offensive issues start & end with SEC Becky.

The run game is struggling (Drunk Joe Namath voice), because teams are packing the box against us. We're running into 7-8+ man fronts, especially on short yardage plays. Why? Because they don't respect the QB, therefore, they can just sit back in 2-high playing Cover 3 & watch his eyes all game.

They know he's going 2 places with the ball. To Toney & CJ Daniels, and there's only 4 routes between the 2 of them that he throws;
For Toney - Drag route, Curl route
For CJ - Button Hook, Deep In

If you watch just 2 games worth of film on Becky, you can perfectly sequence when & where he’s going with the ball.

HENCE WHY HE KEEPS THROWING PICKS ON IN-BREAKING ROUTES... But alas.

The reason why he's uncomfortable when he has time to throw, is because he's not an advanced progression reader. He's a one read & throw QB. DC's since LAST YEAR, have figured out, that all you have to do is confuse Becky with coverage. It's not pressure, or disguised looks, just sit back & watch him & he will take you to the ball.

The major difference in the Offense from last year to this year, is that Defenses were scared to Death of Cam & his improvisational ability. The coverages we saw on a weekly basis were of a result of DC's biting their finger nails off in anticipation for how to stop Cam. They'd play Man, they'd play Zone, they'd give us Cover 2, 3, 5, 6, 0, they'd go presnap Blitz & drop 7, they'd go presnap Zone & come with delayed Blitzes, they tried everything & none of it worked, until FSU when our Patron Saint decided he needed a pound of flesh.

But the point is, the Offensive struggles this season are because DC's don't respect our passing attack & they see on film that they don't need to because our QB is going to give them the ball when they need it & our RB's are going to run directly to them.

A better QB = a better Offense
A better Offense = Winning games we should win

Unfortunately, the HC is a firm believer in the idea of being able to win games in spite of your QB & not because of your QB. Which is why he always loses close games against lesser opponents, because he still hasn't figured out the formula.

I agree with this, but there is zero defense for that fact that the gameplan and overall conservative nature as well as not tying in SIGNIFICANT play action volume is fully on the coaches period. They have elected to go for a slow paced conservative offense with legit ZERO ability to generate explosive plays - BY DESIGN. Period. I get you hate Beck. But you can absolutely design an offense to win and execute 10x better than we have with Beck. Period. You can absolutely win with game managers and guys that are more "1 read". You can absolutely win with a more heavy ground based attack. I've never really cared about the Run: Pass ratio all that much. If we want to run the **** out of the ball I don't generally have a problem with that. But no matter what you need to generate explosive plays. And I said all offseason that if we were going with Beck who has never been a very big-play Qb, then we needed to change our Run game to generate explosive runs. This staff utterly failed to do so and have been complete pussies along the way.

I fully agree that it seems given Mario being a conservative ***** and Dawsons offense, we absolutely NEED a Cam/Baker/Mahomes style QB. One that is a playmaker and ALPHA that literally gives Mario no ******* option to not be aggressive. Finding that QB in the portal imo has become the MOST critical thing about this football program. LIke I literally think everything hinges on that at this point. The type of QB you usually like are definitely the type we need next year for those factors. Doesn't seem like a Riaola or anything will be available. I'm not at all sold on Sellers... Idk whos gunna be available, but we better land a gunslinger/improvisor... Right Now I've been wanting Sorsby or Mestemaker but we'll see...

Like Look at the trend in the NFL. 12 personnel With a ****ton of play action for high y/a passes. Teams are going heavy against 12 and when they overreact to your heavy run usage, you hit them with ******* play action. It's literally what the ******* Seahawks are doing with Sam Darnold. Sure Darnold has a better arm, is he THAT much of a different qb than Beck? The Seahawks have a garbage run game too yet Their offense is ******* working. Toney can Absolutely be the JSN fill in... Look at the past 4 years of the Lions with Goff? Heavy ******* play action with a lot of 12 personnel... This year their offense is having a little less success because they are behaving a little more like us with morton of just running ******* dive every 1st down...

Teams are committed 7/8 in the box and overcommitting to the Run.... And we don't ******* run practically any play action, I swear. And Honestly I get Dawsons offense doesn't do under center really, but this type of gameplan and conservative style just works better under center or at least using pistol...yet...

