STATE OF THE U 2023: Tackling the biggest question facing the Miami Hurricanes football team this year
The 2023 Miami Hurricanes have question marks all over the place. How can you not off a 5-7 season, and with most prognosticators predicting a so-so seven- or eight-win season? How can you not after taking 14 transfer portal pieces and jettisoning 22 other players with eligibility to return? There are legitimate concerns how things will all gel together not just with the new personnel that also includes 26 members of the No. 6 recruiting class, but also a program that has seven new position coaches including the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator. The only coaches that are back in the same role as last year are OL coach Alex Mirabal, DL coach Joe Salave’a and DB coach Jahmile Addae.
Then there are the individual player question marks.
Tyler Van Dyke had a great first season as starter, then a not-real-good one. Henry Parrish is the retuning starter at RB but didn’t have a real good season and isn’t really built to be an every-down back. No WR had more than 367 yards a year ago. TE loses starter Will Mallory. The OL will have 3-4 new starters, and two of them might be true freshmen. The DL has two proven guys and no real depth. Linebacker was a mess last year and the team’s relying on the portal to fix it. Cornerback lost its two starters and brought in a handful of new guys from JUCO/the portal the team hopes can step up.
So sure, there are plenty of big on-field questions facing Miami.
But, really in the big picture, none of the above are most important as this program seeks to turn things around.
The real question that’s most important and will be plainly revealed in all its glory or all its hideousness in every game on the field this year: Is this a Mario Cristobal team?
Is this a team that will fight each and every rep.
Will that physical, bruising offensive line Cristobal prizes show up to complement what should be an effective passing game in a new Air-Raid attack.
Is this a team that, like Cristobal, is tireless and relentless in its work ethic and pursuit of excellence.
Does every single Miami player on the roster from All-American Kam Kinchens to the fourth-string cornerback have that drive, the culture Cristobal is working to instill headlined by the catchphrase “how you do anything is how you do everything.”
The behind the scenes work the team puts in will show up on Saturdays when the fans are watching from their stadium seats or in front of their TVs. And perhaps this year, more than any in the prior 19 that have not gone real well, will be a reflection of not an individual star making a play but of a cohesive unit playing together. It’s what Cristobal is striving to build, to have players thrust each other onto the big stage on gameday, not crumble down together like we’ve seen so many times in recent years.
That is reflected in the aforementioned “how you do anything is how you do everything” phrase that Cristobal so often hammers into his players. It’s not just about school and workouts. It’s about how you live your life with the ultimate goal that it’ll of course be reflected in strong character, perseverance and play on Saturdays that ends with wins.
If you do a little research you find that Cristobal’s favorite phrase is attributed to Zen Buddhism from the book “Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t”.
There are plenty of other meaningful quotes in that Simon Sinek book.
And perhaps one other rings most true in this particular situation.
“It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great,” Sinek writes. “It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius.”
Mario Cristobal needs great players doing great things. The pieces all need to work as one.
That’s how you arrive at wins on a 100-yard piece of grass on a hot, sunny Saturday.
And, heck, wouldn’t a bit of Zen be a nice change for Miami Hurricanes fans?
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