Around this time last year, everything was looking great for the Hurricanes. They started 5-0 and were off for the second time in three weeks.
Miami was No. 2 in the nation and preparing for a Friday night home game against Louisville.
The game was disastrous. Carson Beck threw four interceptions, including a game-sealing pick on the final UM drive. It was Miami’s first loss of the season — but not the last. Two weeks later, the Hurricanes lost to SMU.
Miami bounced back, sneaking into the College Football Playoff and going on a postseason tear en route to the program’s first title game in more than two decades.
But now that UM is in a similar spot during its bye week — 5-0 and ranked No. 4 nationally — the Hurricanes are working to ensure they do not endure another midseason slump.
“Every year, you learn more,” Miami coach Mario Cristobal said.
The veteran coach said earlier in his UM tenure the Miami staff was looking to optimize its training so the team peaked in November and December. This year, their focus has been on making sure they do not hit any kind of lull against midseason opponents like Florida State (Oct. 17), Pitt (Oct. 24) and North Carolina (Oct. 31).
“We looked at last season and were like, ‘Well, OK. We were playing good football, but, man, we had like 13 penalties.’ We had some really uncharacteristic mistakes,” Cristobal said. “And so we jumped on that all offseason and studied what we do, how we do it, the numbers as it relates to sports science, player load, internal readings with all the data that we have and came up with a plan that we felt was going to impact how we go into Games 5, 6 and 7.
“And we had our first opportunity to see it on Saturday night, and we think we got a favorable result.”
Some of those changes are off the field. Cristobal put an emphasis on eliminating distractions.
“It’s a lot of stuff revolving around regimentation,” Cristobal said. “Strategically, we may have enhanced some things, but from a nutrition standpoint, from a travel standpoint, from leaving-a-day-early standpoint, from an eliminated-distraction standpoint — from just being on a complete assault and annihilation of distractions — I think we may have found something to help us continue just to prevent ourselves from not playing our best.”
Last season, the road loss to SMU catalyzed the team. They had a players-only meeting where the team re-focused. It led to four dominant wins to end the season, which led to the Hurricanes’ playoff run. But Cristobal said UM cannot wait for a loss to find its motivation.
“Don’t get me wrong; that hit you between the eyes last year when we lost to SMU,” Cristobal said. “And there’s some good things that came about after the fact, but we’re not waiting for something bad to happen.”
The Hurricanes must be internally motivated, Cristobal said.
“What you’d like is to build a team that doesn’t rely on external factors,” Cristobal said. “That’s the whole motive. You like to have a team that wakes up and thinks about nothing else but whooping somebody’s behind. We never rely on waiting for a source of motivation to create a crisis to get our guys going. I think that would be catastrophic because you’re going to find yourself having to create a crisis every week. And at the end of the day, you’re gonna be just filling your team with (B.S.).”