 

[cookies]

I appreciate and respect you even making this post, didn’t think you would. Just two things to add:

First, Mario put 3 top 10 picks into the league while at Oregon but outside of that the rest was extremely underwhelming. I see a similar pattern happening at Miami, probably slightly better.

Second, and this was brought to the board by others and yet another red flag ignored which was just how weak the PAC was during Mario’s tenure. It’s no surprise he is struggling to win the ACC. His PAC success just wasn’t that impressive whatsoever once you looked under the hood.

Brohm won the B1G West his last year at Purdue, and won 9 games the year before that. Georgia tech last year played UGA just as close as we played GT.

Mario also beat 11 win teams in Wisconsin, Ohio State at Oregon. He lost to a 9 win auburn team, by six points. Said Auburn team played national championship LSU closer than any other team — 23-20, lost to UGA by 7 lost to a 11 win UF squad, and beat Alabama.

Went 3-1 against Washington during his time there. Utah was pretty **** good throughout his tenure. The Arizona state team he lost to had Herm Edwards as the HC, Likens as the OC, freshman Jayden Daniels at qb, and Brandon Aiyuk at wideout.

Indiana just took Cal Berkley’s quarterback and Syracuse had Kyler McCord; OSU’s previous QB. He threw for more yards than Cam Ward. USC’s only loss (5-1) in 2020 was against Oregon. That USC team had Amon St. Brown, Drake London, and a pre injury Bru McCoy who would transfer to Tennessee and perform as the second best WR on a 11 win SEC team.

Brandon Dorlrus, shoutout Macho, made all-conference three teams and went in the fourth round. Jevon Holland, Troy Dye, Deommodore Lenoir, and Noah Sewell are all players taken outside the first two rounds that are still active in the NFL. He helped turn DJ Johnson into a third round pick after he looked like a five star scrub here.

Winning 72% of conference games keeps the train running. No way Mario goes 1-10 against OSU like James Franklin. Everything D$ wrote is accurate but the guy had helluva resume before taking this job; and his 10-2 output last year wasn’t as bad as it looked.

 

[Calinative]

I’ll bite

wtf does “let it rip” mean, exactly? Respectfully, of course lol.

Stop being a *****, hopefully.

 

[Cribby]

I’ll bite

wtf does “let it rip” mean, exactly? Respectfully, of course lol.

 

[Bender]

To be quite honest, Mario is the perfect coach for the current landscape of college football. He'll obtain the talent necessary to win football games.

To be quite honest, Mario is also the worst possible coach for the current landscape of football. Instead of just being who he is, a recruiter, he believes that his vision of football absolutely has to be translated onto to football field, meaning: It's my way and only my way.

If Mario would be who he is, which is a recruiter, a tonesetter and a OL coach, cool. Hire the creative coordinators looking for a shot (which Miami, given it's recruiting area, is absolutely perfect for) at the big ticket and off you go.

Ironically, the DC was the perfect hire. A young, up-and-coming cat with plenty to prove, a modern way of thinking defense with a persona that fits what defense is all about. The OC, however, fits precisely what Mario wants: boring, not more than necessary, just win and get out of there. Oh, and you better not question his way of thinking or he'll get ****y about it.

Mario barely wins one out of four games at Miami starting in November. Based on how many games we have left... do the math.

 

[CANEFAN83]

Before this week's post, I wanted to talk to people outside the Canes bubble. I spoke to NFL personnel people, college coaches, and others to get an external perspective on our annual collapse. Afterwards, I spoke to Miami to get the inside perspective. This post will summarize their thoughts, along with my own.

Let's start with a disclaimer. Mario is in Year 4. These are his players, his coaches, and his culture. He owns everything that's failing. A rash of injuries would be outside his control, but we've been pretty healthy to this point. So there are no excuses.

I'll provide my own thoughts first. Most of what we're seeing follows Mario's pattern from Oregon. Those teams were tough, strong up front, competed hard, produced NFL players, and won big games. It was a high-floor operation. They also failed to pull away from weaker competition, lost games as double-digit favorites, struggled with penalties, made gameday blunders, and lacked explosiveness in the passing game. The same stuff is happening here, but without the conference titles. We've yet to reach the same ceiling, and that ceiling was already below title caliber.

If I could sum up this year's problem, it's this: We're a down-and-distance offense that commits an extraordinary amount of penalties. That combination will get you beat in close games.

