Miami’s Offense Under the Microscope for the 2023-2024 Season

The Miami Hurricanes finished Mario Cristobal’s inaugural season as head coach of the Miami Hurricanes with a 5-7 record. Despite a rocky first year, Miami feels confident that better days are ahead as talent acquisition through both recruiting and the transfer portal is well underway. After a year, Cristobal has had an opportunity to fully analyze the team’s roster, evaluate every player, and see who fits his system and philosophy. But an area that also needs to be evaluated is the coaching staff. Mario’s motto of “How you do anything is how you do everything” should not apply to players only, but also to the coaching staff and the organization as a whole. If there was one area where the Hurricanes suffered it was offensively. Miami was unlucky with various injuries to OL, WRs, and their starting QB. All of these things can skew the production of the offense. But it was apparent even when the team was healthy, that they failed to score even against the least talented teams.

Miami’s offense this past year under former OC Josh Gattis totaled 367.9 yards per game, 3.7 yards per rush, and scored a total of 23.6 points per game. When we look deeper at the numbers, we see that Miami ranked 99th in total rush yards and 96th in the nation in rush yards average per game. In total, Miami fielded the 114th-ranked offense in 2022. Against power five opponents, Miami football was an anemic 13.6 ppg. Miami labored to score 20 points per game with a quarterback who before he was injured was on the Heisman candidate watchlist.

The year before under Rhett Lashlee as OC, Miami went 7-5 but averaged 34.1 ppg and had the 23rd-ranked offense in the nation. When we look at the top 25 offenses today in terms of points per game this is what the top 25 teams are averaging points-wise per game:

1. TENN- 46.1
2. OSU- 44.2
3. USC- 41.4
4. ALA- 41.1
5. UGA- 41.1
6. MICH- 40.4
7. WASH-39.7
8. UCLA- 39.2
9. TCU- 38.8
10. ORE- 38.8
11. UTAH- 38.6
12. SMU- 37.2
13. JMU- 37.0
14. UTSA -36.8
15. WKU- 36.4
16. FSU- 36.1
17. WAKE-36.1
18. HOU- 36.1
19. TULN-36.0
20. PSU- 35.8
21. KU- 35.6
22. MEM-35.3
23. APP- 34.9
24. LSU- 34.5
25. TEX- 34.5

No team in the top 25 scored less than 34 points per game. It is not just air-raid teams in pass-happy conferences either. We see that Georgia won the championship with a pro spread that scored 41 points per game. Coincidentally this is the same offense that Mario is trying to recreate in Miami. Even the Big 10 Conference, which has traditionally been seen as a slow-plodding power football conference had multiple teams scoring no less than 35 points per game. If Miami is to return to prominence, the play calling on the offensive side of the ball needs to dramatically improve. Another 5-7 type season, which sees Miami laboring to score, will significantly setback the rebuild process, as high-end recruits and transfers on offense will continue to look elsewhere. Because of this, for the Miami Hurricanes program, the most important decision and evaluation of the 2023-2024 season will be the adjustments and direction of their offense under their new offensive coordinator.