After saying Thursday that the defense had outshone the offense early in fall camp, coach Mario Cristobal said the offense had the better day in the team’s first scrimmage on Saturday.
“Defense has been getting after them and knocking them around all week, and today the offense countered in a big-time way,” Cristobal said in an in-house interview posted on the team’s YouTube channel. “All sparked by a big-time third-down play that snowballed into more and more (big) plays. But also more physicality at the line of scrimmage on both sides, but today the day belonged to the offense.”
Miami defensive back Jadais Richard said early this past week that UM’s secondary had locked down the team’s receivers well, but that changed in the scrimmage.
“The offense today, they adjusted to the speed of the defense,” Cristobal said. “Throughout the course of the week, the defense created a lot of negative plays for the offense, really pressured the quarterback, did a good job snuffing out our receivers and tight ends in coverage. Today, the offense created more separation, more air and made more plays.”
Cristobal said the Hurricanes have nailed down their base special-teams schematics.
The Hurricanes followed the scrimmage with a family barbecue, Cristobal said.
“It’s not like prison,” Cristobal said, “but you’ve got your family for an hour, so it’s visitation hours now. See your family, but if you take a nap, make sure you set your alarm because we’ve got meetings, we’ve got lift, we’ve got walk-through. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