Two things shocked me about this year's team. First, I expected us to push around ACC defensive lines. The conference is thin on NFL bodies and we'd already powered through the tough part of the schedule. I was dead wrong. We're averaging 3.9 yards per carry, good for 84th nationally. The running game that ran for 5+ yards per carry behind TVD and Anthony Brown looks like ancient history now. We're as bad as everyone says we are.

My second big miss comes from a trio of offensive players. Coming out of spring, I thought Elija Lofton, Jordan Lyle and JoJo Trader would be the focal points of our offense. At his current pace, Lofton will go down as an all-time Greentree All American. I'll wear that albatross forever. He's been that bad.

I'll get defensive for a second here, if only to avoid the Baker Act - everybody watching spring practice thought Lofton was going to be a stud. He was running all over our first-team defense and getting more targets than anybody. But a couple of things happened. He hurt his shoulder, which removed any pop he had as a lead blocker. He hurt his leg, which sapped him of explosiveness. And he appears to be in below-average condition. Finally, we didn't add enough game-ready TE bodies from the Portal, so we haven't been able to use Lofton as much in the backfield (where he's most natural). Add it up, and it's my worst call since the Coker era.

I can't tell if Lyle is struggling with our blocking schemes or if he just has poor vision. But he's another practice standout, which is why he's being force-fed reps. Lyle and Trader will get a ton of opportunities due to injury, and they have a chance to raise the ceiling of this offense. But it hasn't happened yet and it may never happen. My big takeaway- don't put too much stock in spring (which is far away from the season) and base expectations on August camp, which is more predictive.

Now onto the external opinions. I found these were pretty consistent. Everybody pointed out the obvious penalty issues. We're 134rd nationally, and we finished 98th in 2024 and 80th in 2023. Raw penalty numbers can be deceptive (man coverage teams get more DPI, for example), but most of our penalties are controllable pre- and post-snap errors. That's an indictment on team discipline.

Not surprisingly, everybody felt we lacked urgency on offense. We slow the game down at weird times and never catch teams napping with tempo. Our pace works fine against better teams, but allows inferior teams to hang around and win. Our passing game is also straightforward, which is not uncommon for the Air Raid (which relies on execution of simple plays). But it's not clicking for us. Other teams are scheming guys wide open. It's hard to find a comparable examples on our team. SMU played 95% Cover 3 against us, and we couldn't make them pay for the single-high look with downfield passing.

On the running game, multiple people told me there's more variety than fans think (at least lately). The bigger issue is short yardage. We have zero creativity in those situations, and it killed us against SMU. We're missing opportunities to hit explosive plays against stacked boxes, and we're no longer good enough to bully teams that know what's coming. We'd be better off stealing plays off YouTube than running into the same brick walls.

Which brings me to their next observation- even accounting for stacked boxes, our run blocking has taken a huge step back. My NFL sources pointed to C and LG as major problem areas, and Anez Cooper has been disappointing as well. Mirabal teaches the double-under block technique, where you strike with your palms facing up and catch movement as opposed to firing off the ball. The benefit is you play with balance and get your hands inside without getting on the ground too much. But it's somewhat of a passive technique that requires brute strength to get movement. We aren't getting that push right now with our current interior personnel. Lastly, as much as we miss Elijah Arroyo, we also miss Cam McCormick and Riley Williams. The blocking at the tight end position has been a problem.

The feedback was better than expected on Carson Beck. He still projects as a mid-round type pick. His biggest issue is that he's the type of guy who runs the play that's called. Not only did Cam Ward change more plays at the line, but he was a perfect fit behind our pass protection (which remains elite). Cam would use the extra time to find angles and rip off explosive throws to Xavier Restrepo. Beck is better getting rid of it quick, and almost looks uncomfortable when he has too much time.

Finally, there is the receiver position. Aside from Malachi Toney and JoJo Trader, our receivers aren't explosive. Recruiting misses on guys like RayRay Joseph, Robbie Washington, Ny Carr, and (maybe) Trader are killing us. We also missed on guys like Zechariah Branch and Eric Singelton in the Portal. Both guys visited and signed elsewhere. The fact that we don't have great route runners is compounding the issue.

