Started By
Message

"Miami fans, I've watched your last 13 games, and I have some observations..."

Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:07 am
Posted by MastrShake
SoCal
Member since Nov 2008
7281 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:07 am
to be clear, this isnt my work, Im not the one saying that headline, its an Oregon fan called /u/hythloday1over on /r/CFB, and its very well done, it tells you essentially everything you could want to know about Miami. assuming thats something you care about .

OFFENSE

This is a pro-style, single-back offense called by Coach Richt without many bells and whistles, simply relying on timing, execution, and a high overall talent level to overwhelm defenses. It was clear from the playcalling that they’d like to have an even run-pass balance, but by necessity the actual product shifted to roughly 2:1 in favor of downfield passing. The biggest deviation, and often the most effective one, was that this offense employs a lot of designed QB runs, both draws and zone reads.

Quarterback - Even after scrutinizing over 500 of his snaps, I still couldn’t give you a straight answer on whether #12 QB Rosier is a good quarterback or not. I’m sure a lot of Miami fans put the blame for the team’s skid on his inaccuracy at the end of the year, and to be sure his completion percentage took a big tumble in November. But I think that’s too superficial, and ignores a lot of complicating factors I’ll discuss in the other position groups. Stripping those away and just looking at his capabilities: he has an arm that can hit the whole field -- both a nice soft lob and a quick heater -- and there’s no hesitation on his throw when a man breaks open. He’s an effective and durable runner and makes the correct call most of the time on read-options and designed QB draws that identify the second-level defense. The offensive scheme is not designed to give him a lot of easy, wide-open throws but rather asks him to make pretty tight passes, which he does pretty well.

My biggest criticism of him isn’t his inconsistency or even his somewhat high interception numbers, it’s that he’s got real happy feet and breaks the pocket much too early, and on such improvised plays his success rate is terrible - I’ve been filling out these tally sheets for the better part of a decade and I’ve never seen a QB with scramble percentages this high or this poor. It’s true that he’s got some very memorable heroic moments in his career when he breaks the pocket, but for every one of those there were at least three more net-negative plays.

Wide receivers - This is possibly the most talented receivers group I have ever seen, and it’s returning almost everybody with one key exception. It was incredible to watch the trio of towering flankers in #82 WR Richards, #18 WR Cager, and #81 WR Langham simply dominate shorter secondaries; even though they had some injuries and drops mar their season, I think they were by far Miami’s most lethal weapons since defenses didn’t know whether they were just going to camp in the flats for possession plays or go out for unstoppable deep fades. Also returning are #4 WR J. Thomas who broke out at the end of the year and is astonishingly fast, as well as a capable blocker and relief option #3 WR Harley.

The impact player they lose to the NFL is one of the best slot receivers I’ve watched, #8 WR Berrios. In fact, he was so good that he made the rest of the passing game a lot better, because he was getting consistent bracket coverage – by the middle of the year his reception numbers had actually started to decline because defenses were so over-dedicating resources to stopping him, but this meant playing man against the rest of Miami’s enormous talents and that’s a losing proposition. This is partly what I was referring to above with Rosier’s completion percentage: by the back half of the season, he wasn’t throwing into seams in the zone, but just a tall dude with another guy right on his hip.

Running backs - It was a damned shame that the Hurricanes lost #1 RB Walton to an ankle injury mid-season. He’s now gone pro and when he was healthy he was a transformational talent, creating jaw-dropping runs out of absolutely nothing. That injury made evaluating Miami’s running game difficult, and I think because the coaching staff was making some peculiar decisions. First, they returned him to the field probably before they had to, because his backup -- returning #24 RB Homer -- had a similar ability to be his own blocker, and then after Walton’s injury they took about a game and a half to start utilizing Homer as extensively. Then this weird delay happened again with returning #13 RB Dallas, who would come in for some (frankly pretty goofy) wildcat plays for a few games until they finally figured out he could be as or even more effective compared to Homer.

Instead, the Canes’ second leading rusher turned out to be Rosier, in carries, yards, and rushing TDs. And even when it became clear that Miami had a dominant passing attack, they stuck with -- and in some late games, doubled-down on -- a really hit-or-miss run game which by necessity meant Rosier running and not throwing ... this offense cries out for a strong RPO game but I didn’t see it used consistently.

