Diaz: Camp won’t be all different
UM coach Manny Diaz shouts instructions to
As much as the Miami Hurricanes will try to prepare as they normally would for a college football season in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, there will be significant differences when they begin fall camp with their first practice on Friday night.
“It’s unfair to call it business as usual,” said UM coach Manny Diaz in a web conference with reporters on Thursday afternoon. “It’s different. 2020 is different, and everybody gets that.”
After Miami had team workouts since midJune and a walkthrough period ahead of training camp, coaches and players got together for one-on-one meetings to have candid conversations addressing any concerns ahead of Friday.
“We had every player on our team meet one-on-one,” Diaz said, “either with their [position] coach or with me, and look them in the eye and just say, ‘Tell me how you feel. Tell me what your concerns are, and if you feel good about playing, what can we do to ensure that you’re your most comfortable?’
“Talking to those guys eye to eye and face to face, I think, has helped.”
In at least one case, those conversations led to a player opting out for the season. Diaz learned, during his Thursday news conference, that star defensive end Gregory Rousseau, a top 2021 draft prospect, has opted out of the season. Rousseau signed with Rosenhaus Sports, and Diaz revealed the news after stating, at the start of the call with reporters, that he expected everyone to be available for Friday.
But onward the Hurricanes will move, and while many precautions will be taken, the team learned through studying the past that not much has to change in the practices themselves.
Diaz said the Hurricanes went back to watch practices from the spring before social distancing
“We took every play in practice, probably two or three players at every position, and we just started a stopwatch every time they came within a 6-foot bubble of one of their teammates,” Diaz said.
“When you do that, it was actually fascinating, in a practice where we weren’t trying to be socially distant, how few players a football player actually comes in close contact with during the course of a two-hour practice. There’s a mentality that every play kind of ends with a 22-man pile, and what the data showed, is that that’s not really the case.”
Diaz said linemen, as would be expected, had the most close contact, but the team only found one pairing of an offensive and defensive lineman that reached four minutes of close contact with one another. Individual player-to-player highs were usually in the two-minute range and perimeter skill position players even less.
The Hurricanes will still tackle during practices, but will target times when players aren’t actively participating to limit close contact.
“We still have to get the team ready to play, so tackling and those type of things, we won’t do that much differently than we would in any other year,” Diaz said. “Everything else that you can control, except for the actual ball when it’s 11-on-11, that’s where you’ll see the distancing spread out.
“The way the team stretches, the way you stand when you’re not in a drill, how you get your water, having your personalized water bottle. There are drills that we’ve eliminated.”
One area that Diaz is eliminating this fall is the “Big ‘Cane” drill, where two players line up against each other one-on-one with the rest of the team surrounding them, similar to the famed Oklahoma drill.
The cautiousness extends consciousness was so to heavily team emphasized. meetings. year.
“When we meet, our guys are never within 6 feet of each other. They’ve got masks on in the meeting. They’re spread out,” offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee said.
He quipped that he would like to have his quarterbacks keep the different-colored noncontact jerseys they practice with on at all times.
The Hurricanes will also attempt to keep players prepared to play multiple positions in the event someone becomes suddenly unavailable for a game, but Diaz noted no one will play a drastically different position from their natural spot.
“With all the COVID precautions we have to take, you never know with the contact tracing or if someone catches it, we’re doing a good job as a coaching staff trying to crosstrain across the board,” defensive coordinator Blake Baker said. “It’ll be interesting to see how it all unfolds, but it’ll be hard to pinpoint, ‘This is our starting depth chart week to week.’”
A concern for the college football season is that bubble atmospheres, as have been successful with the NBA and MLS, aren’t possible in college athletics. The Hurricanes are stressing to players to be prudent despite being unable to watch their every move outside of team facilities. Diaz noted he has been pleased with testing results since mid-June when Miami returned to campus for voluntary workouts.
“I push back on that notion. We have the opportunity to keep a bubble,” Diaz said. “People that you don’t know that you’re in close contact with, and if you’re not in a mask, you just let that person — not only into your bubble — potentially into our football team’s bubble.”
Diaz said on Thursday that come time for the season, UM will be “in line” with ACC minimum recommendations of testing players once a week within 72 hours of kickoff to be eligible for a game. Teams can test more frequently if they choose.