I was encouraged talking to folks inside the building because they seemed self-aware. No excuses, even off the record. One guy said flat out, "The fans are right." Penalties are their number one focus- they can't fix everything in November, but cleaning up the penalties would have numerous downstream effects. Nobody said anything about the refs, either. They've raised issues with the league office, but the message to me was about accountability. They know they've failed to this point and lost to less-talented teams.

Now we're going to find out about the culture. My prediction before the season was 10-2. Right now, I'd bet against that. November losses come in bunches and our trajectory has been downhill for a month. The message internally, is "Let it rip." We'll see if that plays out on the field. Go Canes.

One of the problems the last 25 years is miami never seems to adjust the scheme to fit the players. We always seem to make the players fit the scheme. Maybe we should adjust our air raid scheme to fit the personnel for this year's team. Maybe go back if next year's personnel changes and adjust accordingly.

Our coaches just always make the players fit the scheme. Its frustrating to watch since other schools clearly adjust and outscheme us.

 

[3rd-43]

To be quite honest, Mario is the perfect coach for the current landscape of college football. He'll obtain the talent necessary to win football games.

To be quite honest, Mario is also the worst possible coach for the current landscape of football. Instead of just being who he is, a recruiter, he believes that his vision of football absolutely has to be translated onto to football field, meaning: It's my way and only my way.

If Mario would be who he is, which is a recruiter, a tonesetter and a OL coach, cool. Hire the creative coordinators looking for a shot (which Miami, given it's recruiting area, is absolutely perfect for) at the big ticket and off you go.

Ironically, the DC was the perfect hire. A young, up-and-coming cat with plenty to prove, a modern way of thinking defense with a persona that fits what defense is all about. The OC, however, fits precisely what Mario wants: boring, not more than necessary, just win and get out of there. Oh, and you better not question his way of thinking or he'll get ****y about it.

Mario barely wins one out of four games at Miami starting in November. Based on how many games we have left... do the math.

Mario’s clenched cheeks appearing all over the defense as well now. Dude can’t get out of his own way. When things get tougher, he squeezes harder.

Bluntly, it’s how he recruits too. ‘Oh, you committed elsewhere, I’m going to text more!’

 

[305407cane]

We killed 3-4 drives with penalties

I know we did. I unfortunately was at the game. Busted my butt getting there straight from work.

Anyways. Yes penalties killed us that game especially the first drive. But man Beck was bad that day that’s why I was hesitant to say cleaning the penalties up leads to a win

 

[The U is back to work]

I know we did. I unfortunately was at the game. Busted my butt getting there straight from work.

Anyways. Yes penalties killed us that game especially the first drive. But man Beck was bad that day that’s why I was hesitant to say cleaning the penalties up leads to a win

Beck lost us the Louisville game.
Mario and his approach lost us the SMU game.

 

[Empirical Cane]

Before this week's post, I wanted to talk to people outside the Canes bubble. I spoke to NFL personnel people, college coaches, and others to get an external perspective on our annual collapse. Afterwards, I spoke to Miami to get the inside perspective. This post will summarize their thoughts, along with my own.

Let's start with a disclaimer. Mario is in Year 4. These are his players, his coaches, and his culture. He owns everything that's failing. A rash of injuries would be outside his control, but we've been pretty healthy to this point. So there are no excuses.

I'll provide my own thoughts first. Most of what we're seeing follows Mario's pattern from Oregon. Those teams were tough, strong up front, competed hard, produced NFL players, and won big games. It was a high-floor operation. They also failed to pull away from weaker competition, lost games as double-digit favorites, struggled with penalties, made gameday blunders, and lacked explosiveness in the passing game. The same stuff is happening here, but without the conference titles. We've yet to reach the same ceiling, and that ceiling was already below title caliber.

If I could sum up this year's problem, it's this: We're a down-and-distance offense that commits an extraordinary amount of penalties. That combination will get you beat in close games.

Two things shocked me about this year's team. First, I expected us to push around ACC defensive lines. The conference is thin on NFL bodies and we'd already powered through the tough part of the schedule. I was dead wrong. We're averaging 3.9 yards per carry, good for 84th nationally. The running game that ran for 5+ yards per carry behind TVD and Anthony Brown looks like ancient history now. We're as bad as everyone says we are.

My second big miss comes from a trio of offensive players. Coming out of spring, I thought Elija Lofton, Jordan Lyle and JoJo Trader would be the focal points of our offense. At his current pace, Lofton will go down as an all-time Greentree All American. I'll wear that albatross forever. He's been that bad.