Tight ends - I think the team is going to wind up missing #23 TE Herndon (to the NY Jets, assuming he survives the offseason) a lot more than is expected – he was one of the most quietly effective tight ends I’ve evaluated in both blocking and possession receptions, and he’s pretty tough to bring down as well with some really good YAC numbers. Herndon wound up being their second leading receiver (behind the also departed Berrios), although I think that’s more a product of the both of them being unique positions and the next six guys sharing the same kinds of routes. I also think it’s telling that when he went out with an injury, Miami went from playing 11-personnel sets almost exclusively to a whole lot of 10 sets, and were generally reluctant to bring in his backup #87 TE Irvin for the same playcalls - another factor that I think should be considered when looking at Rosier’s passing numbers in the same timeframe. The only other tight end I saw on the field was a converted defensive end, #19 TE Patchan, but it was only for a few ineffective plays and I believe he’s going back to the defense in 2018.
This post was edited on 8/30/18 at 12:09 pm
Posted by MastrShake
SoCal
Member since Nov 2008
7281 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:07 am to
Offensive line - This group brings back five of the seven guys who had extensive playing experience -- starters #74 C Gauthier, #55 RG Donaldson, and #78 RT St. Louis, as well as frequent backups #62 OG Mahoney and #65 OG Gaynor – and normally that’d be cause for optimism. Donaldson and St. Louis both impressed me with their great measurables, and while the former showed a lot of true-freshman mistakes and the latter was eclipsed by the more senior linemen’s leadership, I think they’ll both step up in 2018. However, I think there’s some cause for concern here. For one thing, the two guys they lose, #52 LT McDermott and #73 LG Darling, were by far the most effective blockers in my opinion, and for another I never saw a third tackle getting any reps so it’ll be an untested OT taking over (I think Mahoney or Gaynor would be fine sliding into the open guard spot though, and having the other as a backup is nice). And while it’s good to have continuity with a returning center and QB, I’m not wild about Gauthier’s performance - he racked up quite a few penalties and had a couple heart attack-inducing bad snaps.

But the real issue, which I think reverberated throughout the entire team’s performance, was that this group was so ineffective at run blocking. The problem was footwork - they just weren’t creating the leverage that this zone-blocking scheme requires, and without a solid push into defensive lines the RBs were bouncing off the line and forced to improvise a whole lot. In turn that made the run game (which put up deceptively good overall numbers) extremely feast-or-famine, which translated into an inability to sit on the clock or set up a convincing play-action pass game. By the end of the year defenses were playing a pretty light box, covering the QB or RB as run threats only as outside bounces (or just another receiver), and freeing up a defender to both bracket Berrios and get extensive safety help against Miami’s plethora of deep weapons. That’s the last piece of the puzzle for why I think Rosier’s dip in performance should be evaluated in a fuller context.
Posted by MastrShake
SoCal
Member since Nov 2008
7281 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:08 am to
DEFENSE

Structurally, this a 4-3 usually playing out of a cover-2 shell, but with so much depth at defensive back that they’ll frequently go into nickel or even dime packages in obvious passing downs. There’s frequent use of a variety of blitzes, and deploying a stand-up backer in the middle of the line with a safety brought down into the box in run situations.

The novel aspect -- which even though I was somewhat familiar with Jimmy Johnson’s 4-3 slide and so shouldn’t have been too shocked to see at Miami again, still caught me by surprise -- is that DC Diaz’s scheme completely abandons gap integrity and instructs backers and run-support safeties to react instantly and take whichever run fits they see immediately. It’s highly aggressive and sometimes devastatingly effective, but at the risk of uselessly doubling up on gaps, losing edge contain, or just plain guessing wrong and getting taken out of the play.

Defensive line - This was by far the strength of the defense, and they put five of the eight-man rotation into the NFL. It’s hard to overstate just how disruptive this line was: in the middle were massive lane-cloggers #7 DT Norton and #95 DT Moten, but in my opinion the real star was the 3-tech #80 DT McIntosh who was constantly in the backfield. All of those guys are gone now, leaving the backup #93 DT Bethel as the only returner. I didn’t see him often and he’s 50/50 on my tally sheet when he was in.

