2014 Schedule - A Preview

I recently saw the movie Her. The lesson in that movie...I think...is that letting go can be a beautiful thing. 

After the past decade, I think I have finally let go of my expectations of having a great football team. I just want one that is fun to watch. We can worry about being great after that.

In that vein, Miami came out with its schedule today. In years past that has been a momentous day for me.

Because of Al Golden’s recent round of bullshit, our complete meltdown in the second half of last season and the bitter, bitter aftertaste of that Louisville loss, here is my early breakdown of each game.

*Keep in mind that I am super cynical right now and by July will have drunk the Kool-Aid and come fully around to the light side again.* 

September 1^st – at Louisville

We will lose this game. They won’t have Teddy Bridgewater anymore, but they will have Bobby Petrino. Petrino will be playing the role of Jed from Pulp Fiction in this one…Mark D’Onofrio will be playing The Gimp. The things Petrino will do will be, to borrow Al’s language, “multiple” and “varied”. This will get ugly, and Petrino WILL run the score up, with both middle fingers extended for everyone to see.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Watching our best pass rusher give up a huge play in coverage because we had him lined up over a wide receiver 20 yards away from the ball.

September 6^th – vs. FAMU

This will be sloppy, and they will probably give us a game into the 2^nd Half, due to the very short break between games here. You will be hoping that we put this thing away early and get to play the freshmen. You will be disappointed.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Golden’s “the schedule is too tough” excuse on Joe Rose on Monday morning. Because apparently “anybody anywhere anytime” doesn’t matter anymore.

September 13^th – vs. Arkansas State

This sounds like a cakewalk, right? Wrong. Arkie State keeps reeling off nice seasons in the Sun Belt and losing their coach to a Big Boy school. They will be competitive and tough and we will probably sleep walk through this. I remember a game against Houston in the Orange Bowl in 2006 that we barely pulled out. This will be like that.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Having to look in the mirror and realize that your beloved Miami Hurricanes just gave up 500+ yards to Arkansas State. I just threw up in my mouth a little.

September 20^th – at Nebraska

This is a battle of two teams that used to be awesome and have fallen into a state of perpetual mediocrity. Bo Pelini and Al Golden should just sumo at midfield to determine the winner. These teams have squared off 4 times with national titles in the balance…how far we done fell. We will probably lose this.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Having to watch Bo Pelini for 3 hours on a lovely late summer afternoon, and then realizing that Neanderthal is probably coaching his team to a win over the coach of your team.

September 27^th – vs Duke

Do the following. Before every game, ask if the other team has a coach with a pulse. If so, they will probably exploit our defense like this is an episode of Dance Moms or Friday Night Tykes.  David Cutcliffe looks like Franklin the Turtle, but Ol’ Boy can COACH. Our only hope is that our guys are pissed off about last year’s loss to Duke. Which means hope is probably lost, because that would require our coaching staff to motivate somebody.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Replaying last season’s disaster in your head over, and over, and over again.

October 4^th – at Georgia Tech

This could go either way. One thing we know for sure is that we will be losing by double digits at some point. Luckily Paul Johnson not only looks like Jabba the Hutt’s personal assistant, but also coaches like a dude with a weird balloon fetish.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: That stupid Georgia Tech commercial. “You want to not get laid for 4 years? You’re at Georgia Tech, YOU CAN DO THAT!!!!!!!”

October 11^th – vs Cincinatti

I know what you’re thinking. “There’s no way we can lose this one.” Wrong. Their coach is named Tommy Tuberville, and he is a pretty damned good one. In fact, when it comes to just coaching, he is probably better than our staff. Which means they will be fired up and play asymmetric football and force us to beat them. This will be either a close win or an embarrassing loss.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Just…all of it.

October 18^th – BYE

We will win this one. I’ve never even heard of this team.

