ANALYSIS: CaneSport staff predicts Miami Hurricanes 2023 win-loss record … and why

The Miami Hurricanes aren’t exactly getting a lot of national respect for the 2023 season. The over-under on wins, set by DraftKings, is a pedestrian 7.5. A trio of early point spreads, thanks to the FanDuel Sportsbook: Texas A&M is favored by 6.5 points at Miami, Clemson by 10 at Miami and Florida State is a massive 16.5-point favorite with that game in Tallahassee.

Yikes.

Not exactly high expectations.

But that’s viewing this program from the outside.

Today CaneSport’s staff weighs in with its take on the coming season. Are the odds-makers and national pundits who aren’t expecting much from the Canes correct? Or is this a team that will surprise a lot of folks?

Those are tough questions to answer. What are your opinions? We want you to share them in our post on the war room message board.

We will take the first stab. Without further ado, the CaneSport staff’s predictions for next season:

GARY FERMAN (predicts 8-4 record)

This is a topic that will be ever present all the way up to the September 1 kickoff of the regular season against Miami-Ohio. Last year, there was incredible hype over the arrival of Mario Cristobal to Miami and an assumption that Cristobal could just wave a magic wand and two decades of malpractice in Coral Gables would be erased overnight. Once the games began, those thoughts were quickly smacked down to reality as Miami lost at Texas A&M and was stunned by Middle Tennessee State on the way to a 5-7 season. Yes, what Cristobal inherited was very bad. Cristobal has now been on the case at Miami for 18 months, time to also erase the mistakes that he made himself while frantically putting his initial staff together. Miami has six new coaches, two of them coordinators in OC Shannon Dawson and DC Lance Guidry. There has been enormous improvement behind the scenes. The University has made a massive commitment to football and athletics in general, finally realizing that its athletic department was a face of the institution to an even greater degree than academics, which are at an all-time high, and an incredibly profitable hospital operation. The staffing level inside the football program has been increased significantly. The recruiting budget and all budgets from travel to nutrition of players have all received significant bumps. One of the nation’s best NIL programs has been established and there now is an evolution toward greater involvement of the collective Canes Connection as laws allow institutions to take a bigger role in NIL. Every Miami football and basketball player will have a NIL deal in some form. The collective is working seamlessly with John Ruiz and his LifeWallet in the planning and execution of NIL. This makes Miami competitive in recruiting and efforts are underway to spend money more wisely in this second cycle of NIL. The foundation has been laid to go to the next level on the field. But this team is incredibly young and still devoid of top-end impact talent. There are great hopes for Tyler Van Dyke at quarterback, for example, but on a nationwide level he is an afterthought. I think that can change this season. Down here, we know what Van Dyke is capable of from his sophomore year with Rhett Lashlee. But around the country, Van Dyke is often not even included when reputable media members and companies rank the top 25 quarterbacks in the country. Here at Miami, he unquestionably remains the best at the position. But don’t assume this is his exit season. His master plan right now might be to go to the NFL Draft next April. But he also could need multiple seasons to maximize his potential and draft stock. In the meantime, Van Dyke recently inked a new deal with Canes Connection that will make that time left at Miami financially rewarding. And on a pure established talent level, Van Dyke is at the top tier of the team. The lack of established impact talent resonates up and down the roster which is why Miami has again been a giant land of opportunity for transfers. There is not an established top-end running back. The wide receiver position has some