What went wrong

[jackedaround]

100% disagree. 2022 was rock bottom. The changes Mario makes off season will begin to right the ship.

i sure hope so. we need new coaches and new talent. it is a total gut job.

 

[L A M P]

I don't know how he didn't hit the portal harder after being here in the spring. We had one WR who might crack the two deep at programs like Bama/Ga/OSU.. LB had zero that would. Purge this place mane!

 

[grover]

I don't know how he didn't hit the portal harder after being here in the spring. We had one WR who might crack the two deep at programs like Bama/Ga/OSU.. LB had zero that would. Purge this place mane!

He tried. The portal had dried up at that point. No good WRs or LBs IIRC. We waited too long for the OC/WR coach hire to get in the game on the very few top quality WRs that hit the portal early. And waited too long for the Syracuse kid to come home and he opted to stick with Cuse. I truly believe this season will be different and Mario will address the problems.

 

[L A M P]

He tried. The portal had dried up at that point. No good WRs or LBs IIRC. We waited too long for the OC/WR coach hire to get in the game on the very few top quality WRs that hit the portal early. And waited too long for the Syracuse kid to come home and he opted to stick with Cuse. I truly believe this season will be different and Mario will address the problems.

True. We supposedly thought we had the BC receiver in the bag.. Not so fast my friend!

FSU has killed the portal. I want a Mich St type turnover.

 

[Canes0714]

an abomination of a season. everything that could go wrong, went wrong. and more.

1. We Hired Mario
2. He Hired Gattis
3. Coaching Staff not held accountable for poor decisions, adjustment and player development

 

[ItsAUThing.com]

We spent Alabama money for FIU results. Every week was worse than the last.

Miami spent big to fix a two-decade problem and to construct a champion.

The 2022 is only a disaster if Cristobal never gets the Canes back to any promised land.

No one points a finger at Butch Davis the 5-6 debacle of 1997, other than as a bottoming-out that set the stage for a rebuild; Ed Reed and others always pointing at 47-0 at Florida State as a breaking point where attitudes changed and the off-season work ethic went next-level.

All that to say, those of us who lived through 1997 and that brutal season—I was 23 at the time and driving down from Gainesville for home games, as well as to Trailerhassee for that abortion of a game—the sentiment was as brutal as it is right now, if not worse.

At least now we've watched Miami suck for two decades. 118-85 entering this season (since the 2005 Peach Bowl)—the Canes averaged 7-5 annually for the past 16 seasons—yet in 1997 Miami was five years removed from a national title game appearance with a Heisman-winning quarterback, as defending national champs who just won their fourth title in nine seasons.

We'll see where it all goes, but fans need to get their heads out of 2022 and focused on the project that is underway to rebuild this once-proud program. Constantly lamenting on everything that went wrong this year is egregious.

0-for-19 in ACC titles and 1-for-18 in Coastal Division titles—consistently dropping winnable games to lesser on-paper conference foes dating back to 2004 when a 3-4 Tar Heels squad days from firing Carl Torbush upset third-ranked Miami in Chapel Hill.

Shake up the staff, send dead weight to the portal, identify guys who want to be here in the portal (Cristobal, Highsmith and Andrew Rodgers from Michigan State), close strong recruiting, train like mother**kers this off-season, hurt each other out on Greentree this spring and hope more leaders like Kinchens step up and lead, as this program has been void of those kinds of players for years.

2022 season is in the books. On to year two of the Cristobal era, where we'll see that "Alabama money" spent to right the ship over this year and the next—5-7 not defining the long-term investment by any stretch.

 

[JHallCanes]

He should know better than anyone you just let south Florida athletes loose. You dont make them overthink.

Why he wants a slow paced offense in miami i will never understand.

I will admit I did not pay one shred of attention to Mario before he got here

So while I understand people wanting to see results, I think the steps we take this off-season might be the most critical ones in recent memory

We are in this for the long haul and need to see some corrections for sure

 

[simplycanes]

I'm sure having Zo will be a major asset in correcting most of the issues stated above. This season was de pinga.

It depends, one would hope but it depends where Zo stands. There's the faction of former players who still think its the 1990s and are enablers rather than realists. Hopefully the when the pan con pinga runs out someone feels differently.

 

[RickRollU]

Mario ain’t that different than Dabo. They are CEOs type, they need to build their programs. If they surround themselves with bad hires, you get Clemson giving up 70 pts to WVU. Once Venables came in, the entire programs destiny changed. This year, he went the cheap route and the results were very meh.

If Mario can’t find greats OCs/DCs, we are ****ed.

When you look at the 1st year coaches who succeeded, it’s coaches who can actually coach. Dykes, Riley, Lanning, theses guys can get control.
Napier is trash in Xs and Os and his hires were trash’s so UF sucked. Same as Cristobal!

