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What I'm seeing and hearing...

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“We can still make the playoffs if we win out”

“If team A and B lose a game we can make ACC champ game”

“This year was always about growth we weren’t going to win a title”

**** is exhausting and for the 15th year in a row we’re sitting here jumping through hoops to defend our ICU program. 2026 is our year!
 
Memnon said:
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.
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"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."

Philosophically, that's an OK approach with Cam Ward (extreme example, RPO wizard) for reasons discussed, or a QB who is a threat to pull the ball and find a crease, but with Beck, you need to sell PA hard by establishing movement along the LOS. I'd be curious to hear their logic there. Seems like another area where you're creating friction which slows down your running and pass game.
 
OrangeBowlMagic said:
I don't have a breakdown of snaps handy but I thought our best run blocking group last year was Bell at LT, Rivers at LG, obviously Carp at C.

I won't argue with you about personnel though. I think it's mostly tendency based. We are 106th in the country in yards before contact. That is definitely dragged down some by the fact that we have so many runs in short yardage, and you're not going to have a high yards before contact metric running into the A-gap into a 9-10 man box. But it's still a **** poor number overall. We did the same thing a bunch last year, too, and I guarantee you we were WAY higher than 106th in yards before contact.

I just think teams 100% know what's coming in almost every situation, because we don't EVER deviate. I know I'm a broken record, but 26 consecutive runs in short yardage is honestly unheard of. If I'm a DC, and I watch literally multiple games where a team does the exact same thing in a situation, guess what I'm going when they face that situation against me? 10 in the box, everyone between the tackles, and coach my kids to just obliterate the A-gap. What's the drawback? You know, 100%, that's what they're doing.

A play-action in that situation would be the easiest completion in the history of the sport. But no, just turn and hand it off.
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It's a chicken/egg issue w/r/t personnel and scheme. Ultimately, our inability to run pre or post contact is determined by our lazy offensive scheme imo. Is it really 26 consecutive short yardage runs?! JFC
 
AUcane said:
It's a chicken/egg issue w/r/t personnel and scheme. Ultimately, our inability to run pre or post contact is determined by our lazy offensive scheme imo. Is it really 26 consecutive short yardage runs?! JFC
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Sure is.

Last 26 situations of 3rd or 4th and 1 or 2, we’ve run the ball. Spans 4 games.

Against SMU, we had 13 situations of short yardage (3 yards or less, any down). We ran the ball all 13 times.
 
Dgixxer252525 said:
Riveting analysis.

In other news: water is wet

It’s clear as day that the issue is Beck. They didn’t trust him to throw against one of the worst pass defenses in CFB. That tells you all you need to know
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Beck had 1 bad throw in the game.

The last throw.

His receivers dropped a TD and gave a free INT to the defense. Not to mention other ridiculous drops.

They arent setting Beck up for success. They arent amplifying his strengths or playing to his strengths. Tempo and quick passes.

Beck is not the problem. Any QB would look bad in this system just like how TVD regressed in it.
 
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kyle_schick said:
Beck had 1 bad throw in the game.

The last throw.

His receivers dropped a TD and gave a free INT to the defense. Not to mention other ridiculous drops.

They arent setting Beck up for success. They arent amplifying his strengths or playing to his strengths. Tempo and quick passes.

Beck is not the problem. Any QB would look bad in this system just like how TVD regressed in it.
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We are the #1 team in America in pressure rate allowed. The absolute best. Beck is pressured on a smaller % of his drop backs than any QB in America.

If you gave me a QB as accurate as him and told me, never mind sacked, he's only going to be PRESSURED on 15% of his drop-backs, I would carve your *** up for 40 a game. It's a legit cheat code.

But what do we do? When we have the singular most advantageous passing situation in football, which is 2nd and short, we run the ball. Not a lot. Literally every single time.

Give the **** kid a chance. Run some vertical routes. Run a stop and go. Run some sluggos. Run a wheel route. Run a circus route. RUN PLAY-ACTION! The whole world knows you're going to try to lean on your run game, let your QB pull it and look down the field.

Much like Guidry last year, Dawson's approach to how we're playing these games on offense this year is going to haunt me to my grave.
 
Canedog said:
I think Miami wins 2 of the remaining games. A banner year if it happens.
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Happy Will Ferrell GIF
 
90scane said:
Schott is fast enough to play Y in the 4 wide sets then have him play HB the next play. It is all about getting mismatches, four wide works because it gets teams out of the box and lighter with more DBs, the first drive also ran faster because it was scripted.
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No one has seen Schott yet either. Throw him out as a pass catcher. Use him like Arroyo. What can it hurt?

Time to try something new
 
OrangeBowlMagic said:
Sure is.

Last 26 situations of 3rd or 4th and 1 or 2, we’ve run the ball. Spans 4 games.

Against SMU, we had 13 situations of short yardage (3 yards or less, any down). We ran the ball all 13 times.
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I assume a good portion of those runs were A gap runs.

#AgAp4LyFe
 
My guy Danny, how can you not like that guy? Great accountability, messaging, and everything you said you're hearing from scouts and inside the building aligns with what I see when I review their games (especially C and LG).

Mario is his own worst enemy. My guess is his conservatism stems from a desire to control things, where football is a game of chaos and that can be good for you.

I'll be here regardless, but this season has really brought my PTSD back to the forefront.
 
Lance Roffers said:
My guy Danny, how can you not like that guy? Great accountability, messaging, and everything you said you're hearing from scouts and inside the building aligns with what I see when I review their games (especially C and LG).

Mario is his own worst enemy. My guess is his conservatism stems from a desire to control things, where football is a game of chaos and that can be good for you.

I'll be here regardless, but this season has really brought my PTSD back to the forefront.
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Very interesting theory that I never thought of. 🤔
 
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DMoney said:
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.
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Would like more context on what let it rip means off a game where 38 pass attempts were made, are you talking to the coaches or the qb?
 
caneaddict said:
Would like more context on what let it rip means off a game where 38 pass attempts were made, are you talking to the coaches or the qb?
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Assume it means they’re gonna throw when the opponent has 9 in the box. Might get flashy and even throw a HB toss in this week
 
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