There are rare moments when one has so much to say that you don’t know where to begin, so it feels as if you have no words to accurately describe your emotions that you want to articulate. That is the way I felt this weekend watching my Miami Hurricanes lose by three touchdowns to the Michigan State Spartans at Hard Rock stadium. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised, which is absolutely devastating to me when I think about it. I spent all week wondering what they knew in Vegas that we didn’t know down here when Miami was declared as favorites. I saw the way MSU ran the ball against Northwestern and I saw how Miami failed to defend the run in their first two games, I knew that we were going to struggle in this matchup. I still had faith that we could pull off the win though. By the beginning of the 4th quarter, all faith had transformed into disdain. How is it possible that a 2-5 team who incorporated 41 new players from the transfer portal turned things around so quickly? Meanwhile Manny Diaz is failing to coach up his three and four star kids he’s supposedly developing over the last five years upsetting his new five star kids like Leonard Taylor by not playing them at all.
Has anyone noticed that the best defense Manny had at Miami was when he had mostly Al Golden’s recruits on the roster? Has anyone noticed that some of our big star recruits perform better as under classmen and the more time they spend in our program the more they have regressed? Zach McCloud started as a true freshman, by his senior year he could barely get on the field to the point where he asked to redshirt. Here he is in his 6th season of eligibility after requesting to make a change to be an edge rusher and it’s clear that DE is not the position for him. He can’t rush the QB. He doesn’t set the edge well. He doesn’t know how to read the tackles to predict run or pass. His get off at the snap is slower than Sha’Carri in her last race. It’s all bad watching McCloud play with his hand in the dirt. Jonathan Garvin, Cam Harris, and Navaughn Donladson were all beasts with a lot of promise as true freshman and by the time their UM careers were coming to an end, they became shells of themselves. Maybe Cam should change his last name back to Davis, he used to tote the rock better back then. Will Mallory has become a total disappointment after arriving in Coral Gables with so much hype. Is this really the new Miami? Feels a lot like the old Miami. Feels like all we are having are weak tropical storms this season. Maybe tropical storm is too strong a term for their performances. Let’s go with weak unnamed tropical depressions, because let’s face it- their performances have been depressing. We can’t score. We can’t defend. There is nothing that this Miami team does exceptionally well that they can lean on when adversity strikes in a game. This team has no identity. At least when Al Golden was here the offense was still scoring. We still had running backs that went for big games. Now our running backs can’t even get a hole 4 inches wide to squeeze through and make a big play. Everyone is stuffing our inside and outside run plays. Are we that slow? Our offensive linemen don’t hustle on pulling plays or block during screens. We have a starting safety named Gurvan Hall Jr. wearing the #26 of the late great Sean Taylor who was in prime position to make a tackle on an approaching ball carrier, and rather than attempt to make the tackle- he got out of the ball carriers way and engaged the blocker next to him. Letting the ball carrier break out for a huge chunk play. It was such a bad and bizarre play that even ESPN had to highlight it.
Now we have Manny the marketing major and used car salesman still talking about winning the coastal. How does he plan on winning the coastal when his team can’t execute the fundamentals of football? They can’t block, they can’t run, they don’t get stops on 3rd down. There is only one receiver that consistently gets open and doesn’t drop the ball when he is targeted. Additionally, the whole defense is allergic to tackling. They make silly penalties and turn the ball over a ton. At this point we should start giving the turnover chain to the other team, no? I was a huge Manny advocate when we hired him. I drank the Kool-Aid because of the amazing job I saw him do with our defense in the early days. However, the honeymoon is over and we need to see results. We need to see this program being built up to something or else we need to make a change. To me Manny’s chair is heating up and if he wants to save his job he needs to win the Coastal, this season. He needs to win a bowl game, this season. Eight wins and four losses is the best case scenario at this point. Realistically, this is starting to look like a team full of underperforming upperclassmen that will go 7-5 and lose another pre-Christmas day Classic Top Ramen Aluminum Foil bowl to a team like Tulane. Before this Hurricane season all of the sports weather experts were expecting a very active season with 9 or 10 major category 5 wins and landfall in Charlotte, NC for the ACC championship game, but it seems like these predictions were way off. So far this is clearly another case of new season, same Hurricanes. Please prove me wrong.