 

[BeastMode]

@DMoney why hasn’t gattass been publicly fired. It’s been almost 72 hours since our last game. What’s the hold up? Buyout?

 

[AtlAtty]

I’ve always thought that physical practices must lead to more injuries. Hitting causes injuries, and there are no 2 ways about that. This is one reason the NFL has limited hitting in practice, along with CTE of course.
Mario was in a tough spot this season because he had to make practrice physical to set a new tone and find out about who he had on the roster. I am hoping this season was our version of the Texas A&M Junction Boys and that Mario can find a balance going forward between being sound in tackling without injuring half of our own team.
I don’t advocategoing back to the no tackling days of Manny diaz but maybe there is a middle ground somewhere to be found. And if not, we better have Willis McGahee ready to back up Frank Gore in case Sean Taylor takes out Gore in the Spring.

 

[Miami[]_[]Smoke]

I’ve always thought that physical practices must lead to more injuries. Hitting causes injuries, and there are no 2 ways about that. This is one reason the NFL has limited hitting in practice, along with CTE of course.
Mario was in a tough spot this season because he had to make practrice physical to set a new tone and find out about who he had on the roster. I am hoping this season was our version of the Texas A&M Junction Boys and that Mario can find a balance going forward between being sound in tackling without injuring half of our own team.
I don’t advocategoing back to the no tackling days of Manny diaz but maybe there is a middle ground somewhere to be found. And if not, we better have Willis McGahee ready to back up Frank Gore in case Sean Taylor takes out Gore in the Spring.

I dont see that happening. All he talks about is physicality, and he thinks that is the only way to get it. He saw those practices at bama and obviously implemented them at Oregon too

 

[RVACane]

Put it all together, and you have the worst team our lives. What’s next? You can find that thread here. But for now, let’s hope Mario remembers the lessons of this season while the rest of us try to forget it.

Nice use of links within the board lately.

 

[Canesfan1899]

I will admit I did not pay one shred of attention to Mario before he got here

So while I understand people wanting to see results, I think the steps we take this off-season might be the most critical ones in recent memory

We are in this for the long haul and need to see some corrections for sure

IMO his decision on the offensive coordinator is going to tell us all we need to know. If he keeps Gattis or goes out and gets another dinosaur we may improve as he remakes the roster but we ain’t compete for national titles. He needs to find an elite innovative play caller and stock the cupboards for them and get out of the way.

 

[JHallCanes]

IMO his decision on the offensive coordinator is going to tell us all we need to know. If he keeps Gattis or goes out and gets another dinosaur we may improve as he remakes the roster but we ain’t compete for national titles. He needs to find an elite innovative play caller and stock the cupboards for them and get out of the way.

Yeah I’m not absolving the guy of anything but I’m sure last year was a whirlwind.

He’s been here for a year now and the guy seems to be relentless with his work ethic and planning so I would expect more educated decisions this time around

I don’t necessarily want to see the pendulum swing the complete opposite direction. I just want to see more of a cohesive approach this off-season when it comes to scheme/coaches/portal players

Last year was kind of a crazy off-season as well with all the high profile coaches that changed spots

Again, not to defend anything, I just think this off-season will be more indicative of the plan moving forward

I hope anyway

 

[Canezum5]

Great points @DMoney, but I'm inclined to believe that Mario will keep Gattis on next year, and just try to surround TVD with more talent. As a fan, I'm disgusted with the result of this year, but if we are being rational, Gattis didn't have much to work with. We were playing with the 3rd string QB and 3rd string lineman at times. I'm not sure what OC could make that work. To be without Zion, Chaney, Citizen, Arroyo, Restrepo, and Rivers for extended periods is crazy, and there is a clear drop-off in talent even when going to the two-deep. At this point we have to trust Mario. I'm all for burning it down, and building it back up.

 

[fresssh]

This was the worst season ever. That’s true both in a vacuum and in context. We spent Alabama money for FIU results. Every week was worse than the last. We’ve hit more rock bottoms than The Rock at Wrestlemania 19. It’s a relief to be done with the season, and that’s a strange feeling.

What went wrong?

The offense- No need to bury the lede. Josh Gattis was a catastrophic hire. We went from scoring 31 ppg to scoring 19 ppg. We were 113th in the nation with an NFL-caliber QB and a veteran offensive line. We were pass-happy (100th in rush play percentage) with no explosive passing (95th in yards per pass) and no ability to protect the passer (114th in sacks per game). Everything sucked.

I wasn’t too surprised we were boring. Anybody who listened to the podcast knew this offense struggled to make explosive plays throughout camp. But the total collapse of our quarterbacks was shocking to me and set the tone for this disastrous season.

