Everybody wants to make this about one man. Fire Manny, hire the next guy, cue the hype video, sell out the lower bowl for one September Saturday and pretend the thing is fixed. That’s the easy conversation, and after 38-17 at home to Michigan State, it’s the loudest one. But if you actually sit with what happened in that building, the coaching name on the headset is the third or fourth most alarming thing on the list.
Here’s the first thing: Miami is the worst tackling team in the country. Not “one of.” Not “struggling in that area.” The worst. And that is not a scheme problem. That is not a play-calling problem. That is not something a new coordinator’s whiteboard fixes in a bye week. Tackling is the single most fundamental act in football — the thing 11-year-olds learn before they learn a snap count — and a program with Miami’s history, Miami’s speed, Miami’s recruiting footprint, cannot do it.
The Fumble Isn’t the Story. The Guy Standing Next to It Is.
First play from scrimmage: D’Eriq King puts it on the ground. Bad. Happens. Quarterbacks fumble in every stadium in America on any given weekend.
What should keep Miami fans up at night is that safety D Wiggins was right there and didn’t even attempt to recover it. Didn’t dive. Didn’t scramble. That’s not a physical failure — you don’t need a 40 time to fall on a football. That’s a want-to failure, on the first play, in your own stadium, on national television, in front of whatever crowd bothered to show.
You can coach leverage. You can coach gap fits. You cannot coach a grown man into diving on a loose ball if the culture around him hasn’t already made that reflexive. And that’s the through-line of this entire season: Miami’s failures aren’t the exotic kind. Nobody’s getting schemed into oblivion by some genius offense. Miami is losing to effort plays. Missed tackles on the perimeter. Defenders getting run through — not around, through. No answer for contain, week after week, against opponents who aren’t hiding what they’re about to do.
Michigan State’s quarterback threw four touchdowns. Four. Against a defense that could not get off the field. That’s not a chess match you lost. That’s a fight you didn’t show up to.
The Cruelest Part: They Started Fast
This is what makes it worse, not better. Miami came out of the tunnel and got after it. Pressure. Stops. The stadium had a pulse for a stretch. So the talent is real — you don’t generate pressure on a Big Ten offensive line with scrubs.
Then the same thing happened that has happened every single week: the missed tackles started, the angles busted, and the whole operation dissolved. That collapse pattern is the actual diagnosis. A team that couldn’t compete would look bad from the opening whistle. A team that competes for a quarter and then unravels in the same identical way, every week, has a conditioning-and-conviction problem, not a talent problem.
And that’s why swapping the head coach, by itself, doesn’t guarantee you anything. The next guy inherits the same roster that stopped diving on fumbles.
“Power Five School, Group of Five Identity”
That line has been rattling around the show all season and it lands harder every week. Miami has the brand, the metro, the recruiting territory, the ring of history in the rafters — and it operates, week to week, like a program that’s grateful to be in the conversation.
You want the receipt? Look at the broadcast. Look at the stands. Empty seats in the fourth quarter of a home game against a ranked opponent from a real conference.
Now — a lot of people want to use that to beat up the fan base. Don’t. The empty seats aren’t the cause; they’re the invoice. This fan base showed up for years on the promise that the next hire, the next quarterback, the next transfer class was the one. They bought in on Al Golden’s warning signs until they couldn’t anymore. They bought in again. When people say Miami fans are unreasonable, point at the stands and ask what exactly a reasonable person is supposed to keep paying for.
The fan base isn’t the embarrassment. The fan base is the last honest metric the program has.
About That Coaching Search — Be Careful What You Wish For
The names come out fast: Mike Locksley. Lane Kiffin. Hugh Freeze. Eric Bieniemy. Joe Brady. Brent Venables. Everybody’s got a guy, everybody’s guy is the answer, everybody’s guy is going to walk in and restore the swagger.
Two problems with that fantasy.
One, the market prices you. Bieniemy and Brady have NFL stock. NFL stock means NFL money and NFL leverage, and Miami — right now, in this state, with this facilities conversation and this collective conversation and this attendance — is not obviously the job those men take. You can want a guy all you want; wanting is not a bid.
Two, and this is the part fans skip: the criteria matter more than the name. A coach who can actually coach. A coach who can recruit. A coach who can motivate. Those are three separate skills and most candidates have two. Miami has spent a decade hiring for one of the three and hoping the rest showed up.
Because here’s the thing about that list of names — if you hire any one of them and hand him a defense that leads the nation in missed tackles and a safety who won’t chase a loose ball, year one looks a lot like this year. Then it’s month eight of the honeymoon and the same people screaming today are screaming again, and the cycle restarts. Ask 2015 how it went. Ask the guys who were sure the Golden problem was strictly a Golden problem.
What Actually Has to Change
The next hire — whenever it comes, and it’s coming — has to be evaluated on one boring, unglamorous question: does this man’s previous defense tackle? Not “does he run an exciting offense,” not “does he pop on a podium,” not “can he land a five-star.” Does the tape show 11 guys running to the football and finishing?
Because Miami’s identity — the real one, the one in the rafters, the one that made this place terrifying — was never a scheme. It was a standard. It was the certainty that the guy in the orange and green was going to hit you harder than you’d been hit, and that if the ball hit the ground, four of them were diving on it before you blinked.
You don’t restore that with a press conference. You restore it with a coach who will bench a starter for a lazy angle in the first quarter of a September game and make everyone in the building understand why. Whether Manny gets that chance or somebody else does — and the market is telling you it’ll be somebody else — that’s the job description. Everything else is a hype video.
This take grew out of the September 19, 2021 episode of U Talk Live, where Devin and Larry Frank Jr. went live minutes after the final whistle and the callers didn’t let up for two hours. Go listen to the whole thing — the raw version is worth your time.
This take grew out of the September 19, 2021 episode — watch it here: Miami Hurricanes U TALK LIVE-96