What I'm seeing and hearing...

[90scane]

Nobody loves midseason mock drafts like miami fans do lol

Cici doesn’t suck. He likely goes late day 1. Bell should return because he is a day 3 right now.

 

[90scane]

I wont say he left a great situation but he left way more than people would like to admit.

We had four NFL players in the backend and they were the issue vs MTSU. That screams coaching.

 

[ReggaeCane]

If we came out on 3rd and 2 in 10 or 11 personnel in the shotgun, the defense would literally have to call a timeout. That's how utterly blown away they'd be by seeing that in that situation. Like, holy ****, we didn't even consider we'd see this when we game-planned.

But no, 26 times in a row, we've lined up in 13, like it's 1945, and run the ball into the A-gap.

13 times in a row against SMU, in all short yardage situations (ANY down and 3 or less to go), we ran the ball. All 13 times.

Sorry, that ain't Beck. That's coaching malpractice.

As a matter of fact, on 1st and goal from the 4, we lined up in heavy, ran play-action, and it was the easiest TD of Beck's life. Would we ever do that again in any short yardage situation? No. We would not. Because, it worked, incredibly easily (OF COURSE IT DID YOU ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING DIFFERENT). So why do it ever again?

This is what kills me. Dawson will scheme up a great play call and then, literally, never run it again. The Jacolby George motion play, the Beck PA bootleg TD, things we see one time. It's extremely frustrating.

 

[Empirical Cane]

@DMoney So how does it get fixed? No use in crying over spilled milk.

It likely doesn't get "fixed" with this leadership team in place.

What you are seeing is a feature, not a bug, in the system.

As I've been saying...

 

[GrozDozer]

This is what kills me. Dawson will scheme up a great play call and then, literally, never run it again. The Jacolby George motion play, the Beck PA bootleg TD, things we see one time. It's extremely frustrating.

The QB draw fake to the TE

 

[E1k]

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?

 

[Hurracanes]

It’s the best pass protecting unit in America. Bar none.

It’s struggling in run push. Notably on short yardage. Maybe give them a little help by not running on 26 consecutive 3rd/4th and shorts, as we have over the past 4 weeks? But what do I know?

The only reason our OL is struggling in the run game isn’t because of talent, it’s because of what the coaches are asking them to do. They’re making it harder than it needs to be. Our philosophy is all about moving defenders straight ahead 85% of the time instead of mixing it up with pulls, angles or east and west motion. Teams like Michigan, GT, and OSU all add variety to their run schemes, which keeps defenses honest.

And then you have our OC talking to the media in that patronizing tone, basically asking how to run plays outside the box in shotgun. That says it all. Last year, even though we ran up the middle a lot (smfh), we at least had more creativity and mixed in different looks in both the run and pass game.

I’m done with Dawson. He hand picked this awful QB room and is running an elementary offense in 2025. He literally got furious with Brown on camera because he didn’t go inside. ******* ridiculous. Season is over.

 

[E1k]

Cici doesn’t suck. He likely goes late day 1. Bell should return because he is a day 3 right now.

I didn’t say he sucked, i just don’t see a first round level player..I hope he goes #1 tho

 

[NicKane]

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.

Like I commented on one of your podcasts Dmoney, never put too much stock in spring because there is no scheming happening on particular players in spring. So a lot of the time, everyone looks good. But in fall camp, that’s when they actually start scheming against players and you see where the cream rises. Remember that this coming spring before you let the hype out.

 

[Empirical Cane]

Mirabal is a problem. No doubt about it. He has to go.

We have now reached the "blame the shadow OC" stage of grief.

 

[BigDikDaddyFromCincinnati]

We need to play with pace on offense.

We need to go 5 wide and spread them out.

Will help the running game and get the 5 best offensive weapons on the field ... no more Lofton/Bauman

If you go five wide, who’s going to run the ball?

 

[Gocanes1990]

The only reason our OL is struggling in the run game isn’t because of talent, it’s because of what the coaches are asking them to do. They’re making it harder than it needs to be. Our philosophy is all about moving defenders straight ahead 85% of the time instead of mixing it up with pulls, angles or east and west motion. Teams like Michigan, GT, and OSU all add variety to their run schemes, which keeps defenses honest.

And then you have our OC talking to the media in that patronizing tone, basically asking how to run plays outside the box in shotgun. That says it all. Last year, even though we ran up the middle a lot (smfh), we at least had more creativity and mixed in different looks in both the run and pass game.

I’m done with Dawson. He hand picked this awful QB room and is running an elementary offense in 2025. He literally got furious with Brown on camera because he didn’t go inside. ******* ridiculous. Season is over.

This, my biggest issue with Dawson. He Mario and the midget jizzed their pants over Beck.

There were far better or lower risk targets all things considered. Cost us singleton and others. Branch was never coming as a jb athlete

 

[flips]

Will we let it rip tuff and fyzikally is the question

 

[htownkidd]

Lol

Ya’ll are truly wasting your time with this Mirabal has to go ****.

1.) That’s ridiculous
2.) Even if he were the worst OL coach in America, he goes when/if Mario goes.

 

[BigDikDaddyFromCincinnati]

How do we always end up with the most stubborn coaching staffs in America? Shannon, Golden, Richt, and now Wario are some of the most stubborn corches I’ve ever seen.

They’re all that way. When you win it’s spun as fiery winning culture. When you don’t… Mario

 

[Hurracanes]

This, my biggest issue with Dawson. He Mario and the midget jizzed their pants over Beck.

There were far better or lower risk targets all things considered. Cost us singleton and others. Branch was never coming as a jb athlete

Next season, get a real OC who runs a true spread offense who is creative and let that coach have full control of the offense. It’s time for real change and Miami/Dawson need to move on.

Also, they better, and let me repeat that, THEY BETTER hit big in the portal next year and actually let it rip. Our recruiting class isn’t exactly setting the world on fire again, and we are still missing real difference makers and depth across multiple rooms. It’s concerning.

 

[Empirical Cane]

It’s the best pass protecting unit in America. Bar none.

It’s struggling in run push. Notably on short yardage. Maybe give them a little help by not running on 26 consecutive 3rd/4th and shorts, as we have over the past 4 weeks? But what do I know?

How many Miami OL have TD receptions?

Stop pretending we have a serious O gameplan.

 

[AuoraCane]

Was Indiana his 2nd choice?

Not sure where they ranked. I have family in Fort Wayne and know they recruited him pretty hard. Most of the BIG schools did. I'm basing my opinion on our offense and where Indiana is sitting right now.

 

[Gocanes1990]

Next season, get a real OC who runs a true spread offense who is creative and let that coach have full control of the offense. It’s time for real change and Miami/Dawson need to move on.

Also, they better, and let me repeat that, THEY BETTER hit big in the portal next year and actually let it rip. Our recruiting class isn’t exactly setting the world on fire again, and we are still missing real difference makers and depth across multiple rooms. It’s concerning.

But but how could this happen with an elite recruiter? Also my worry is that we need a qb1 and new OC and there’s only a transfer window in Jan. Mario takes MONTHS to pick a coach. Recipe for disaster.

 

[LuCane]

It’s the best pass protecting unit in America. Bar none.

It’s struggling in run push. Notably on short yardage. Maybe give them a little help by not running on 26 consecutive 3rd/4th and shorts, as we have over the past 4 weeks? But what do I know?

Is it generally struggling in run push or is it outnumbered by actual defenders or defensive alignments made easier from predictability (which stems from conservatism)?

Anyway, I think we agree. I just wanted to make this crystal clear.