End is pretty interesting. They lose two very effective players to the NFL, #9 DE C. Thomas who usually played the strong side and #33 DE T. Harris who took the weak. However, they return two excellent upperclassmen in #31 D. Jackson and #99 J. Jackson. This group was particularly interesting to watch because they did something I hadn’t seen before: on some passing downs, they’d pull both the DTs have all four DEs on the line standing up to shoot for the QB, with the Jacksons usually the middle pair.

Linebackers - This group is exciting for a lot of reasons. First, they return almost everybody who had significant playing time: the core starters #55 LB Quarterman, #56 LB Pinckney, #53 LB McCloud, as well as the second-string #35 LB M. Smith and #34 LB Perry, while losing only #58 LB Owens. Second, all of these guys rotated extensively within the linebacker spot and I wouldn’t peg any of them as exclusively outside or in. Third, they’re all some of the hardest hitting backers I’ve ever seen - both incredibly fast and so strong that if they get both hands on the ballcarrier he’s definitely going down.

But as I mentioned in the scheme discussion, these guys are frequently a total non-factor in the outcome of the play - they’re asked to guess fast, and if they guess wrong, they wind up badly out of position. Especially troublesome was how often they got burned on offensive plays that are designed to break big if the defense over-commits early - counters, reverses, bootlegs, etc. ... hell, Pitt’s winning 4th down TD came on an old-school QB waggle where the poor backers weren’t even on the screen. My tally sheet indicates that, on balance, these LBs weren’t guessing correctly enough to produce sufficient extra havoc to make up for the opportunity cost of getting caught flat-footed, and I think the truly excellent defensive line has been masking a structural weakness here.
Posted by MastrShake
SoCal
Member since Nov 2008
7281 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:09 am to
Secondary - There was a lot of rotation at cornerback, and I never really caught whether that was for health or effectiveness reasons. Regardless of why, it’s probably for the best because while this unit loses the two starters at the beginning of the year, #3 CB Delaney and #12 CB Young, they return three guys I found myself liking a bit more: #28 CB M. Jackson, #2 DB Bandy (who came in for a lot of nickel), and #6 CB Dean. Jackson in particular might turn out to be a lockdown corner - when he was in I didn’t see opposing QBs test him very often, and he had to be pretty far off target for them to try. Dean struggled a bit more but I still liked his strong tackling technique.

As far as I can tell, the safety position returns everybody who got playing time last year: #4 S J. Johnson and #22 S Redwine who started most of the year, and #20 S Knowles, #5 S Carter, #25 S D. Smith, and #30 S Finley who rotated through as backups. Knowles got the most reps and I think forms a good 4-man rotation with Johnson, Redwine, and Bandy, and it wouldn’t surprise me if any of the other guys switched over into the CB rotation. This group is universally fast and hard-hitting, and I particularly liked Johnson’s instincts for the ball and tackling ability in run support (often more effective than the backers he was, uh, backing). Some of these guys need to work on their form tackle, though - I saw a lot of hotshot “big hit” stuff which let ballcarriers step through, around, or even (embarrassingly) over low-flying DBs.
Posted by MastrShake
SoCal
Member since Nov 2008
7281 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:11 am to
QUESTION FOR MIAMI FANS

I’ve seen some enthusiasm about how much of last year’s tackle production is returning on defense, but … I don’t know. I think the incredibly disruptive d-line was mostly responsible for that (whether they’re officially credited the tackle stat or not) and were the reason why the back-seven were able to play as wild and loose as they did and produce all those turnovers. Now that they’re mostly in the pros and the center of gravity when it comes to experience shifts to the boom-or-bust (and a lot of the latter) linebackers, what to you think of the possibility the defense takes a scary step back this year?
Posted by RB10
Member since Nov 2010
43785 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:16 am to
Guy gives a really good, and detailed, breakdown of what he's seeing.

