Miami Hurricanes College Football Pregame Quote, 11/04/2019

Obviously it was a very buoyant mood yesterday, in meetings and in practice. Our players were not just very excited to defeat their rival on the road, but there were a lot of aspects – the manner of our performance, the way that we played – we felt like we had had the best week of preparation leading up to this game. As a coach, you really want that to correlate. You want to see the execution in practice match up in the game. We had a little bit of a different demeanor about us the day of the game, at the hotel during walk-throughs. We had a little bit of a different demeanor during pregame warmups where you can tell the guys were really locked in and focused on the job at hand.

And then to go out and to play the way that we played and certainly to put together a dominating performance on the defensive side of the ball, and then to make some of the plays that we made offensively from an explosive standpoint, was outstanding. And then to add in special teams ‚Äì this is the third week in a row where, the way that we calculate hidden yardage, has been over 100 yards in our favor. This week it was 266 [yards]. That’s really all three phases ‚Äì offense, defense and special teams. Obviously the turnovers had a role in that. That’s where their starting field position is compared to where our starting field position is multiplied by the amount of drives ‚Äì how much further Florida State would have to go to score the points that we had to score. They’re basically starting the game 266 yards behind us because of how we dominated the field position. That’s been something that has been happening the last few weeks. Louis Hedley becoming a massive weapon for us in the punting game, K.J. Osborn becoming a massive weapon for us ‚Äì we’re now second in the ACC and 11th in the country in punt returns. We’re starting to understand that punting is always a bad thing to have happen, because every time we’ve punted the ball and we got it back on offense, we move closer to their goal line, which is what the game is all about. Some of the things that we thought have hurt us in the past, with field position, we now have that remedied.

We feel like we are improving. The players are starting to gain some confidence, and we’re going to need it, because this Saturday, we play a very dangerous Louisville football team who had a week off to think about nothing but the Miami Hurricanes. They’re pretty dynamic in what they do on both sides of the ball. They’ve obviously got some very skilled weapons. All these guys playing for Louisville were all recruited when Lamar Jackson was there. Scott Satterfield has done a great job of re-energizing that program and getting them to play the way they’re used to playing up in Louisville. With the game being Homecoming, with the game being Senior Day, it’s just amazing to think that some of these guys will be playing their last game at Hard Rock Stadium. We hope to have a great crowd, we need to have a great crowd to make it as hard on Louisville as possible and to get around our fans and really cheer on this team that is starting to hit its stride in the month of November.

On if there were any specifics given in player exit meetings after spring practice about improvements:

You’re always going to sit down with the players and say, ‚ÄòOkay, here’s what you do well. Here’s what you need to work on. Here are the things you need to work on.’ It might be transforming your body ‚Äì you need to be at this body weight, you need to be at this body fat ‚Äì to try and get them to be the version of themselves they can be. To me, I’m a big believer in that constant feedback, the constant communication back and forth so guys always know where they stand.

On why he thinks the team is responding well in November compared to August:

You’d love for it to just happen. But if things just happened, you really wouldn’t need coaches, right? If everyone just did the right thing all the time, which would be cool. What was happening is we started having really good Tuesday practices ‚Äì in terms of guys really understanding how to work, putting the work in‚Ķbecause Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the two hardest days of the [week]. We were having good Thursday practices. But we weren’t having a great Wednesday, just for whatever reason. And Wednesday’s a big day. We do one-minute drill, we do red zone, we do third down‚Ķa lot of critical situation stuff on Wednesdays. We walked off the field last Wednesday and we said, ‚ÄòThat, by far, was our best Wednesday practice this year,’ the guys putting it together, being able to stay focused throughout the entire practice. I think a little more of the accountability that they’re having on each other‚Ķand not to accept anything other than the best, that’s why I always going back to player accountability being sort of the secret sauce in all of this.

On what measures need to happen to make sure the team isn’t overconfident entering Saturday:

That’s a great question, because what does the confidence come from? What we need to be confident in is our work. What we need to be confident in is our attention to detail. Not confident in that we’ve got this figured out. That’s what restarts every week. The work restarts every week. The attention to detail restarts every week. So we give them some challenges, even on some off the field stuff, again to try to make some player accountability things happen. They all have an assignment today ‚Äì we don’t have them today ‚Äì but they have an assignment to win Monday. All we’re trying to do today is win Monday. We’d be very foolish, with some of our past performances, to walk around and act like we’ve got anything figured out, other than we know that when we work very hard and we prepare at a very high level, our chances of winning go up. We should not be able to say anything other than that. We don’t have anything else figured out other than we understand that hard work and attention to detail gives us a chance to win every football game we play in.

On the injury to S Bubba Bolden:

We will not have Bubba for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, he’ll be out for the season, which is tough on our defense because he was really starting to play at a very high level. We’ll have to do what we always do. We’ll have to rely on the depth we have at the safety position and move on.