nice young additions, but there is not an established No. 1 receiver. At tight end, Elijah Arroyo is returning off significant injury and we have yet to see Oregon transfer Cam McCormick play a down in a Miami uniform. The offensive line spot has been the best-recruited on the team, adding potential elite talents like center Matt Lee from UCF and guard Javion Cohen from Alabama. That’s no surprise considering how passionate Cristobal is about his strength up front. But the group has not played a single game together and that means it will be a work in progress as the season moves forward. The defensive line seems solid, but until tackle Leonard Taylor shows up every snap there is not a single player there that will scare opponents just yet. The linebacker position has been fortified by Washington State transfer Francisco Mauigoa, but remains one of the question marks in general on the team. All you have to do is look at the way Miami has been recruiting transfer cornerbacks to understand where the coaches feel they are on the perimeter of the secondary. The safety tandem of Kam Kinchens, a pre-season All American, and James Williams is getting a lot of notoriety but has yet to do anything related to beating anybody any good and must now give credence to the hype. Those are the cold facts. That lack of established top end talent is what Miami is fighting as it heads into a season where it must show significant progress. These two months of summer workouts and training camp will be massive moments for the coaches. So today’s dilemma to predict what the record will be is a gargantuan one. What have we done to ourselves here, LOL. Let’s start with the bar created by Las Vegas. That over-under total for the benefit of wagering has typically been set at 7.5 wins, which to me seems about right. I’m sure it makes Cristobal puke. But when you look back at the history of Miami, advancement to the top level of college football has always come in stages. Could Miami jump to 10 wins this year? Yeah, it could. Is that likely? Probably not. When you don’t have top-end talent, you don’t get out of games where you are not at your best or things don’t go right or the other team is simply better. You win some and you lose some, something we have seen for years. That is not the recipe for 10-win seasons. In this current state of evolution, it is very difficult to go down the schedule and predict wins and losses. You feel good about the Miami-Ohio, Bethune Cookman and Temple games, just like you felt about Middle Tennessee State last season. To me the Texas A&M non-conference home game is everything. That day we will know a lot about where this team stands because while the A&M program is also evolving like Miami, it is an SEC team with a lot of very good players. Conference opponents Georgia Tech and Virginia at home, and Boston College on the road should be victories on face value. Clemson at home and FSU on the road will be extremely difficult outs. FSU has done a good job the past two years under Mike Norvell and is a year ahead of Miami in its rebuild. The Seminoles are believed to be a top 10 team this year. They crushed the Hurricanes at Hard Rock last season. The Canes will be better, but they will need to be a lot better to win in Tallahassee. Clemson is still Clemson. North Carolina and NC State on the road and Louisville at home will be the swing games of the season. I will go out on the limb right now for the purpose of this exercise and say that an 8-4 season is a reasonable target. Nine wins would be an amazing accomplishment. Ten wins would make Cristobal a Coach of the Year candidate. The challenge for the Canes fan is to manage expectations in this cycle. The balloon justifiably popped in 2022. You could feel it and see it and justify it. The season was a disappointment. I am not sure I would blow up the balloon this season. I would enjoy it, because it will be fun and entertaining, without setting it up to feel like a failure. If Miami can win at least eight, that would be a strong step forward to build toward contention for the expanded college football playoff in 2024.

