Athlon Sports annually delivers one of the most interesting features of college football magazine season with its quoting of anonymous coaches, providing an inside look at how people within the industry view a team.
Miami enters the 2024 season as one of the more interesting teams in the country as the Hurricanes have garnered plenty of expectations going into the year even though UM is coming off a 7-6 season.
Preseason over/under regular season win total betting lines for the Hurricanes widely stands at 9.5 wins as Miami is viewed as one of the favorites in the ACC, along with Florida State and Clemson.
UM has made big moves in the transfer portal this offseason, elevating the depth and talent with additions of proven players like QB Cam Ward from Washington State, RB Damien Martinez from Oregon State, WR Sam Brown from Houston, and DE Tyler Baron from Tennessee among the top transfer players added.
The Hurricanes also return plenty of productive players from the 2023 season like WR Xavier Restrepo, WR Jacolby George, OL Jalen Rivers, OL Anez Cooper, OL Francis Mauigoa, DL Rueben Bain, LB Kiko Mauigoa, and CB Daryl Porter.
Miami also returns both coordinators year-over-year with Shannon Dawson dialing up the offense and Lance Guidry leading the defense.
LINK: Here is a look at how Athlon ranks Miami's position groups amongst the rest of the ACC going into 2024.
How is Miami viewed by some in the coaching industry? Here is a look at what an opposing ACC assistant coach had to tell Athlon Sports about the Miami Hurricanes in the magazine's 2024 preview magazine:
"It's a situation where the sum is not greater than the parts, and that falls directly on the head coach. There's more talent here, more resources than the overall team you're getting. That's the problem right now…The Tyler Van Dyke experiment is over, and it's on them to fit their offense to Cam Ward, not the other way around. That kid has an established skill set that can help them, so they shouldn't try to make him accommodate their playbook…The defense is strongest to weakest from front to back. They're not as good in the secondary as they should be…The coaching issues cost them a game last season and overall there are questions about how effective this staff is at getting the most out of otherwise talented players. The biggest question is the sidelines, not the roster."
Those are some polarizing views. Cristobal is taking some heat from that opposing ACC assistant coach in the Athlon Sports preview.
Let's separate what is real from those thoughts and what is a bit of an overreaction.
Is it fair to acknowledge Miami has underachieved during the first two seasons of the Mario Cristobal era? Yes. The Hurricanes should have earned a better record than 12-13 over the past two seasons. How much better should the record be? A couple more wins over the two years is a fair expectation in hindsight. The 2023 loss to Georgia Tech is an easy game to point to that should have been a victory. The 2022 loss to Middle Tennessee State was an inexcusable loss in which that UM staff did not have the players prepared.
After making changes at both coordinator spots, Miami took a big step forward in 2023 with Shannon Dawson leading a top 40 offense in the country and Lance Guidry putting together a top 40 defense. Turnovers and the inability to close out close games, however, sunk the Hurricanes in 2023. UM went 2-4 in one-score games last season.
Miami made a big upgrade at quarterback year-over-year with the addition of Cam Ward, who threw for over 3,700 yards and 25 touchdowns while rushing for eight touchdowns at Washington State in 2023. Van Dyke, who transferred to Wisconsin, had an inconsistent 2023 season for the Hurricanes, tossing 12 interceptions with ten of those interceptions coming with clean protection up front.
Ward is a perfect fit for Dawson's 'Air-Raid' passing attack and his ability to improvise gives the Hurricanes an added dimension that was missing with Van Dyke at quarterback in 2023.
The criticism concerning the UM secondary being the weakness on that side of the ball is fair. The Hurricanes need to do a better job in the talent acquisition phase with stacking premier corners and safeties.
Here is the bottom line: it is year three of the Cristobal era at Miami and that means it is time to win. FSU coach Mike Norvell went 8-13 during his first two seasons leading the Seminoles. In year three of Norvell's leadership, Florida State earned a 10-3 record.
There needs to be urgency for UM and Cristobal to deliver a 2024 season in which the Hurricanes win at least ten games, but it is worth recognizing that the Miami head coach has a track record of winning, going back to his time at Oregon. The Ducks won the Rose Bowl in 2019 and earned ten wins in 2021.
Cristobal knows how to win at a high level and he now has the talent and depth to deliver a strong season at Miami. Cristobal has delivered in the talent acquisition phase of the program. Now it is time to deliver wins on the field.
Miami will be looking to win the ACC for the first time in program history in 2024. Can the Hurricanes deliver that result? Comment below.
