If the harsh reality wasn't already abundantly clear before the Miami Hurricanes' 27-20 loss to the Florida State Seminoles on Saturday afternoon at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, it is now. Following their fourth loss of the season, it's becoming increasingly clear they're nowhere near to getting back to the top form expected of the team when its program had championship standards.
Fans will have to confront some tough truths regarding the 'Canes program, some of which feature the main characters in the story.
Acceptance is a necessary step in recovery. Let's accomplish that here, so we can all move on with our lives.
Another Lost Season
Don't lie to yourselves — nothing good came from the 2023 campaign.No major rivalry win. No ACC title. No quarterback of the past, present, or future. Just another season that ends with a simple goal — don't completely embarrass yourself, and get to the conditioning program you can tout on Instagram.
The Miami Hurricanes are now a 6-4 football team. Their remaining games are against a 9-1 Louisville team at home and Boston College on the road before a possible bowl game (a startling possibility at this point).
It's likely the Hurricanes will lose five games in 2023. It's more likely they will lose six. Most Hurricanes fans can tell you it's not out of the realm of possibilities that they limp into some random bowl game in Mississippi, a 6-6 team, and lose, finishing the season under .500.
Even the most rosy-lensed outlook on how this season ends makes it hard to call it a success. The Miami Hurricanes are beyond touting good recruiting cycles or a sprinkling of players that don't look terrible. This was year twenty of a three-year plan to return to college football relevance. If you're touting a couple of players who won't be here by the time the Hurricanes get it all together at once, you're lying to yourself. Any improvements are negligible, at best.
Maybe next year is the year the Hurricanes look remotely like a team ready to compete for a championship in the near future. But certainly, this was not the year.
Mario Cristobal: Overrated
Hurricanes fans got out the pots and pans when Mario Cristobal accepted the Miami job, but his performance has since proven to be barely worth a pizza party, much less an entire parade. As a former Miami Hurricane and champion, Cristobal was a promising addition, and fans wanted to see him succeed. They wanted him to be different than those past coaches.And he is. He's paid a lot more, for arguably less than his predecessors accomplished during the same two-year tryout.
On December 6, 2021, Cristobal was named head coach of the University of Miami Hurricanes football team, replacing Manny Diaz and signing a ten-year, $80 million contract with the Hurricanes. Since then, he has gone 11-11 overall and 5-9 in the ACC. If not already headed for the chopping block, any other coach would be in the hot seat. But when you owe a coach $60-plus million, you lie to yourself.
The mid-numbers don't tell the entire story; he's simply been a bad gameday football coach. From terrible clock management to being the brains behind one of the worst losses in recent memory that could be directly pinned on a coach, Cristobal's coaching juice has not been worth the surly, painful squeeze that he is.
Van Dyke Is Toast for '23
When the Miami Hurricanes face Louisville at Hard Rock Stadium next weekend, the starting quarterback should be second-year backup Jacurri Brown, redshirt or not.It's a tough truth, but the Hurricanes moved on from quarterback Tyler Van Dyke when they benched him in the biggest game of the season for true freshman Emory Williams. If that doesn't tell you the program is looking at 2025, not 2023, nothing will.
But the man for whom Van Dyke was benched is now done for the season — and possibly, some of next — due to a serious arm injury suffered in a game. That makes it clearly time to break the emergency glass on Brown in hopes the Hurricanes can see what he can do before 2024.
Per NCAA rules, players can compete in up to four games without burning a redshirt. Brown appeared in several games last season but can redshirt this year. Having not played this season, Brown should be safe, but even if he weren't, he would need to play over Van Dyke, whose past two seasons were a regression from the potential Heisman finalist he looked like in his first season. He has 11 interceptions this season, many in big spots with the game on the line.
The 'Canes need to make some unsparing decisions that will put them in a position to secure eight wins on the upswing heading into a bowl game, not fade away to a 6-6 season that ends with a loss in a no-name bowl.
