Miami is coming off a bye week after suffering their first loss of the season against Georgia Tech.
Miami head coach Mario Cristobal appeared on The Joe Rose Show on WQAM-56 and shared his thoughts on the team’s efforts to clean up the issues in Atlanta.
"Overall, it is a matter of communication, alignment, assignment, and execution," said Cristobal. "We had to get on a couple of things that really hurt us in our last game that we now feel good about going into this game. It is all about this opportunity in front of us and being 1-0.”
On defensive adjustments...
Miami’s defense struggled to get Tech’s offense off the field. The Yellow Jackets controlled the ball with a solid ground game, collecting 271 yards with a mix of motion, read-options, and misdirection. Coach Cristobal said the root cause of Miami’s defensive struggles was alignment.
"When you say tackling and getting off blocks, it has a lot to do with alignments," said Cristobal. "If you are out leveraged and not in the correct position, and look you eat it as a team. It is both coaching and playing. You have to do it and you have to learn it. You do it together. You don't point fingers. We have improved our process this week and gone right at it. We don't sidestep anything and we feel like we have improved in that area. We were attacked that way and the plays that were made against us are things we can improve on and our guys attacked it with the right mentality and we all took accountability and we feel like we are a better team coming out of the bye week.”
"We have guys that are working really hard," Cristobal said. "Some of the communication errors showed up, but that is both coaching and playing. It goes together. We have streamlined a lot of the stuff so we can line up and keep our eyes on the right stuff. The biggest thing is don't let your eyes wander. With all this jet motion, rocket over stuff, if you see a little you see what you need to see. If you see too much and let those eyes wander, all of a sudden you are not moving very fast."
On offensive adjustments...
On offense, the Canes didn’t execute at a consistent level, despite the having the #1 offense in the nation.
"We didn't score many points last game," said Cristobal. "That is the bottom line. What you see at this time of year is college football reflecting the NFL a little bit more. Look at some of the scores over the weekend. You have limited possessions. You have ten or 11 games of tape out there on you and other teams need you to lose, so they are going to share information that help you lose. That is ok and that is always been a part of college football, so you better understand the holes you show on tape, you better remedy them and fix them quickly because if not they will show up week after week.”
The Bye Week...
The bye week could not have come at a better time. It allowed the staff and team cleanup and correct issues on both sides of the ball. It also gave players another week to recover from injuries for the final stretch of two games. Cristobal is encouraged that players such as corner Damari Brown, defensive end Elijah Alston, linebacker Popo Aguirre and offensive lineman Ryan Rodriguez can return to bolster the Canes’ rotation depth.
"Hopefully we will get the guys that were injured back this week," said Cristobal. "If not, the week after that. It is going to be close, but they are practicing well.”
BOTTOM LINE:
Coach Cristobal is really encouraged with the team’s resolve and determination.
"We know we have a really good team and when we play and coach and execute at a high level, we are really hard to stop. That has been the focus. Make sure everything is geared toward us communicating better, us lining up better, us coaching better, us teaching and making sure we have answers. It has been a really good week."
GO CANES!
Comments