MATT SHODELL (predicts 7-5 record)

A year ago no one would have predicted in the preseason that the Canes would have lost to a team like Middle Tennessee State, and there is always a surprise or two during the season – sometimes a win, but too often in recent years a loss. With that said, I see easy home wins over Miami (Ohio), Bethune-Cookman, Georgia Tech, Virginia and at Temple and Boston College. Those teams are just not going to be real good based on the talent they have returning or just the level of program in general. Losing any of those games would mean this Miami program is probably further away from getting to that 10-win season that’s only happened once in the last 19 years than I previously thought. So let’s chalk those up as 6 wins, which already is more than the team had last season (5-7). The teams I don’t think Miami is ready to beat just yet? That’s Clemson and Florida State. FSU annihilated the Canes in Miami last season and a one-year turnaround of those proportions I think is unlikely. Clemson remains Clemson, a level ahead of Miami for now. So that’s 6-2. I also think North Carolina has an offense that’s going to cause all kinds of problems for Miami behind Heisman Trophy candidate Drake Maye, and the D should be better than a year ago behind one of the ACC’s better linebacker corps. I don’t see Miami winning that one on the road. So that’s 6-3. The other three games will really determine if this is a 6-6 team or a 9-3 one. I see that trio as more toss-up types at home against Texas A&M and Louisville and on the road vs. NC State. The Aggies have underperformed based on expectations recently, but I’m just not sure the Canes have the horses to win that one. The team remains extremely talented roster-wise. And I’m going with a split in the other two – a win against a Louisville team that I think is going to have some inconsistency and a loss to an NC State team that I think is going to have an improved offense with the Brennan Armstrong/Robert Anae connection having a couple of months into the season to get humming (the Wolfpack defense should be one of the ACC’s better units). So yes, I have Miami finishing 7-5. And that’s okay coming off a 5-7 season. Miami can be viewed as young, up-and-coming team that’s trying to survive in the short term with the help of transfers (23 on the current roster). There’s also a reshaped offensive line, a healthy potential star QB in Tyler Van Dyke and a couple of star DL in Leonard Taylor and Akheem Mesidor and in the back end with safeties Kam Kinchens and James Williams. But depth is an issue across the board for this team, and there remain big question marks at WR, RB, DT and even LB (where UM hopes Francisco Mauigoa can be a huge upgrade in the middle). Plus while you can’t predict injuries they always happen, a massive issue for teams that don’t have a lot of quality depth. So, with all the above said, I can see the Canes going 7-5 and then pushing to 10 wins in 2024 with recruit development and perhaps a couple of top free agents in the portal to fill in the gaps. And then it’s on to the playoffs in 2025. So there is room for future optimism, Canes fans.

IZUBEE CHARLES (predicts 9-3 record)

Although Matt Shodell may think I am Mr. Positive and believe Miami will go 15-0 this season, I do think the Hurricanes may surprise some people in year two under Mario Cristobal, and here’s why. With a pretty light schedule to start the season, I think Miami could potentially start the year 4-0 in out-of-conference play and use that momentum to carry them through the bulk of their conference schedule. With their first four opponents combining for a 16-32 record last season, the Hurricanes are favored in all but one of those contests, and that is against Texas A&M, which I feel is the most important game for Miami this season despite its early date. After