I'd love to see his LSU analysis.
Posted by MastrShake
SoCal
Member since Nov 2008
7281 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:17 am to
quote:

I'd love to see his LSU analysis.
he said hes doing one tomorrow
Posted by Westbank Hank
Gretna
Member since Apr 2018
549 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:21 am to
Their Offensive line is what loses them the game Sunday. Fehoko Lawrence and Chaisson will take no prisoners. Hell, Rosier doesn’t even finish the game.
This post was edited on 8/30/18 at 11:21 am
Posted by Tiger Ree
Houston
Member since Jun 2004
24534 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:21 am to
quote:

but by necessity the actual product shifted to roughly 2:1 in favor of downfield passing


Ruh Roh Reorge !!!

This was from the "hype/non-hype" thread earlier today.

" Greedy Williams is arguably the best corner in the country and he’s not even the undisputed best corner on his own team. Go ahead, try and pass on this defense. We’re begging you."
Posted by Brodiecane
Member since Jun 2018
107 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:23 am to
quote:

QUESTION FOR MIAMI FANS I’ve seen some enthusiasm about how much of last year’s tackle production is returning on defense, but … I don’t know. I think the incredibly disruptive d-line was mostly responsible for that (whether they’re officially credited the tackle stat or not) and were the reason why the back-seven were able to play as wild and loose as they did and produce all those turnovers. Now that they’re mostly in the pros and the center of gravity when it comes to experience shifts to the boom-or-bust (and a lot of the latter) linebackers, what to you think of the possibility the defense takes a scary step back this year?


The people who left combined for only 16.5(43 total last year) sacks and 42 tfls (110) which is 37% tfls and 38% sack production gone which isn’t a lot and we rotate our entire front 7 so the guys behind them have played extensively. Miami will have an even better pass rush which is pretty scary considering they led the country in sacks per game last year
This post was edited on 8/30/18 at 11:24 am
Posted by WestlakeTiger
San Antonio, Tejas
Member since Feb 2012
9437 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:23 am to
Tomorrow he is doing lsu
Posted by jrodLSUke
Premium
Member since Jan 2011
22030 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:24 am to
LOL at the down votes from dudes who h8 readin'.

Posted by Brodiecane
Member since Jun 2018
107 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:26 am to
Against elite competiton on defense Miami actually (clemson, Wisconsin , va tech, Notre Dame, FSU) Miami actually averaged 161 rushing yards per game. Much is made about Miami’s oline but it’s largely unwarranted honestly. They had their lapses but when playing good competion the line performed good outside of clemson who has a beastly front and may be the best ever in college football
This post was edited on 8/30/18 at 11:27 am
Posted by ibleedprplngld
Lafayette, LA
Member since Jan 2012
4300 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:29 am to
Marked.
Posted by RB10
Member since Nov 2010
43785 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:34 am to
quote:

Against elite competiton on defense Miami actually (clemson, Wisconsin , va tech, Notre Dame, FSU) Miami actually averaged 161 rushing yards per game.


FSU and Notre Dame weren't great rushing defenses last season.
Posted by CalTiger53
California
Member since Oct 2011
9034 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:47 am to
Miami fans think the have the best team in 30 years. They also think LSU has no QB, WR, or RBs who has played any meaningful football. They give LSU close to zero chance of winning the game.
Posted by RB10
Member since Nov 2010
43785 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:50 am to
quote:

They also think LSU has no QB, WR, or RBs who has played any meaningful football.


They aren't wrong with this point.
Posted by lsuson
Metairie
Member since Oct 2013
12090 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 11:54 am to
I could give two shits what Miami fans think
Posted by MastrShake
SoCal
Member since Nov 2008
7281 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 12:02 pm to
between that and this...
quote:

"...he’s got real happy feet and breaks the pocket much too early, and on such improvised plays his success rate is terrible - I’ve been filling out these tally sheets for the better part of a decade and I’ve never seen a QB with scramble percentages this high or this poor."

if these are still issues with him, and they likely will be in game 1, thats advantage LSU. Aranda stone walled Lamar Jackson with a less talented D than this one, and this dude aint Lamar Jackson.
Posted by GumboPot
Member since Mar 2009
118550 posts
Posted on 8/30/18 at 12:06 pm to
That was a really great break down. I look forward to his write up on LSU.
first pageprev pagePage 1 of 2Next pagelast page

Back to top
logoFollow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to get the latest updates on LSU Football and Recruiting.

FacebookTwitterInstagram