CORAL GABLES, Fla. — The Miami Hurricanes have had their whole season turned around because of one game.
Last season, Notre Dame lost to NIU and ended up in the championship game against a two-loss Ohio State team. The Hurricanes don’t have the luxury of being the SEC or Big 10, so the little things have to be fixed.
The little things for the Hurricanes are the penalties. They have averaged nearly eight penalties a game. The highest in the ACC and one of the highest for teams that look to compete for a national championship.
Head coach Mario Cristobal knows that this is going to be the biggest test to get to the next level, but also knows that they will have to work hard to fix the little things.
“The common thread, it’s hurt us,” Cristobal said. “There’s no question about that. They not only stall drives, but they’ve also created good field position for the opponent, which led to points on the other side as well. So that’s where, in these games, the margins are really important, and the margins between winning and losing become smaller and smaller.
“And that’s one where we have not done a good enough job. I have not done a good enough job in getting us to reduce those, eliminate those. That’s what you want, right? Reducing and eliminating pre-snap and post-snap penalties. Keep everything between the lines and snap to the whistle. So the common thread is we just have not a good enough job.”
Cristobal also knows that this team has to be the same team that has won five games against three ranked opponents. There doesn’t need to be drastic changes, but minor ones for the future.
“The same team, we lost on Saturday, but it’s the same team that won five games against arguably the toughest out-of-conference schedule this year in college football,” Cristobal said. “So where are the changes? It’s more improvements and obviously presenting our players with schematic technique, fundamental advantages and answers to help us execute at a higher level. Right? That comes with everybody having more mental intensity and energy, but collectively as a group, some of it is tweaking, and some of it might be changing, but it’s also improving, and really doing things that we have done well, doing them well again, and not straying from that.
Not allowing us to get caught up in some of the things we mentioned earlier about the pre- and post-snap penalties, because those things do knock you off schedule and do kill drives, you know. So I think it falls a little bit here and a little bit there.”
Justice Sandle is a graduate of Mississippi State University and is the site lead for the Miami Hurricanes on SI. He can be reached at Twitter @Justice_News5.
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