Everybody wants to talk about the quarterback. Fine. The quarterback is the shiny thing, the name that trends, the guy whose highlights get clipped and reposted until your thumb hurts. D’Eriq King is a Miami Hurricane, he came over from Houston as a grad transfer, and yes, that is a real upgrade at the most important position on the field. Nobody is arguing that.
But here’s the take nobody wants to sit with: the quarterback is not the reason Miami has been stuck. And bringing in a new one, by itself, doesn’t unstick anything.
The Position Nobody Made a Graphic For
When the portal additions got announced, the celebration was loud. King at quarterback. Quincy Roche coming in from Temple to rush the passer. Keyshawn Smith at receiver after flipping off his Washington State commitment. Isaiah Dunson at corner, snatched right out from under Florida State. That’s a haul. That’s four guys who can play, at four spots where Miami wanted help.
Now count the defensive tackles in that group. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Zero. The one need that’s been flagged out loud — interior defensive line depth — is the one need the portal class didn’t touch. Miami has ends. Miami has a lot of ends, enough that the honest hope is that younger linemen grow into bigger roles because the edge room is deep enough to absorb it. But depth at end is not the same thing as strength inside, and pretending it is has burned this program before.
Here’s why it matters more than the headline signing: a quarterback improves your offense. An interior defensive line improves everything. It decides whether teams can run the ball at you on early downs. It decides whether your talented ends are rushing on third-and-eight or chasing a running back who already got seven yards on second down. It decides whether your secondary — where you just added Dunson — is covering for two seconds or four. Every good thing that happens on defense starts with somebody occupying blockers in the middle. That’s not a sexy sentence. It’s just true.
What the Schedule Actually Asks For
Look at the 2020 slate with trench eyes instead of quarterback eyes and it reads differently. Temple, Wagner and UAB at home to open. A trip to Michigan State. Then Pitt, at Wake Forest, North Carolina, at Virginia, Florida State at home, at Virginia Tech, at Georgia Tech, Duke to close.
The talk about that schedule has been about how winnable it is, and it is winnable — outside of a potential ACC title date with Clemson, there isn’t a game on there you look at and say Miami can’t take it. That’s exactly the point. That’s exactly the pressure. When there’s no monster on the schedule, there’s also no excuse hiding behind the monster.
And notice what’s on there. A road trip to Michigan State — a Big Ten program that is going to try to line up and physically move you, because that is what those programs do and have always done. Virginia Tech on the road, in a stadium that turns into a different planet at night. Georgia Tech on the road. Pitt, who has spent years building an identity around getting nasty up front. That’s four separate opponents whose best version of a game plan against Miami is: run it, shorten the game, keep King on the sideline holding a clipboard.
You don’t beat that with a quarterback. You beat that with 320 pounds of somebody in the middle who won’t move.
The Trap of Winning the Offseason
Miami has been here. Not with this exact roster, but with this exact feeling. The talent has never been the missing ingredient. Look at last year’s opener against Florida — the near-miss that told you everything. That team wasn’t short on ability. It was short on the thing that turns ability into points and stops.
That’s what makes the portal class both exciting and a little dangerous. It’s exciting because these are proven, productive players, not projections. King has a track record. Roche has a track record. That’s different from stacking four-stars and hoping. But it’s dangerous because a good portal class produces the same feeling in January that a good recruiting class does — the feeling that the problem got solved in an office instead of on a field.
Nobody hangs a banner for the transfer portal. There’s no trophy for it. The upgrade only counts if it shows up on Saturdays, and it only shows up on Saturdays if the parts of the roster that didn’t get an upgrade hold their end.
Why the Offense Might Cover for It Anyway
Here’s the counterargument, and it’s a real one. Rhett Lashlee’s offense is built for the kind of players Miami actually has — speed, playmakers in space, a quarterback who can hurt you with his legs and force a defense to account for eleven guys instead of ten. Put King in that system and the offense could genuinely be a problem for people.
An offense that scores fast and stays on schedule takes pressure off a defensive front. If you’re up two scores in the third quarter, that Michigan State game plan of grinding you down goes in the trash, and now they have to throw it, and now Roche and that deep end rotation get to pin their ears back. That’s the version where the roster construction works — where the offense buys the defensive line easier snaps instead of harder ones.
But that’s a chain of ifs. And every link in it depends on Miami not getting run on in the first quarter of games it’s supposed to control.
The Bar
So here’s the honest way to watch this season. Don’t judge it by King’s stat line. Judge it by what happens on second-and-four when a Pitt or a Virginia Tech decides to test the middle of that defense. Judge it by whether a young interior lineman nobody’s talking about right now becomes somebody we’re all talking about in November.
Two guys are gone out the door — reserve tight end Brian Polendey and quarterback Jarren Williams both moved on, and there’s no bad blood in that. Everybody had their shot. Williams got his, N’Kosi Perry got his, and King got the job on production. That’s how it should work. The door stays open for anybody who doesn’t want to compete, and that cuts both ways: the guys who stayed are the guys who want the fight.
Now somebody inside has to go win one.
This one grew out of a Friday night U Talk Live show where the roster additions and the new schedule got broken down top to bottom — and where the line that stuck was that you can’t be champions in the transfer portal, you’ve got to put it on the field. Everything above is just taking that seriously.
This take grew out of the January 25, 2020 episode — watch it here: Miami Hurricanes U TALK LIVE-17