I spoke with an FBS defensive coach who told me that our offense has no identity. We just run plays. Everything looked hard and everything was a struggle. Last year, there were numerous layups every game, both because of pace and scheme. We didn’t waste the entire clock trying to make the perfect playcall against the defense. The story of this season was congestion.

An offense this bad doesn’t just hurt your ability to score points. It also poisons the morale of the team. Which leads to point two:

Morale- The team and the staff were miserable all year. Anybody who watched the sidelines could see that. Mario sets an incredibly demanding tone with his work ethic. But if you’re a player, how do you buy into a hellacious process when the coaches can’t put you in position to succeed? On top of that, Mario consistently buried the talent while treating Gattis with kid gloves. I understand why he had to do that as a professional, but it would infuriate me as a player.

Some kids are just lost causes. That’s normal for any coaching transition. Some kids, like Restrepo, will go balls-to-the-wall for anybody. It’s the kids in the middle that matter. They will buy in if you give them a reason. Mario gave them nothing.

Staff cohesion- These are the two most glaring stats of the season for me- we ranked 8th nationally in sacks per game and 117th in the nation in pass efficiency defense. It’s almost impossible to be that bad against the pass with an elite front four pass rush. And it’s not like we lacked talent. The secondary was filled with experienced blue-chippers, several of whom will get looks on Sundays.

The lesson? Hiring all-star coaches does not guarantee an all-star staff. Kevin Steele had killer defenses at Auburn. Addae had elite secondaries at WVU and Georgia. But they could not get on the same page. Every game had multiple coverage busts that cost us games.

This board killed Banda and Rumph because of their resumes. But they were on the same page with the defensive coordinator. The result was consistently good pass defense and players getting better. Look at our pass efficiency defense ranks during the Rumph/Banda/Manny as DC years:

2016- 12th

2017- 20th

2018- 4th

We dropped to the 30s when Baker replaced Manny, dropped to 42nd with TRob and totally bottomed out with Addae. The lesson is that we need to prioritize chemistry and cohesion with the next staff, on both sides of the ball.

Injuries- If Mario is assessing every aspect of the program, he needs to start with our very expensive sports science program. This is more than just bad luck. We lost Arroyo, Zion, Citizen, Chaney, Justice, Denis and Chase Smith for the year along with TVD, Restrepo and Jalen Rivers for extended stretches. Everybody who visited Greentree noticed the extreme physicality of the practices. That style can be risky. We ended up with the worst of both of worlds- a beat-up team that wasn’t tough. Injuries were a problem with Cristobal at Oregon and the issue has continued at Miami.

Talent deterioration- There was a significant talent drop-off after the early 2000s. But even through the Shannon and Golden eras, Miami continued to produce NFL players at a Top 5-10 rate. That fell of completely with Richt and Diaz. We’re down to 11 total NFL players, tied for 21st with Tennessee, Ole Miss and Virginia Tech. Three transition classes in seven years along with disappointing classes in 2018 and 2020 put us in a hole.

Misses in the transfer portal- While Mario spent three months building a staff, we were falling behind at key positions in the Portal. Tyler Steen (Miami native) ended up as the starting LT for Alabama. Juice Wells, a stud WR from James Madison, went to South Carolina. We struck out at corner and linebacker. Mario said he regretted not taking more players from the Portal. The effects were felt on the field.

No discipline- When Mario replaced Manny, we heard a lot about how Manny didn’t hold his players accountable. If anything changed, it hasn’t shown up on film yet. Miami was 108th in penalties per game and 123rd in giveaways. The film needs to start matching the talk.

Put it all together, and you have the worst team our lives. What’s next? You can find that thread here. But for now, let’s hope Mario remembers the lessons of this season while the rest of us try to forget it.

Very well said!! Now going forward, do we have anyone capable of putting a staff together and hiring the right coaches, or is that still going to be all Mario? He has proven that those responsibilities should be handled by someone more qualified.

 

[Timmy T-Bags $$$]

You don't 'create' toughness. Everyone that applies to West Point has the same resume, but only 1% of all applicants graduate. It's passion and perseverance. Better find people who don't quit anything, and who love being an athlete. Having great modeling from family or close friends helps.

Elite rugby teams go to the ground on crash pads with shields between the runner and defender. It's confidence, and it's a skill.

Wait, so 99% of West Point students don't graduate from the academy? If that is true, that is insane!!

 

[crossover22[]_[]]

100% disagree. 2022 was rock bottom. The changes Mario makes off season will begin to right the ship.

5 losses each year for the next 2 years.

 

[OriginalCanesCanesCanes]

Wait, so 99% of West Point students don't graduate from the academy? If that is true, that is insane!!

It’s not true and I don’t think it’s what he meant