Around this time last year, Miami was rolling. The Hurricanes were 5-0, ranked No. 2 in the country and heading into a Friday night home matchup with Louisville after a second bye in three weeks. Then the floor dropped out.
Carson Beck threw four interceptions in that game, including a pick on Miami’s final drive that sealed the loss. It was the Hurricanes’ first defeat of the season, and it was followed two weeks later by another setback against SMU.
Miami ultimately recovered, squeezed into the College Football Playoff and stormed through the postseason all the way to the program’s first title game in more than 20 years. But with the Hurricanes back in a familiar place now - 5-0, ranked No. 4 and on bye - Mario Cristobal is making sure this team doesn’t drift into the same midseason fog.
“Every year, you learn more,” Cristobal said.
Cristobal said the staff spent the offseason studying what went wrong a year ago, with an eye on preventing the kind of sloppy stretch that can show up in the middle of the schedule. The focus, he said, was not just on football details, but on how the team handled the grind leading into Games 5, 6 and 7.
“We looked at last season and were like, ‘Well, OK. We were playing good football, but, man, we had like 13 penalties.’
We had some really uncharacteristic mistakes,” Cristobal said. “And so we jumped on that all offseason and studied what we do, how we do it, the numbers as it relates to sports science, player load, internal readings with all the data that we have and came up with a plan that we felt was going to impact how we go into Games 5, 6 and 7.
“And we had our first opportunity to see it on Saturday night, and we think we got a favorable result.”
Some of the adjustments have nothing to do with scheme. Cristobal said Miami has tightened up the routine around the program, from nutrition and travel to leaving a day early and cutting out distractions.
“It’s a lot of stuff revolving around regimentation,” Cristobal said. “Strategically, we may have enhanced some things, but from a nutrition standpoint, from a travel standpoint, from leaving-a-day-early standpoint, from an eliminated-distraction standpoint - from just being on a complete assault and annihilation of distractions - I think we may have found something to help us continue just to prevent ourselves from not playing our best.”
Last season’s stumble at SMU ended up sparking Miami’s best football of the year. The Hurricanes held a players-only meeting, reset the tone and finished with four straight dominant wins before their playoff run. Cristobal, though, said the lesson this time is that Miami cannot wait for a loss to jolt it awake.
“Don’t get me wrong; that hit you between the eyes last year when we lost to SMU,” Cristobal said. “And there’s some good things that came about after the fact, but we’re not waiting for something bad to happen.”
For Cristobal, the goal is a team that doesn’t need an outside shock to get going.
“What you’d like is to build a team that doesn’t rely on external factors,” Cristobal said. “That’s the whole motive.
You like to have a team that wakes up and thinks about nothing else but whooping somebody’s behind. We never rely on waiting for a source of motivation to create a crisis to get our guys going.
I think that would be catastrophic because you’re going to find yourself having to create a crisis every week. And at the end of the day, you’re gonna be just filling your team with (B.S.).”
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