Miami Hurricanes College Football Pregame Quote, 10/21/2019

Before we begin, just like many or all of you probably just heard, we got the news of Coach Richt suffering a heart attack this morning. Obviously, on behalf of everybody in the University of Miami community, our best thoughts and wishes go out to Mark and Katharyn. He is and will always be one of us. He is and always will be a Hurricane. It’s good to know he’s doing well and resting well. That was quite some news to get this morning, but we’re really glad that Mark is okay.

As to what’s going on inside this building, obviously still disappointed in the result on Saturday. The team came in yesterday. We had a good practice last night. We had a good meeting where we kind of assessed where we were, and what’s going on, and the things that we believe in. I think we feel confident that we’ll be able to put that performance behind us and play much better this weekend against an outstanding Pitt team.

On the plans to use K Camden Price as an option moving forward:

We for sure don’t know who will kick against Pitt, but Camden Price is going to be in the mix this week. It has been good to have him back and getting more practice, where we feel like he’ll be game-ready to go in. I will say that there was no guarantee that we were going to kick if we scored in overtime.

On health updates to RB DeeJay Dallas, LB Michael Pinckney and CB Trajan Bandy:

All of that’s coming in throughout the course of the day. All of those guys are coming in based off their class schedules on treatments. We’ll meet this afternoon at 3:30 and I may know a little bit more, but probably more tomorrow after practice.

On the fake punt play that Georgia Tech converted for a touchdown:

We’re in ‚Äòpunt safe’ [defense] for a fake. We saw their punter has an excellent arm. In pregame warmups, the guy was zinging the ball all over the yard. It was actually the second time we had been in ‚Äòpunt safe’ that day. We had seen on film that we had not done a good job, at times, of covering their guys. The dynamic is, you have to cover the wideouts. You have to take speed off of the wideouts. But you also want to make sure on pooch punt situations, you don’t want a guy either getting in the way of your returner or potentially hitting the ball when those balls are placed in the ‚Äòcoffin corner.’ The first time they punted the ball down the field, we didn’t think we did a very good job on the wideouts. We came to the sideline and we reiterated it again, how important it would be to cover the wideouts in that type of setting and take speed off those guys. If you watched our field corner – our field corner kind of does it exactly the way we want to do it. And we didn’t do it in the boundary. That’s a coaching error. That’s something that, when we’re emphasizing, we’re not getting what we demand. That’s something that I take the responsibility for.

On the team meeting on Sunday night and what was shared:

Here’s what our football team knows. We’re four plays away from being 7-0, and we believe that. But we’re not. We understand the mistakes that have got us to where we are. Regardless of what our record says, it’s about what we do today. We have an opportunity to win today. We have an opportunity to win on Saturday. We need to learn what it takes to win a football game. Sometimes, that comes down to learning what it takes to lose a football game‚Ķgiving up a strip-sack on the first drive of the game. Giving up a fake punt and then giving up a long pass. Those are ways that, in a game that ‚Äì otherwise, play by play ‚Äì you’re showing off to be the more dominant team‚Ķmissing three chip shot field goals. That’s how these upsets occur. There’s no hidden formula to that.

Now, when we look at who we are at our core, and the way we’re building ourselves as a program ‚Äì our hard work, our effort, our competitiveness and our toughness, the foundation of who we want to be and what we’re trying to brand ourselves as – those things have shown up. Those things have given us a chance to win every game that we’ve played. We need to make sure to never flinch on those things. Those are principals that I didn’t invent. Those are things that have worked here forever and ever and ever. We understand that, no different than starting any business ‚Äì if your principals are sound, and your core values are sound, and you continue to apply them over time, all it takes is persistence. To me, there are three things that have to happen, really. Number one, we have to have a will to persist, regardless of the short-term outcomes. Number two, as a coaching staff, we have to continue to do a better job of getting the execution that it takes to win these games. That falls on me and that falls on our staff. And number three, we have to recruit at a high level. Because some of our issues will get fixed by continuing to add depth and add the players that we need. That’s it. There’s no flinching, there’s no panic, there’s no nothing. Our guys understand that they’re good enough and they’ve played good enough that 15 things had to go 15 for 15 to happen in that game on Saturday for us to lose. If 14 out of the 15 happened, Miami wins. Now, how do we get it to a situation where we’re not relying on the chip shot field goal with 30 seconds left to kick off to a team with no timeouts? It should have gone in ‚Äì but we shouldn’t have had to rely on that. But it still should have gone in. And our guys are aware of that. You want to make sure that we see where we’ve come. We understand where we’re going. Now let’s get back to work and focus on today.