Excuse Me, But Where Did All This Miami Love Suddenly Come From?

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Miami returns 12 starters from that 7-6 team, so bringing back a lot of experience cannot be the roadmap for such prognostications.

By CARLTON REESE

The line reads Miami minus 2.5. Not in the Orange Bowl, not in that parking lot they call Hard Rock Stadium, but in The Swamp – and so it begs the question: “When did the Miami Hurricanes morph into this road menace that is expected to win at Florida?”

For Gators coach Billy Napier, such a spread must sound sweeter than Karen Carpenter – the “experts” are disrespecting his boys and, better yet, have no idea who his boys are. Something about that silly innocuous “U” on the helmet that still conjures up images of Michael Irvin or Ed Reed, ghosts with no bearing on the ‘Canes of 2024 except in stirring up some nostalgic optimism more Pollyanna and less Hermione Granger.

So how are we to interpret this? UM head coach Mario Cristobal, like Napier, enters his third season at the helm of a shipwreck. The first two seasons, the only thing Cristobal achieved beyond Napier is a Pinstripe Bowl loss to Rutgers, a team whose most impressive moment came against Wagner College. The recruiting classes have been strong, at least if you ask Rivals -- national rankings of 34, 8 and 5 the last three cycles, respectively. In that time frame, Napier’s classes ranked 18, 13 and 15.

But what happened between last season and Saturday’s season-opener that somehow makes people forget those four losses in the last five games, including an abject lemon at N.C. State? According to certain metrics, Miami returns 12 starters from that 7-6 team, so bringing back a lot of experience cannot be the roadmap for such prognostications. The pollsters put Miami in the top 20 of the country, so what is it? Quite simply, it comes down to Cam Ward, the transfer quarterback most assume elevates the Hurricanes roster to the next level.

Ward put up some gaudy numbers in two seasons at Washington State after tossing 47 touchdowns with over 4,600 yards passing in 2021 at Incarnate Word. There is no disputing this young man’s talent, but let us remember these numbers came against a buffet of Pac-12 and Southland Conference competition. The numbers, though, may mean less than the four years experience as a starting QB. Like the Hurricanes of last season, Ward also lost four of his last five games (seven of the last eight, to be precise).

CARLTON REESE

On the other side of the field is Florida, which returns 14 starters (again, choose your metric), a more promising number than offered by Miami. The Gators also have a transfer QB who has a year under his belt with his current team, a pretty significant fact when talking signal-callers. By any accounting measure, this should be a Florida team that garners much more respect than is being delivered – sort of the anti-Canes, if you will.

The focus on Miami’s transfer QB has wrought laurels upon Cristobal and the prospects of 2024 while the focus on a certain Florida transfer seems to have the opposite effect. Because Trevor Etienne will now be running for the Georgia Bulldogs, the Gators see themselves in a net-negative situation in terms of transfer personnel. For Gator fans who climbed out onto the ledge when they first heard the news of Etienne’s departure, let us set minds at ease.

With the ball in his hands, Etienne is a force, a downhill runner that can make defenses look bad. When the ball is not in his hands, Etienne is a liability that creates an 11-on-10 advantage for the defense. If his number is not called on 60 percent of the plays in which he is on the field, that’s 60 percent of the time Etienne hurts his team more than he helps. Yes, maybe that means he can’t block, and also means he is a terrible route runner. Perhaps he develops these talents at Georgia, but personally I am quite comfortable with Kirby Smart exhausting precious time chasing such windmills.

So, climb off the ledge – Etienne’s departure may be a net benefit in the long run with the current stable of young backs next to Montrell Johnson, a beast in his own right who possesses more intangibles than Etienne could dream.

Ward in at Miami and Etienne out at Florida seems to be the only relevant equation used by “experts” to dissect this matchup, as if the 40 other spots on the field somehow carry little weight. For the Canes, as many as 10 immediate transfers are likely to start Saturday against Florida, and this seems like a lot. By contrast, Florida is looking at around five immediate transfers starting.

To some, the number of transfer starters is a sign of plugging up holes and regarded as a positive sign for the team. But how many is too many? Is it a team of mercenaries a program desires? Those Hessians camped out on the other side of the Delaware may be talented, but also ripe for the picking of a savvy general – the same can be said for college football.

Just how much true devotion is there among the transfers? Do they bleed orange and blue or green the same as those who signed out of high school and hung around the system for years? When adversity strikes, just how invested will these transfer players be? A team loaded with such players may be more likely to mail it in under dire circumstances, lacking the same devotion and fortitude as the long-timers. Just a thought.

In this respect, Florida has a bit of an edge. All of Florida’s immediate starting transfers played their entire careers at one school – by contrast, three of Miami’s immediate starting transfers are transients in the truest sense of the word with Coral Gables being their third stop. This includes the QB Ward.

Making too much of it? Team Mercenary in Tallahassee was on full display last weekend in Dublin, Ireland and how did that turn out? Again, just a thought.

Such intangibles are not taken into consideration when the analytics are fed into the computer and as such Miami has quite an appeal. But this isn’t Strat-O-Matic or Rotisserie League football played with cards and game pieces; this is flesh and blood and desire and devotion and emotion and all those things that make college football unpredictable from a numbers standpoint.

Would you rather have the quarterback who threw just three interceptions the year before and is embarking on his second season with the current staff or the quarterback starting all over for the third time with a new set of coaches and receivers where the learning curve will no doubt play a factor? You know the answer to that one.

And there you have it: Miami is the darling of the bookies and favored to win at Florida. Napier has them right where he wants them.