South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Cristobal Era won’t find answers this year
Mario Cristobal never was going to coach himself out of this University of Miami mess. That was never the idea, and it’s a good thing, because Saturday again confirmed he’s not going to coach his way out.
If losing badly to Middle Tennessee in the second game confirmed Cristobal brought no magical system for winning, losing badly to Duke in the seventh game on Saturday confirmed something decidedly worse.
By this point in a season good coaching should have mistakes corrected, not multiplying, and fundamentals should be winning games, not losing them in ways that require an archaeological dig through record books.
Eight turnovers. Eight! Who commits eight turnovers in a game like Miami did in their 45-21 loss to Duke at Hard Rock Stadium? Answer:
A. None of the 131 Football Bowl Subdivision teams in the past five seasons.
B. None of the 69 Power Five
schools since the 2009 season.
C. None of Larry Coker’s, Randy Shannon’s, Al Golden’s or Manny Diaz’s teams in the last two decades at Miami. And, yes, we know how their eras ended.
“Not good,’’ Cristobal said afterward. “Not a good performance, in every respect.”
Let’s not pretend Duke is any good, either. You hear some of that now, which is as comical as hearing Middle Tennessee wasn’t so bad after it drubbed Miami in September.
Middle Tennessee is 3-4 now. Duke had lost 19 of of its previous 21 conference games before Saturday. These are measuring sticks only if you’re measuring how bad Miami looks. And Miami’s bad.
Fair question: How is Miami this much worse than last year?
This is the question Cristobal has to wrestle with now. Some TV reality shows drop people off on a desert island to test their survival skills. It seems college football drops coaches at Miami.
Will Cristobal survive? We’ve not arrived at that question, not even close, and it’s not just because he has eight-year, $80 million contract. That’s some of it, though.
The other part, again is that Cristobal wasn’t brought to coach his way to the top. His way will be the Butch Davis Way, if it works. He’s going to recruit his way out of this mess. That takes time, which takes patience, which is a trait rarely assigned to Miami fans.
Some fans bailed after the Middle Tennessee state loss. More importantly, a nationally stellar recruiting class stayed with Cristobal. To that end, two-time prep All-American Kaden Strayhorn tweeted out a photo taken with Cristobal before Saturday’s game.
Are recruits staying with him now? That, in the long game, means more than this loss to Duke. That really would be the cost of a loss to Duke more than Saturday pain. This always was a season to get through more than to enjoy — and it’s really a season to get through by now.
“You go right to the truth,’’ Cristobal said of correcting problems. “You don’t headfake it. I don’t think, at this point in time, it’s about morale. It’s about reality. The best way to build good morale is to have success and performance.
“The best way to do that is to go back to work and work on the things that need to get better. They’re identified. There is some progress in some. But today, regression showed up. And that’s the point that’s disappointing.”
Thanks to turnovers, four of Duke’s scoring drives were: 23 yards, 22 yards, minus-1 yard (a field goal) and 25 yards. Throw in the interception returned for a touchdown and you get a feel for what went down Saturday.
Duke, under first-year coach Mike Elko, beat Miami by the largest margin it ever has beaten Miami.
“We created short fields, we caused turnovers, special teams did it, defense did it,’’ Elko said.
Come on, coach, give Miami some credit there, too. It had a hand in the turnovers.
“Unfortunately, you have to go through some painful steps, but we caused our own painful steps — extra painful steps that we don’t need,’’ Cristobal said of building his team. “Back to work.”
The work now is to keep that recruiting class together. That’s always been the way out for Cristobal, if he gets there. It’s not coaching. As Saturday again showed, he doesn’t have some magical system or an ability to X and O against roughly equal talent to the top.