I'll get defensive for a second here, if only to avoid the Baker Act - everybody watching spring practice thought Lofton was going to be a stud. He was running all over our first-team defense and getting more targets than anybody. But a couple of things happened. He hurt his shoulder, which removed any pop he had as a lead blocker. He hurt his leg, which sapped him of explosiveness. And he appears to be in below-average condition. Finally, we didn't add enough game-ready TE bodies from the Portal, so we haven't been able to use Lofton as much in the backfield (where he's most natural). Add it up, and it's my worst call since the Coker era.

I can't tell if Lyle is struggling with our blocking schemes or if he just has poor vision. But he's another practice standout, which is why he's being force-fed reps. Lyle and Trader will get a ton of opportunities due to injury, and they have a chance to raise the ceiling of this offense. But it hasn't happened yet and it may never happen. My big takeaway- don't put too much stock in spring (which is far away from the season) and base expectations on August camp, which is more predictive.

Now onto the external opinions. I found these were pretty consistent. Everybody pointed out the obvious penalty issues. We're 134rd nationally, and we finished 98th in 2024 and 80th in 2023. Raw penalty numbers can be deceptive (man coverage teams get more DPI, for example), but most of our penalties are controllable pre- and post-snap errors. That's an indictment on team discipline.

Not surprisingly, everybody felt we lacked urgency on offense. We slow the game down at weird times and never catch teams napping with tempo. Our pace works fine against better teams, but allows inferior teams to hang around and win. Our passing game is also straightforward, which is not uncommon for the Air Raid (which relies on execution of simple plays). But it's not clicking for us. Other teams are scheming guys wide open. It's hard to find a comparable examples on our team. SMU played 95% Cover 3 against us, and we couldn't make them pay for the single-high look with downfield passing.

On the running game, multiple people told me there's more variety than fans think (at least lately). The bigger issue is short yardage. We have zero creativity in those situations, and it killed us against SMU. We're missing opportunities to hit explosive plays against stacked boxes, and we're no longer good enough to bully teams that know what's coming. We'd be better off stealing plays off YouTube than running into the same brick walls.

Which brings me to their next observation- even accounting for stacked boxes, our run blocking has taken a huge step back. My NFL sources pointed to C and LG as major problem areas, and Anez Cooper has been disappointing as well. Mirabal teaches the double-under block technique, where you strike with your palms facing up and catch movement as opposed to firing off the ball. The benefit is you play with balance and get your hands inside without getting on the ground too much. But it's somewhat of a passive technique that requires brute strength to get movement. We aren't getting that push right now with our current interior personnel. Lastly, as much as we miss Elijah Arroyo, we also miss Cam McCormick and Riley Williams. The blocking at the tight end position has been a problem.

The feedback was better than expected on Carson Beck. He still projects as a mid-round type pick. His biggest issue is that he's the type of guy who runs the play that's called. Not only did Cam Ward change more plays at the line, but he was a perfect fit behind our pass protection (which remains elite). Cam would use the extra time to find angles and rip off explosive throws to Xavier Restrepo. Beck is better getting rid of it quick, and almost looks uncomfortable when he has too much time.

Finally, there is the receiver position. Aside from Malachi Toney and JoJo Trader, our receivers aren't explosive. Recruiting misses on guys like RayRay Joseph, Robbie Washington, Ny Carr, and (maybe) Trader are killing us. We also missed on guys like Zechariah Branch and Eric Singelton in the Portal. Both guys visited and signed elsewhere. The fact that we don't have great route runners is compounding the issue.

I was encouraged talking to folks inside the building because they seemed self-aware. No excuses, even off the record. One guy said flat out, "The fans are right." Penalties are their number one focus- they can't fix everything in November, but cleaning up the penalties would have numerous downstream effects. Nobody said anything about the refs, either. They've raised issues with the league office, but the message to me was about accountability. They know they've failed to this point and lost to less-talented teams.

Now we're going to find out about the culture. My prediction before the season was 10-2. Right now, I'd bet against that. November losses come in bunches and our trajectory has been downhill for a month. The message internally, is "Let it rip." We'll see if that plays out on the field. Go Canes.

Your write-up indicates a program that just isn't well run.

Damning for Year 4.