There’s a specific kind of misery that only Miami fans understand, and it has nothing to do with losing. Losing is clean. Losing hurts once and then you move on. No, the specific misery is the win that feels like a loss — the one where the scoreboard says you’re fine and every single snap you actually watched says you’re not. That’s where this program is living right now, and the address is right up front: the offensive line.
The Scoreboard Is Lying to You
A win is a win. Nobody is giving it back, and nobody should be apologizing for taking it. But there’s a difference between winning and being good, and the fastest way to waste a season is to let the first one convince you that you’ve got the second one. Miami got the W. Miami also, up front, looked exactly the way it looked in Week 1 against Florida — which is the part that should be keeping people up at night.
Think about what that actually means. Not “they had a bad night.” Not “they got beat by a good front.” It means that from the season opener to now, with every practice rep, every film session, every walkthrough in between, the tape looks the same. That’s not a talent indictment. That’s a development indictment. Bad units that are getting coached hard look different in October than they did in August — maybe not fixed, but different. Sloppier in new ways. Cleaner in some. When a group looks frozen in place, you’re not watching a personnel problem. You’re watching a teaching problem.
And this is where I’ll say the thing that’s uncomfortable: the offensive line and the kickers are the two worst position groups on this football team. Not “needs improvement.” Worst. The two spots where the margin between competent and catastrophic is thinnest, and Miami is on the wrong side of both. Butch Barry owns that room, and this isn’t about running anybody out of the building — it’s about naming the standard. This is Miami. The standard was set by other people a long time ago and the rest of us just inherited the receipts.
The Play-Calling Is Feeding the Weakness
Here’s what makes it worse. If your line can’t sustain a block, your scheme has one job: hide it. Make the ball come out fast in ways that punish the defense instead of just surviving them. Create conflict. Move the launch point. Give your athletes a runway.
Instead Miami keeps parking the quarterback under center and running the same conservative, telegraphed concepts. The same screens. The same quick game. Stuff that has carried over from the previous staff like a lease nobody bothered to break. And the defense on the other side knows it. When you’re predictable AND you can’t win up front, you’ve stacked the two worst possible traits in the same offense. Predictable is survivable if you’re physical. Physical shortcomings are survivable if you’re creative. Be neither and you’re just donating possessions.
Get out from under center. Get into spread looks that actually match the guys wearing the uniform. Miami has always recruited speed in space — so put people in space. Jet motion forces a defense to declare. Rub routes manufacture separation without asking a receiver to beat man coverage for four seconds behind a leaky pocket. Take a shot and throw the fade to a guy like Dee Wiggins and let a big athletic body go get it. Those aren’t exotic ideas. They’re the standard vocabulary of modern college football, and half the league is running them on Saturdays while Miami runs bubble screens on second-and-seven.
The frustrating part isn’t that the fix is hard. It’s that the fix is obvious.
The Defense Is Holding Up Its End
And credit where it’s owed, because this is not a broken roster. On the other side of the ball, guys are showing up. DJ Ivey put together a real game. Robert Knowles put together a real game. Those are the kinds of individual performances that tell you the cupboard isn’t bare and the effort isn’t gone. When your defense is playing well enough to keep you in every game and your offense is playing scared, the problem is not “we don’t have players.”
That’s the whole argument in one sentence: the players are good enough to win every week. Every week. This is not a roster that should be sweating out games against teams it out-recruits. So when it does, the question stops being about the guys and starts being about the plan.
Still a Manny Believer — With a Clock Running
Now, let’s be clear about the tone here, because there’s a real difference between criticism and calling for somebody’s job. Year one is year one. Manny Diaz walked into a situation, inherited a roster built partly for somebody else’s ideas, and is trying to install a culture in real time while playing games every Saturday. That deserves patience. He gets the benefit of the doubt from me, and he should get it from you too.
But patience is not the same as blindness, and the vote of confidence comes with an asterisk: adjust faster.
That’s the whole ask. Not a coaching change. Not a scheme overhaul in the middle of a season. Just in-season adjustment at the speed the sport actually demands. If the line looks the same in Week 9 as it did in Week 1, somebody upstairs has to be the one who says “we’re not waiting on this anymore” and changes what we’re asking those five guys to do. Shorten their assignments. Change the launch point. Get the ball out on your terms instead of the defense’s. Coaching isn’t just teaching technique — it’s honestly diagnosing what your group can and cannot do this Saturday and building around that answer.
The Miami standard was never “we won, so it’s fine.” The Miami standard was that you turned on the tape and knew, in about six plays, exactly who was more physical. Right now you can turn on Miami’s tape and know that in six plays too. It’s just not the answer anybody around here is used to.
Fix the front. The rest of this roster is already holding up its end of the bargain.
One More Thing
This take grew out of the very first episode of the show — a solo reaction after a Miami win that turned into forty-some minutes of hollering about blocking instead of celebrating. That’s the deal here: no right answers, no wrong answers, just Miami football and everybody’s honest opinion. Videos go up Friday before games, and we go live Monday with the phone lines open. Pull up. It ain’t no me without you, baby.
This take grew out of the October 27, 2019 episode — watch it here: U TALK – #1