starting the year 2-0 last season, as we all know, the Hurricanes simply could not get things going against the Aggies, falling short on the road 17-9. In the ensuing week after the loss, there was the Middle Tennessee State game, and we all know how that went. For the remainder of the season, the Hurricanes could never find a consistent rhythm due to multiple reasons, which led to their lackluster 5-7 record. I believe Miami can come back and find redemption inside Hard Rock Stadium on national television against a Texas A&M team that underwent a massive overhaul in talent this offseason. Although those out-of-conference wins against group of five teams aren’t guaranteed, I do believe Miami will be able to come out with wins in those contests and against the Aggies to begin the season 4-0 heading into ACC play. In their first conference matchup, I think Miami will handle Georgia Tech with ease under first-year head coach Brent Key, but will follow that up with their first loss of the season against arguably the best quarterback in college football, North Carolina’s Drake Maye, but not by much. I believe it will be a good contest, as we have seen the last two seasons, but Miami will fall in Chapel Hill for their first loss of the season and will sit at 5-1 midway through the year. With six games remaining, this is where things may get tricky for the Hurricanes during the bottom half of their season. With a duel against Clemson at home, I realistically cannot see the Hurricanes beating the Tigers based on roster talent heading into 2023, and I also believe Clemson sophomore quarterback Cade Klubnik is due for a breakout season under new offensive coordinator Garret Riley. So I have Miami falling to 5-2 after losing that contest. Following two straight losses, Miami will need to bounce back at home against Virginia, a team they barely scraped by last season, but I do think they’ll be able to manage the Cavaliers, advancing to 6-2 with four games remaining on the schedule against NC State, Florida State, Louisville, and Boston College. For some time, I debated and went back and forth on whether the Hurricanes would be able to knock off North Carolina State on the road and when making my final decision, it came down to one player, Tyler Van Dyke. With the Wolfpack losing Devin Leary (who posted a 17-4 record as NC State’s starting quarterback) to the transfer portal, I am not sold on their quarterback situation after bringing in former Virginia quarterback Brennan Armstrong, so I’m giving Miami the edge in that one. After downing the Wolfpack, which I believe will be a barn burner, Miami will travel to Tallahassee with a date against Florida State, and I do not believe they’ll be able to pull that one out against one of the best Seminoles teams we’ve seen in recent years. With two games remaining following their loss to FSU against Louisville and Boston College, I see Miami ending the season on a high by defeating the Cardinals on senior night at home and finishing strong on the road against the Eagles, ending the regular season with a 9-3 record. During the offseason, Miami addressed some major concerns by bringing in new offensive and defensive coordinators Shannon Dawson and Lance Guidry, as well as attacking the transfer portal at positions of need. With the additions of Javion Cohen, Matt Lee, Francisco Mauigoa, Tyler Harrell, Davonte Brown, and others, Miami added talent to a variety of position groups that had their ups and downs last season, and I believe they will play a pivotal role in the Hurricanes success this upcoming year. I know after reading all of that some may think I’m being too optimistic or putting too much faith in the Hurricanes in year two, but hey, not too many people thought the Hurricanes would go 5-7 last year, and what’s to say they can’t overachieve expectations this time around?

