Miami Hurricanes College Football Pregame Quote, 11/25/2019

Quite simply, we’re a football team that chooses when our best is required. That responsibility falls upon me. I think when you go back and watch the film, and you talk to our guys in the aftermath of the game, and you step away and analyze our season, I think that’s a thing that stands out more than anything. We talked about, really, two challenges in the lead-up to the game a week ago. Challenge one was to play better coming out of a bye week then we had. Challenge two was to play better against the competition we were facing than we had in the Central Michigan game. Obviously we did not step up to that challenge.

When you look for similarities, we mentioned, because we even talked about it after the game on Saturday, about coming off the bye, we changed our bye week structure. I’d do the same thing in terms of how we practiced in the lead-up to the FIU game. The difference is the pattern goes beyond the bye. Because the pattern of what we saw on Saturday night is the same pattern that showed up in the Georgia Tech game. It’s the same pattern that showed up in the Central Michigan game, that was not following a bye. Quite simply, we just did not have the respect of the opposition that we have [had], and that is up to myself to make sure that that’s something we have every week. When we play, we’re pretty dang good. When we don’t play, we’re pretty awful. And we were awful on Saturday. Fortunately, we have another opportunity to get back out there and to play. We’ve got a challenge going up to Duke. It is imperative for our guys to come together and find a way, to as much as possible, put last Saturday behind us.

On the difficulty of getting a program to meet standards and expectations internally:

There is a culture that has been embedded here in some way, shape or form, despite who the coach has been, for a while. That to me is what we’re trying to battle against. You’ve heard me say some of the buzzwords in terms of what we’re trying to accomplish. Some of those things, to be very honest, are coming from the lessons of this season. In life, when the same thing keeps presenting to you, there’s a lesson you have to learn from it. That, to me, is how I look at our year. Can we look at this as an opportunity to learn from this and understand how a season has to be addressed and has to be attacked? That’s our challenge. I hope so, but that is the challenge.

On the two fourth down situations on offense and if there were uncovered players:

They were misaligned, which is actually why the play was stopped, on the first one. I don’t know if Jarren [Williams] saw the uncovered wide receiver on that play, which actually put an extra guy in the box to handle the run. On the second 4th and 1, we had [Michael] Irvin wide open in the flat and just didn’t see him out there. When you lose by six, it’s obvious you’d say those are six points right there. But 4th and 1 at the 1 [yard line] ‚Äì all the signs say that’s an always go [for it]. And then our defense did not do a great job of getting a three-and-out. We had them down there and we made them punt, but I think when our offense got the ball back, instead of that being around midfield, it was around our 20-yard line or something like that. It was a poor exchange of events there.

On the status of RB DeeJay Dallas:

I don’t actually have the prognosis of the timetable for recovery. I do know that, the latest I heard, it may not need surgery, which is really good. I think it could have been a lot worse, is what it sounds like. But I don’t know exactly how many weeks the recovery will be.

On if RB Lorenzo Lingard could see action given Dallas’ injury:

Yes. That’s definitely a possibility.

On the status of QB Tate Martell:

Tate came to me midweek last week. He felt like he needed another personal leave. We decided together that it would probably be better just to take this one and the Duke game and sit out, instead of being in and out, in and out, in and out. He also reiterated that Miami is where he wants to be. He doesn’t want to leave. He has got to resolve these issues and we support him in that.