Besieged Miami offensive coordinator Pat Nix sat down with both the Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald for a candid interview. Nix explained much of the trouble the offense has had lately. Before we get to his comments about the offense I found it very telling that Nix implied to Manny Navarro of the Herald and Shandel Richardson of the Sun Sentinel that the team was flat this past Saturday against UCF and lacked energy. This directly refutes the comments of Nix's boss, Randy Shannon who has called the UCF game a "big victory." I tend to agree with Nix more on this point than Shannon. It was important to get a win, any sort of win after heartbreaking losses the previous two weeks, but the honest truth is Miami's performance in both losses was much better than the performance in the "big victory" over UCF.
Some of Nix's Comments:
- On Robert Marve's performance vs UCF
"Last week, on two of his interceptions, he trusted his receivers. He made good reads and good throws. One of them, the receiver got knocked off his route and the other one the receiver raised his shoulders a bit and telegraphed it to the corner(back) and the corner jumped it."
My take: Miami's WRs have for years had this trouble. This doesn't surprise me and this could be why I have been generally less critical of Nix than 95% of the fan base who just don't realize how raw and below average our pass catchers are.
- On reading defenses
My Take: A bit of spin here.
- On the Gadget Plays vs FSU
Paraphrase: We need to get more reps in to run the plays again. We used the plays based on the situation against FSU and they all worked.
My Take: I'm not sure I use the tackle eligible play when the game was essentially over, but the other calls were perfect. The pity is the defense could not make a stop so they were essentially wasted. Maybe we need to get answers out of the defensive coaches for why this team is 0-2 in the ACC and not from a coordinator whose team has scored plenty of points in its two league games. Statistics can be deceiving. I've seen it quoted that Miami is 110th in total offense as of this week out of 119 D 1 teams. That based on yardage, not on points scored by the offense. A big part of the reason Miami's ranking is so low is how effective Travis Benjamin has been in the return game setting up a consistent short field for the Canes. Miami's offense isn't good but it isn't nearly as bad as last year and that to me means Nix is doing a decent job at worst, and probably a pretty good job. This team as I have tried to point out for several years now has a talent shortage. Miami is not only the least talented of the "big three" in Florida by a mile, but less talented than USF and many average ACC teams. This talent shortage has been particularly bad on offense. Miami has cycled through four offensive coordinators in six years all of whom have had diminishing returns thanks to a lack of talent. Thus Pat Nix needs some breathing room.
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