STEPHEN WAGNER (predicts 7-5 record)

I’m not going to beat around the bush. I see Miami finishing 7-5 in the regular season and 8-5 overall with a bowl win over a so-so Big 12 team (maybe in the Pop Tarts Bowl?), which should be viewed as a success for the program. Miami needs to see progress in Year 2 under Cristobal, which really just means finishing with a winning record, getting back to a bowl game and avoiding losses to Group of Five programs, all of which I expect the Hurricanes to do. Miami needs to and SHOULD start the season 4-0 with wins over Miami (OH), Bethune-Cookman, Texas A&M and Temple, will probably flirt with the Top 25 as AP voters see the Hurricanes jump out to an undefeated start over the Group of Five and a so-so Texas A&M team. Georgia Tech, Virginia and Louisville should all be victories too strictly based on talent, but then again, if the Hurricanes’ records over the last 15 years reflected the talent they had on the roster, Miami’s program would be in a significantly different place. So this year, I want to consistency above all else. Miami, show us that you can be the same team against Georgia Tech that you’ll be against Clemson and North Carolina. Show us that you’ve established the culture to win 10 games in Year 3 with just a tad more player development. And almost as important as the other criteria, show us you’re ready to compete in a raucous rivalry game at Florida State. If Miami’s culture has truly been established and the Hurricanes are trending in the right direction, the program has enough talent to win eight games and beat a top 25 opponent. But looking at reality, the Hurricanes will probably lose a game no one expects them to lose (I’m looking at Georgia Tech or Virginia, a pair of games that quietly worry me, and I think it’s quite realistic Miami loses one of those two games despite having far more talent). But that’s okay. Miami is still rebuilding. And I think the Hurricanes will use this year to position themselves to compete for an ACC championship next year, which should be fans’ expectation heading into the season. Here is my game by game take: vs. MIAMI (OHIO), Sept. 1: WIN (1-0) This is a no-brainer. The Hurricanes roll past the Redhawks with a 41-7 win in their season opener and send fans home with some optimism for the season. The U gets up big at halftime, gets some breathing room at halftime and gets its freshmen some playing time in the fourth quarter. vs. TEXAS A&M, Sept. 9: WIN (2-0) Much like Miami, Texas A&M made some significant changes in the offseason, most notably adding Bobby Petrino to the staff as the Aggies’ offensive coordinator. He’ll make Texas A&M much more competitive this season than it was last year, but I still expect quarterback Connor Weigman to struggle against Miami DC Lance Guidry, whose defenses are predicated on pressure and aggression. Miami has a comfortable quarterback advantage over A&M with Tyler Van Dyke, which is why I’m picking the Hurricanes. vs. BETHUNE-COOKMAN: WIN (3-0) Like Miami (OH), this game is an obvious win. I don’t have Miami losing to an FCS opponent on my bingo card in 2023. Hurricanes role in their third straight home game. at TEMPLE, Sept. 23: WIN (4-0) Miami wins, but this game is more competitive than Hurricane fans would like. The Owls are coming off a rough 3-9 season and are under new leadership with new head coach Stan Drayton, but I’d expect fans to show out for one of the bigger home games Temple has had. The energy and buzz gives the Owls a first-half boost and makes things interesting at halftime, but Miami pulls away in the second half. vs. GEORGIA TECH, Oct. 7: LOSS (4-1) Yes, Miami is wildly more talented than Georgia Tech. But the Hurricanes are going to have a bad loss this season that comes as a reality check to fans and a gut punch to the team. The Yellowjackets pull a rabbit out of the hat, craft a few touchdowns in the first half and Miami’s offense looks stagnant against a Georgia Tech team that gains more confidence on each down. The loss gives fans disconcerting flashbacks to 2019 and gives Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key a signature win in his first full season as the Jackets’ head coach. at NORTH CAROLINA, Oct. 14: LOSS (4-2) The Hurricanes’ defense struggles against North Carolina Heisman-contending quarterback Drake Maye, and a sold-out Tar Heel crowd causes problems for Miami’s relatively young offense. Offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson’s skills will be tested as he tries to use his veteran presence to calm an anxious offense that presses following the loss to Georgia Tech. vs. CLEMSON, Oct. 21: LOSS (4-3) Let’s be real: as much as we’d like, the Hurricanes aren’t quite ready to beat a Clemson team with a revamped offense under new offensive coordinator Garrett Riley and a promising young quarterback in Cade Klubnik. Dawson puts together a clever offensive gameplan and an aggressive script in the first half that turns this game into somewhat of a shootout at halftime, but the Hurricanes run out of highlight-reel plays in the second half. Miami ends up losing by a score to give the program some buzz, however, that the Hurricanes are closer to competing for ACC championships than originally thought. vs. VIRGINIA, Oct. 28: WIN (5-3) Virginia’s program is seriously struggling, and Miami learns how to put its foot on the gas against a team it should expect to beat. The Hurricanes understand the importance of avoiding upsets by preventing opponents from gaining confidence by striking fast and hard early – a lesson learned from the Georgia Tech loss a few weeks ago – and returns to the winner’s circle. at NC STATE, Nov. 4: LOSS (5-4) NC State turns into a dogfight of a game that never sees either team lead by more than one touchdown, but Wolfpack head coach Dave Doeren’s experience in close games and NC State’s home crowd proves to be the difference maker. I see a tight game late, and Miami’s youth could be an issue with untimely mistakes in pressure moments. at FLORIDA STATE, Nov. 11: Win (6-4) I’m going out on a limb and predicting a signature win for the Hurricanes by beating the Seminoles in Tallahassee, earning sweet revenge for last year’s 45-3 beatdown at Hard Rock. Florida State ultimately ends up disappointing after a tremendous amount of preseason hype, and Miami earns bragging rights for a year. vs. LOUISVILLE, Nov. 18: LOSS (6-5) Miami’s game against the Cardinals is a fight from start to finish – and probably one of the more evenly-matched games the Hurricanes have of the season. Much like the NC State game, this is a one-score contest until the end and a heartbreaker on senior day. at BOSTON COLLEGE, Nov. 24: WIN (7-5) Boston College comes out swinging in the final game of the season and plays a decent first quarter, but the Hurricanes end the season on a high note to ensure they’ll finish the year with a winning record in Cristobal’s second year. Fans get fuzzy feelings heading into bowl season and feel the Hurricanes’ culture moving in the right direction.

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