Everything Mario Cristobal said Ahead of Miami's First Matchup Against Stanford

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — The Miami Hurricanes are back for another week of football but all the minds of everyon in Coral Gables was still on the game against Louisville.

The Hurricanes are preapring to face off against Stanford for the first time in program histroy, but now is the time to move on and improve from last weeks gameplan. There is still a lot more that the Canes can do and while their national championship expectations have taken a hit, they are still in a great position to be a playoff team.

Head coach Mario Cristobal knows that this week has to be about eliminating the little things so the team can improve.

Opening Statment…

"Alright, so getting back to work today, coming off of obviously a disappointing night on Friday. We didn't coach well enough, or play well enough, or execute well enough, and had a chance to certainly get with our players, our entire staff assess it, make the corrections and move forward and get all our focus on our opponents this week in Stanford."

On the adjustments in the run game they need to make after disappointing performance against Louisville…

"Well, I think the simplicity of coaching it better, to execute at a higher level. The devil's in the details. We've been really good at running the football, and we've been a little bit off the last couple of weeks, and we need to get back to our ways in the form and the way that we do run the football, and that's with the principles of technique and fundamentals and pad level and making sure we can get both downhill and outside by doing what we do."

On the pre-snap penalties…

"The common thread, it's hurt us. There's no question about that. They not only stall drives, but they've created good field position for the opponent, which led to points on the other side as well. So that's where, in these games, the margins are really important, and the margins between winning and losing become smaller and smaller. And that's one where we have not done a good enough job. I have not done a good enough job in getting us to reduce those, eliminate those. That's what you want, right? Reducing and eliminating pre-snap and post-snap penalties. Keep everything between the lines and snap to whistle. So the common thread is we just have not a good enough job."

On how much he expects opponents to copy Louisville's game play against them…

"I think we've seen a lot of it before, in the couple previous years, and we've had better success. I think our failure to execute falls on all of us, right? We win as a team. We lose as a team. But the details of execution, of hat position, hand placement, angles, leverage, details, in protection, routes, play call, and all the things that lead to success or not being successful, and all that has to improve. The plan itself, we've seen all up, we've seen quarters cover three man, we've seen it all, and we have had success, and we can and will have success, and to do so, we have to prepare at the highest level and make sure we carry it over to game plan."

On how QB Carson Beck has responded since the game…

"Well, we've seen him handle it very professionally, certainly, and make sure that every player and every staff member knows that we win together and we lose together. Finger pointing won't exist here. Besides making these guys better football players, you have to make them better men, better people. And in life, that is a hard, cold lesson that you have to learn when things don't go well and everything's coming down, and people want to point at you. You man up, you get your butt off the ground, you go right back to work. That's the expectation. That's all we've seen, and that's all we will see going forward."

On the social media comments that Beck threw teammates under the bus in his post-game comments…

"I wouldn't be aware or in tune with, just trying to digest your statement in terms of people under the bus. Again, that doesn't exist here, because it's not part of the culture and just not allowed. It just has no place. But I think the entire team has complete clarity that every coach, every player, everybody takes this. Every win and takes every loss together. There is no exception, and again, there is no blame or finger point."

On if he spoke with Beck about his post-game comments…

"Like I mentioned there, that's something that's very new to me, and you bringing that up, but there is no hint or inkling of any blame being passed around to anybody in our room, our locker room, or our building."

On the status of DE Akheem Mesidor after missing some time in Friday night's game…

"Obviously, it was tough for him to finish the game. He was a little bit banged up, but he seems to be on track to be healing."

On the first ever matchup between Miami and Stanford…

"I think they've been through a lot as a program with a change and whatnot and coaching and all the things that are going on, and I think they've done a great job at really finding their way and schematically, and from a personnel standpoint, putting guys in position to play really, really well. And I think it showed on Saturday against Florida State with them holding one of the best offenses in the country to 13 points, and playing a really physical brand of football. Knocking a quarterback out the game, really explosive in the run game, really good on third down, really good on third down defense and red zone defense as well. And schematically, you could tell that their experience as pros and having been in the pros is really starting to carry over and bleed into what they do schematically. They certainly pose, besides being a physical team that really plays hard, they do enough stuff schematically where you really have to prepare well."

On not allowing a point off of a turnover this season…

"It was very much a big part of today's team presentation. In the margins, meaning hidden yardage right, having to punt the ball and not covering it well, and having being subjected to a self inflicted penalty in the yards that go with that and where the ball is placed when the opponent gets the ball, how that leads to points? Those are hidden yardage points. Those are the margins.

"Well, on the flip side, there's three turnovers offensively that lead to no points due to the defense's ability to rise up and play really good football. That's impressive stuff. That is going to lead us to bigger and greater accomplishments on game day, and certainly stuff that we still have to, we have to continue to build upon. And if you talk to the defensive guys, we'll talk about the details that have to be done, the swarm, the violence and the physicality, but certainly a lot of a lot of bright spots on defense."