October 23rd – at Virginia Tech

Our yearly Thursday night primetime game. We will probably lose this one. Frank Beamer and Bud Foster are awesome coaches and they beat us 2 of the last 3 with a freakin’ tight end playing quarterback.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Their stupid turkey call.

November 1st – vs UNC

This team really hit its stride under Larry Fedora in the second half of the season. Their quarterback is big and fast…the exact type of quarterback we never stop. Well, we never stop any quarterback. Sigh.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Their baby blue helmets. No team wearing that color should ever beat us in any way.

November 8^th – BYE

We will win this one. Weird that we get to play the same team twice though.

November 15th – vs FSU

Well, they just won a national championship, lost less to the NFL than they thought, are bringing in another great recruiting class and return the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback. This will be as much fun a root canal.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Low hanging fruit. Pass.

November 22nd – at Virginia

We should win this one. Virginia waits for the schedule to come out to make sure their program got renewed for another season. They are kind of like every show on NBC’s schedule. BOOM!

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Remembering the last game in the Orange Bowl and then remembering that we used to play there and then remembering where we currently play.

November 29th – vs Pitt

We should win this one. Pitt sucks. But they will be physical and depending how this season goes our team might have already quit on the coaching staff.

Thing That Will Piss You Off: Mark May

Looking Ahead to 2014

So, how about all that positive momentum, eh?

After being there in person to witness the Canes’ demolition at the hands of the Louisville football Cardinals last Saturday night – from great seats, I might add – a lot of the things I believed about this program have been called into question. 

In reality, the second half of this season was a crushing failure. It seems a distant memory to think back to the time when this squad was 7-0, ranked in the Top 10, and in high spirits after a decision was handed down in the NCAA case.

It was that kind of night.

A 2-4 finish will do that. And it wasn’t just any 2-4 finish…it was an EMBARASSING 2-4 finish that included a blowout from FSU, a loss to a shitty Virginia Tech team, a loss to Duke, getting our brakes beat off by Louisville (Miami-lite) and 500+ yard offensive performances by Pitt and Virginia, both of whom suck something awful.

So, it is easy to be negative right now. However, as anyone who knows me can attest, there are few things in life I refuse to stay negative about for very long. One of them is Miami football. 

Therefore, this year-end / year-beginning post will be about the future. Specifically, the things we need to be talking about at this time NEXT year in order for 2014 to be considered a success.

The way I see it, there are two MAJOR issues facing this team.

The first has been written about on CanesInsight by Peter Ariz.

SIDENOTE: If you are a good fan, and by good fan I mean you have a few brain cells to rub together and enjoy making solid contributions to a football discussion OR want to learn and know when to stay quiet, you should join that site. It is awesome. If you are NOT a good fan, stay the f*ck away from that site.

Essentially, there is a disconnect between the way the “city” of Miami views our team and the way our coaches feel about it.

Our coaches feel that we represent the city. The community feels that other schools represent the way kids from the 305 should play. A major part of this problem is that the murky underworld of South Florida football has evolved into an AAU-basketball like landscape of runners and agents and backdoor deals. 

Summer 7-on-7 tournaments have become the hotspot for this shady activity, and Miami is caught between two forces…a need to keep the top players at home (which requires you to play ball with these seedy figures, such as Jon Drummond and Brett Goetz) and a need to stay above the fray (the NCAA watches Miami like Hawks, and right now we are on probation…the NCAA also seemingly does not care what LSU, Alabama, FSU and any school coached by Urban Meyer does).

I think that this issue is a tad overblown. That we have lost studs every year as of late is a fact.

However, there seems to be a popular myth that was propagated by the 30 for 30 film which states that Miami gets every top prospect from the State of Miami every year, period. This is simply not true, and never was. Even when Miami was walking in high cotton, top players left. Marvin Jones, Samari Rolle, Tamarick Vanover, Fred Taylor, Lamont Jordan, etc. were all studs form the State of Miami that left for rival programs during Miami’s Dynasty…and that is literally off the top of my head without doing any research.

