The U is Back: It’s the Hurricanes’ title to lose, and they aren’t going anywhere
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Let’s not bury the lede: Miami is back.
That much appeared evident when Miami out-slugged Texas A&M 10-3 in College Station to win the program’s first College Football Playoff game just before Christmas.
But that game, a rock fighter’s rock fight that saw Mario Cristobal’s team gain just 41 yards in the first half, miss 3 field goals, and ignore star running back Mark Fletcher Jr. for 3 quarters before steadying themselves to put together one great drive and one epic goal line stand, was more “survive and advance” than statement.
What happened on New Year’s Eve at the Cotton Bowl, however, was different.
Miami’s 24-14 Cotton Bowl win over defending national champion Ohio State was a reckoning. A return of the big, bad U, the team that bullies you on both lines of scrimmage, swarms to the football on defense like a horde of Golden Glades interchange Miami traffic and has the best running back in the stadium.
That was football as the city of Miami invented it in 1972. (Have Curt Cignetti Google It!)
The Canes A Miami football team hasn’t looked this good since 2002, when a pass interference penalty shadier than a South Florida hurricane insurance company cost the U a sixth national championship against Ohio State at the Rose Bowl.
Let us never forget the old South Florida adage that revenge is a dish best served cold enough for some Hialeah packrat to stockpile 27 flashlights, 500 double A batteries, a Bowie knife, 4 crates of Fort Pierce citrus, 5 Toyota generators, 2 pantries full of Spam, and a suitcase containing $75,000 in marked American dollars preparing for the next “big one,” the hurricane the 305/754/954/561 have been waiting for since Andrew.
Yes, Miami is back, thanks to Mario Cristobal’s no-nonsense line of scrimmage-first rebuild and an influx of NIL cash Cristobal and his staff have spent wisely.
Wasn’t it the great American poet Will Smith who said “you gotta have cheese for the summerhouse piece on South Beach?”
Miami’s used its money to build Cristobal’s own quiet homage to the 2001 Canes, the prequel to Alabama’s 2009 Murderball that made Tim Tebow cry, Urban Meyer retire, and ushered in Nick Saban’s peerless dynasty in the process.
Miami doesn’t beat you so much as they bludgeon you to death, similar to the humidity if you walk around Coconut Grove long enough in mid-August.
Sure, the Canes lack the get-off-the-jet-in-camo-fatigue swagger of the trash-talking, terrifying Miami teams under Jimmie Johnson.
But the ’01 Canes didn’t talk much. They just beat you over your head with a canoe paddle.
This Canes team is similar.
They are highly efficient, ranking 8th in success rate offense and 4th in success rate defense entering Thursday night’s Fiesta Bowl semifinal against Ole Miss.
They lack the offensive explosiveness or awe-inspiring depth of 2001 Miami, but in Mark Fletcher Jr., they have their Clinton Portis-like workhorse, the guy who becomes exponentially more difficult to tackle by quarter 4 than he was in quarter 1. And Miami’s offensive line, led by Francis Mauigoa, is at a minimum the equal of that vaunted 2001 group.
That was the whole point of Cristobal’s methodical rebuilding project.
Before hiring Cristobal, Miami went through more head coaches than the city of Miami has gone through airport rebuilds, with about as many failed plans to win.
Cristobal is a Miami alumnus who remembered the good old days when Miami won national championships and city residents could take some combination of the Metrorail (1 out of 5 stars, do not recommend!), a cab with dice in the mirror, or a fully loaded 1977 gas tank behind the rear axle Ford Pinto to the Orange Bowl, a stadium actually located in the City of Miami’s limits, to see the Canes play.
He set out to build a team as sturdy and immovable as the Freedom Tower, and with a dominant offensive line and a havoc-creating defensive line led by future pros Rueben Bain and Akeem Mesidor, has done so beautifully.
The Canes front 7 ranks among the top 5 in the country in quarterback pressure percentage (42%) and havoc-rate (quarterback pressures, hurries, and tackles for loss), a whirling dervish of chaos creation that leaves even fully-staffed offensive coaching staffs feeling like they just spent a foggy weekend partying on South Beach.
Miami is, as ever, one of the fastest teams in the sport as well.
Even when, for example, corner Xavier Lucas was beat over the top by Ohio State’s freakish Jeremiah Smith early in the first half of the Cotton Bowl, the Canes had the speed to bring Smith, a South Florida native and rare recruiting battle lost by Cristobal, down.
The Hurricanes chase you sideline to sideline and are brutal to run outside against, allowing a tepid 27% success rate on outside runs, a testament to their speed and athleticism.
When their salty defense gets Miami the ball back, Carson Beck, the Ken Dorsey-like game manager who leads the offense, does just enough to keep defenses honest against Fletcher and the power run game.
Most critically, Beck, who has at times in his career been looser with the ball than a happy hour Brickell crypto-bro with a hot investment tip, has protected the football in the College Football Playoff, avoiding the type of calamitous mistakes that could put his elite defense in difficult spots. In fact, Beck has thrown just 1 interception in his last 5 games, with 12 touchdown passes and a QB rating well over 80 in that time frame.
With a defense like Miami’s, Beck the game manager is plenty good enough.
It will probably be enough on Thursday night, too.
Ole Miss is a wonderful story, a program having a storybook season behind the obscenely good play of quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, a Division II transfer, and the play-calling chops of his offensive coordinator, rising star Charlie Weis Jr.
Chambliss’s ability to improvise and make stupendous plays with his legs should, to a degree, offset the chaos Miami creates with its front 7. And Chambliss isn’t a one-man show, with a terrific, hard-to-tackle running back in Kewan Lacy and a tremendous receiver in Tre Wallace.
But Miami’s defensive line has dominated a better offensive line (Texas A&M) already in this College Football Playoff and Miami’s secondary corralled a more talented group of playmakers (Ohio State) in the quarterfinals.
The Canes are the more complete team, playing with a full coaching staff and superior talent on both lines of scrimmage.
All of that suggests there’s a hurricane warning in the desert this Thursday evening and a national title to win, back in their home stadium, just 10 days later.
Yeah, Miami is back.
What’s more, the way Cristobal has built this team, with outstanding high school recruiting, a line of scrimmage emphasis, and smart, substantial portal investment, suggests this isn’t a flash in the pan or happy accident, like say, a city built in the middle of a mosquito infested mangrove swamp becoming a global metropolis.
The U is back.
How would the great Will Smith put it?
It’s the U. Championship 6 Edition; the type of championship build college football could spend a few years in. Miami. The program that keeps the roof blazin’.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
