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Kaaya’s performance this season has been highly scrutinized by fans and members of the media. The junior quarterback has not performed up to expectations, but he is not solely responsible for that.
The offense in general has underperformed, and a big reason why is Miami’s offensive line. Their play has been inconsistent and just not good enough to run the style of offense that Mark Richt prefers. The offensive line is not the only unit that has lacked consistency, the receivers have dropped crucial passes throughout the entire season.
In Miami’s first four games the receivers only dropped 1 of every 17 catchable passes, but in the last two they have dropped 1 of every 5 catchable passes. Cameron went into more detail in Sunday’s News and Notes.
Before the season began, Kaaya was already considered by many draft analysts as a potential first round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft. Which automatically brought a heap of expectations for him to improve upon an impressive sophomore season. If that was not enough, many wanted to see how Kaaya would progress under new head coach Mark Richt, who has quite the resume when it comes to developing quarterbacks.
Six games into the season and Miami fans are still waiting for the breakout game from their star quarterback. Kaaya is completing 62 percent of his passes, which is similar to his overall completion percentage from the 2015 campaign.
The tables below shows how Kaaya played in the first six games last season compared to the first six this season.
2015
| OPP | Result | CMP | ATT | YDS | CMP% | TD | INT |
| BC | W 45-0 | 16 | 27 | 173 | 59.3% | 2 | 0 |
| FAU | W 44-20 | 21 | 32 | 287 | 65.6 | 1 | 0 |
| NEB | W 36-33 | 25 | 42 | 379 | 59.5 | 2 | 1 |
| CIN | L 34-23 | 24 | 39 | 255 | 61.5 | 0 | 0 |
| FSU | L 29-24 | 29 | 49 | 405 | 59.2 | 3 | 0 |
| VT | W 30-20 | 19 | 30 | 296 | 63.3 | 2 | 0 |
2016
| OPP | Result | CMP | ATT | YDS | CMP% | TD | INT |
| FAMU | W 70-3 | 12 | 18 | 135 | 66.7 | 4 | 0 |
| FAU | W 38-10 | 17 | 31 | 191 | 54.8 | 0 | 2 |
| APP ST | W 45-10 | 21 | 27 | 368 | 77.8 | 3 | 1 |
| GT | W 35-21 | 13 | 19 | 241 | 68.4 | 1 | 0 |
| FSU | L 20-19 | 19 | 32 | 214 | 59.4 | 2 | 1 |
| UNC | L 20-13 | 16 | 31 | 224 | 51.6 | 0 | 0 |
The biggest difference between the two are the interceptions and the amount of attempts. Under James Coley, Kaaya threw the ball more often which allowed him to have more passing yards. Although he has been throwing the ball less this season, he has thrown three more interceptions compared to this point last year.
There are a lot of factors that can be causing him to play like this, including the speculation that he is playing with an injured shoulder. It will interesting to see what Mark Richt changes to get this play caller rolling again.