The reality is, we have done a pretty damned good job of ingratiating ourselves in South Florida while playing very mediocre football. The following core of returning players and incoming recruits, and this is JUST the South Florida guys, would be the envy of most programs in the country: Duke, Tracey Howard, Stacey Coley, Deon Bush, Tyriq Mccord, Anthony Chickillo, Chad Thomas, Kc McDermott, Joe Yearby, Trevor Darling, Anthony Moten, Herb Waters, Malcolm Lewis, Artie Burns, Jamal Carter, Brandon Powell. 

There have been misses, but that is true of any coaching staff. Hell, Jameis Winston, native son of Alabama, is playing for Florida State, not Alabama or Auburn.

In order to go the next step and twist up the railroad spikes, if you will (if you had “outdated Civil War reference” on your SOTS Bingo card, you’re welcome) we need to win. Winning cures all. Winning gets rid of any gap between our perception of the squad and the community’s. Winning negates street agents pushing players elsewhere, because kids want to play for winners, period. Winning eliminates the second guessing about which players we choose to offer. Winning isn’t a band aid…it is a brand new biomechanical limb.

And that nicely segues us into the second problem.

We cannot win doing what we are currently doing. We occupy an untenable position.

When Al Golden took over, he said “players, not plays”.

Well, I have now watched for 3 years, and what I see is a system that refuses to adapt to the strengths of its players. It is all about plays, and forcing players to run them even when they aren’t working. And THAT has to change.

In order for us to be better next year, and be having a more positive conversation about the program a year from now, the staff has to become less dogmatic. And if they need a reminder of how they should approach it, they should look at the tape of that Louisville game.

Louisville played like Miami used to play. They were aggressive. They played downhill. To borrow Mark Dantonio’s phrasing, they let their kids out of the cage on Saturday night, and you could tell their kids responded to it. They weren’t thinking…they were playing. 

It pissed us off the way they were playing, because they were kicking our ass and telling us about it.

It was exactly what we want out of our team.

And that is what we need to get back to. We need to let the kids off the leash.

Too often the current style of play takes players out of what they do best; to wit, I saw McCord, our best pass rusher, split out wide executing the duties of a cornerback AT LEAST a half dozen times. 

Every play, seemingly, one of our linebackers gets so confused that by the time they have figured out which player to tackle, the player is 5 yards gone. 

It has to stop. Now a lot of people that think they know what they are talking about argue the merits of a 4-3 vs. a 3-4 vs. a 5-2…the reality is that it doesn’t give a shit. The ATTITUDE of the team, and it isn’t limited to the defense, by the way, is wrong.

The attitude of this team is one of retreat. It is evident in our lax schemes, it is evident when we have 4^th and a foot and can’t convert, and it is evident when we get our doors blown off in the second half against EVERY good team we play. We lost to the 4 best teams on our schedule this year. That is unacceptable.

The team needs a talent infusion, but also an attitude transfusion.

The coaches, whoever they end up being, need to be brutally honest with themselves and have the courage to fix what is wrong. They need to solicit feedback from their key guys…Duke, Tracey and Bush are the keys, in my opinion. They are leaders, and not leaders in the way Shayon Green is….they actually go out on the field and make plays. Lots of them. And the reality is that they probably have a pretty good idea of what will work with this squad.

I’ve said this before, and I will say it again. I love Golden. I really do. I think he is a great leader, and I think his best days are ahead of him. 

But I do not love him more than I love the Miami Hurricanes.

If change doesn’t come, in one way or the other, the conversation will not be positive next year. Next year will be the first in which the entire roster is Golden’s players. He picked the team, he picked the coaches, he picked the schemes. Whatever attitude the team has, he picked that too.

And if the attitude is one that accepts defeat and cracks under pressure, then that will be very telling about the state of our program.

Let’s pray it doesn’t get to that, because if we don’t get it right this time, we might be left permanently behind.