Do the Canes Need a True Offensive Coordinator?

Canes fans have witnessed legendary offensive play makers on the field, including recent years. Duke Johnson, and David Njoku are a couple that come to mind, with Njoku being a first-round pick; and Johnson, who became the ‘Canes leading rusher in career yards.

Last season, the Canes won 4 games by 8 points or less. The important part is that these games were won, but not in the fashion that many would’ve liked to see. A 5-point victory over a Tarheel squad that finished 3-9 on the season was the low point during this stretch. Playing down to the opponent was a concerning dilemma for the Canes last year, and it finally caught up with them against Pitt. This trend hurt the Canes’ image, despite winning important games. Miami let teams back in the game multiple times due to their streaky offense. Of course, some credit has to go to the opponents, but the Canes were undoubtedly superior to teams like North Carolina, Georgia Tech, and Florida State - and only won those 3 games by a combined 10 points.

A large part of the blame has to go to Quarterback Malik Rosier however, whose inconsistency halted drives and derailed momentum. With that said, I think some less-predictable play calling, and scheme changes may have helped him. One thing I’ve noticed with Richt is that he’ll run a play into the ground until it stops working completely. The ‘Wildcat’ was a formation that worked surprisingly well with DeeJay Dallas, but eventually would become stagnant after the same draw play was called 2-3 consecutive times.There are more examples of this, but the Wildcat was the most obvious in my mind. This predictability in my opinion, was a major factor in terms of why the Canes had so many scoring droughts.

One of the reasons Mark Richt was so excited about taking this job, was because he’d get to be the play-caller. Would taking that ability out of his control hurt his loyalty to the program? In my opinion, Richt shouldn’t give up the responsibility completely, but have someone to consult him. 19 wins in two seasons isn’t bad at all, but there’s always room for improvement, and there’s no telling how high the ceiling for this team would be with a couple changes.