This is about the problems we had this year, and why blaming everything on Richt’s play calling is silly.
Richt’s play calling
Perhaps there’s room for improvement or evolution, but honestly I think we just had less talent on offense this year. What position group on offense was the strength of the team? Running Backs I guess, but even they were screwing up horribly during our losing streak. Wide Receivers were supposed to be good, but the position devolved into Lawrence Cager dropping half the balls thrown right at him and Dee Wiggins. No disrespect to Dee Wiggins but him getting as much playing time as he did is an indictment of every non-Freshman. The OL wasn’t great although I’m not sure if it’s ever been, QB was worse no matter who was playing, and TEs were brand new.
I think we didn’t appreciated how hard it would be to replace Braxton Berrios, Chris Herndon, and KC McDermott. Rosier isn’t going to win you any games on his own but I think he could be a okay game manager when he had the pieces around him, and the pieces weren’t there this year.
What magical play call is supposed to make up for all those problems? How often do you see a play that fails, but you think to yourself “That was a really well designed play, and it was called at the right time against the right defensive coverage, but the mediocre players screwed up the execution.” You never think that! You think a play call is good if it’s successful and bad if it fails. Runs up the middle are bad if they go for 2 yards and brilliant if they break for a touchdown.
We got lucky last year and unlucky this year. I’m not saying there shouldn’t make any changes, but they hypothetically could make zero changes and do fine next year. Both last year and this year we probably should have gotten 9 wins and won the Coastal. We could change nothing, get luckier and do great next year.
Something to realize: Richt is never going to give up play calling. Richt got bored at Georgia and part of him coming to Miami is was he got to call his shots, call his plays, hire his son if he really wants to. If he gives up calling plays that means he’s probably given up. You want him to call the plays if you want him to give a crap.
Fan’s mismanaging their own expectations
I’ve followed this team since 2007. We’ve sucked the whole time. Last year was the first good year since I’m been following this garbage. We didn’t win the Coastal until last year. We didn’t win a bowl game until two years ago. We didn’t get double digit wins or finished ranked until last year. We’re a pretty good team and we over performed last year, but we’re not destined to win the national championship every year. “We had a mediocre year, oh no, it’s the return of Al Golden”. Come on. It’s a regression to the mean. Richt has raised our mean (I'd say from 7 win to 9 wins), but he didn’t make us Alabama overnight. The amount of entitlement is a little ridiculous. Even after this year, we’re easily in a better spot than we’ve been in the past 10 year. That doesn’t mean we’re even close to Clemson, but we’re better than the trash we used to be. I’m okay with regularly win 9ish games for a while.
The Defense
The defense this year was good, but it wasn’t that good. Oklahoma has zero defense and their offense wins all their games for them. Miami’s defense is not Oklahoma’s offense. You can’t give up 33 to LSU, 27 to Boston College or FSU. They’re still very good don’t get me wrong, but Clemson would have still put up 38 on them. They’re not those old LSU teams that would win the game by themselves. The defense is really what cost us the Wisconsin game last year. This year they won Pitt and UNC by themselves but they underperformed against our best opponents this year. Like I said, they were good, but it’s not like they were so good that our offense didn’t have to score points to win. They were on the field for all the loses too.
Conclusion
Nothing about the current state of the team is surprising or unexpected. You guys latch onto random cure-alls that you think will fix all the problems. The problems this year were multifaceted but for some reason you thought it was all QB and Perry could fix everything. Now that that’s been proven completely false it’s the play calling. Stop looking for simple solutions.
Richt’s play calling
Perhaps there’s room for improvement or evolution, but honestly I think we just had less talent on offense this year. What position group on offense was the strength of the team? Running Backs I guess, but even they were screwing up horribly during our losing streak. Wide Receivers were supposed to be good, but the position devolved into Lawrence Cager dropping half the balls thrown right at him and Dee Wiggins. No disrespect to Dee Wiggins but him getting as much playing time as he did is an indictment of every non-Freshman. The OL wasn’t great although I’m not sure if it’s ever been, QB was worse no matter who was playing, and TEs were brand new.
I think we didn’t appreciated how hard it would be to replace Braxton Berrios, Chris Herndon, and KC McDermott. Rosier isn’t going to win you any games on his own but I think he could be a okay game manager when he had the pieces around him, and the pieces weren’t there this year.
What magical play call is supposed to make up for all those problems? How often do you see a play that fails, but you think to yourself “That was a really well designed play, and it was called at the right time against the right defensive coverage, but the mediocre players screwed up the execution.” You never think that! You think a play call is good if it’s successful and bad if it fails. Runs up the middle are bad if they go for 2 yards and brilliant if they break for a touchdown.
We got lucky last year and unlucky this year. I’m not saying there shouldn’t make any changes, but they hypothetically could make zero changes and do fine next year. Both last year and this year we probably should have gotten 9 wins and won the Coastal. We could change nothing, get luckier and do great next year.
Something to realize: Richt is never going to give up play calling. Richt got bored at Georgia and part of him coming to Miami is was he got to call his shots, call his plays, hire his son if he really wants to. If he gives up calling plays that means he’s probably given up. You want him to call the plays if you want him to give a crap.
Fan’s mismanaging their own expectations
I’ve followed this team since 2007. We’ve sucked the whole time. Last year was the first good year since I’m been following this garbage. We didn’t win the Coastal until last year. We didn’t win a bowl game until two years ago. We didn’t get double digit wins or finished ranked until last year. We’re a pretty good team and we over performed last year, but we’re not destined to win the national championship every year. “We had a mediocre year, oh no, it’s the return of Al Golden”. Come on. It’s a regression to the mean. Richt has raised our mean (I'd say from 7 win to 9 wins), but he didn’t make us Alabama overnight. The amount of entitlement is a little ridiculous. Even after this year, we’re easily in a better spot than we’ve been in the past 10 year. That doesn’t mean we’re even close to Clemson, but we’re better than the trash we used to be. I’m okay with regularly win 9ish games for a while.
The Defense
The defense this year was good, but it wasn’t that good. Oklahoma has zero defense and their offense wins all their games for them. Miami’s defense is not Oklahoma’s offense. You can’t give up 33 to LSU, 27 to Boston College or FSU. They’re still very good don’t get me wrong, but Clemson would have still put up 38 on them. They’re not those old LSU teams that would win the game by themselves. The defense is really what cost us the Wisconsin game last year. This year they won Pitt and UNC by themselves but they underperformed against our best opponents this year. Like I said, they were good, but it’s not like they were so good that our offense didn’t have to score points to win. They were on the field for all the loses too.
Conclusion
Nothing about the current state of the team is surprising or unexpected. You guys latch onto random cure-alls that you think will fix all the problems. The problems this year were multifaceted but for some reason you thought it was all QB and Perry could fix everything. Now that that’s been proven completely false it’s the play calling. Stop looking for simple solutions.
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