On if there are changes that need to be made offensively and defensively…

"The same team, we lost on Saturday, but it's the same team that won five games against arguably the toughest out of conference schedule this year in college football. So where are the changes? It's more improvements and obviously presenting our players with schematical technique, fundamental advantages and answers to help us execute at a higher level. Right? That comes with everybody having more mental intensity and energy, but collectively as a group, some of it is tweaking, and some of it might be changing, but it's also improving, and really doing things that we have done well, doing them well again, and not straying from that. Not allowing us to get caught up in some of the things we mentioned earlier about the pre- and post-snap penalties, because those things do knock you off schedule and do kill drives, you know. So I think it falls a little bit here and a little bit there."

On the tackling from the defense…

"We missed more tackles than usual. I think we're playing against some really good players. I think we can't lose sight of that. But I do think that our positioning and the details that go into our drops. Sometimes we're off, and like we spoke about today, as a team, we've got to coach it better. We've got to teach it better, then we've got to execute it better. We weren't we weren't as precise in some of our positionings, in our zones and whatnot, and we got to be better."

On the uneven week-to-week performances from teams in college football…

"It's the reality of football. I think we all have to understand that college football is working its way more and more to be more like professional football, where more teams have really good players. And anyone that doesn't believe that is in for a surprise. Everybody has really good players. And now 5,6, 7 weeks into the season, everybody has film, right? And everybody's talking to staff that have played against you, and you're talking to staff that have played against your opponents, and you're talking to former staff members. You're getting every nugget of information you possibly can to create an advantage. That's the reality of it. So if there's a hole, there's some be exposed, if there's something that you haven't quite corrected yet, you're going to see it. And if you ain't ready, and if you ain't getting better at it, it's going to hurt you. I think it's really important to point out that despite not being at our best and not playing to the standard at the end of the day, we still have the ball in hand at 31-yard line, with two timeouts, with a chance to tie or win the game. So there is a there's a positive in the fact that our players will play hard all the way to the end, that we can dig our way out of stuff. We obviously did too much in a negative way to dig ourselves all the way out, and we need to improve upon those things to get the result."

On the decision to throw from the 31-yard line on the final drive…

"It's part of the play call sheet. It's part of the play call sheet, and the call was made and the call was not executed. And that falls on every coach and every player in the building."

On sticking what has worked versus changing things up to give teams new looks as the season progresses…

"Well, I think that's too general of a question to give a blanket answer to. When you say a team is going quick game and the ball is coming out less than two seconds, right, how do you neutralize that? Well, it has to be in the form of coverage, right? In the form of a battered ball, right? If they're chipping on your defensive end with a tight end or keeping them home and using the back on the other side as well. Well, then you got to get home in a couple different ways, and you've got to be able to hold up outside versus in-cuts versus back-shoulder fades, right? What you're willing to take away, you got to be willing to risk winning and one-on-one situations on the other side. So as the season goes on and on, and as you study film–I know you do–is you've got to really dig into the cat and mouse game that goes in with that so that. So it's more than just a general, 'Got to do this or got to change.' You always got evolve as the season goes on. If you go in again and again with the exact same picture, and that picture doesn't change, you're going to get your butt wired. They're going to wire you, right? So from the wrinkles to the compliments that go with it, we've done a really good job up until this last game. But to in any way, shape or form, think that the University of Miami hasn't done a good job this year. I think, it doesn't fit. It doesn't make much sense to our process. We didn't play to the standard. We did not do our job. We didn't coach well enough, we didn't play well enough, we didn't execute well enough, and we've won five games. We lost one game, and we got to keep improving to make sure we get our best chance to go be 1-0 this Saturday."

On if there's more of an emphasis on the 1-0 mentality with a lot at stake moving forward…

"I don't look at it that way. I would say it's never less of a point of emphasis. Does that make sense? You don't put degrees of value on a win and then lessen it versus other opponents. It would be illogical for our players to even try to fathom that concept. You don't put a degree. It's too disrespectful to football. It's too disrespectful to opponents. Every single opportunity has to be treated like the fight of your life. That's the only way to get the absolute best out of yourself, and that's our approach every single time. The bottom line is we didn't get the outcome that we wanted, okay. the processes must always improve and get better."

On if the early 14-0 deficit took them out of the run game…

"Two scores early in the game should never take you out of that. I think when when you put together a game plan and you see things throughout the course of the game, both on the iPad, communication upstairs in the box, everything is geared towards giving us the best chance to win every play call. There's not a single play call on a sheet by any coordinator that's a random guess. Doesn't exist. There's an answer to every coverage, every pressure that we're getting. 'What's this? What fits best, versus bear? Bear, MIKE, and WILL fire? Corner fire, right? Quarters, zero, all up, bluff, all up, bring it. All that stuff. And so everything is very, very selectively chosen and placed on that call sheet. And the calls that were made were the ones that we felt at the time were the best to give our team the best chance to win."