Everything Miami's Offensive Coordinator Shannon Dawson Said Ahead of Fiesta Bowl

The Miami Hurricanes offense will have a challenge to match the Ole Miss Rebels if the defense can't slow down the most electric offense remaining in the country.

The Hurricanes have had a great attack during the College Football Playoff, but with limited points and possesions, the Canes have the chance to either slow down thepossessions pace and lean on the Rebels or go blow for blow with them.

Miami's offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson spoke with the media to highlight some of the positives and negatives from Ohio State and how he is preparing the Rebels.

Q. Talk a little bit about your adaptability. You've morphed into a lot of different things over the course of the season, and now, of course, in the playoffs, the defenses are at a different level. Just talk about how you've had to adapt week to week.

COACH DAWSON: I think it's probably that way every year. Game plans week to week are going to change based on the defenses you're playing, the things you're doing good. A lot of it has to do with people across the ball and how they're programmed and how they're built. But ultimately, every year is a "figuring out what you're good at" type journey. We've kind of settled into the spot where we're at right now, and we're having some success versus some very high-quality defenses, and we feel good about where we're at.

Q. What stands out about Ole Miss' defense as you start to prepare for them?

COACH DAWSON: Very athletic. They're built probably pretty similar to us. Their edge guys are really good. They get off the ball. The backend runs around. Pete [Golding] mixes it up a good bit. I've known him for a while. He's been a good DC for a long time. Now, obviously, head coach. They do a very good job on defense. Very athletic. They move the front around a good bit. The guy in the middle is, what, 6'8"? Big boy. So they can push the pocket, they can move the pocket, and they can bend the edges, which makes it challenging.

Q. Under the first touchdown, had you thrown out of that look all year yet?

COACH DAWSON: Not with that look. Mali (Malachi Toney) threw it out of the Mali Cat formation. I don't know if you remember that. He threw it to [Girard] Pringle and missed him. I forget what game that was in, but we've ran it out of different sets, not that exact set.

Q. It was kind of the first time Carson --

COACH DAWSON: Yeah, he had been begging for some quarterback run game all year, so I figured I'd put a quarterback counter in that he would have the option if they gave him the right look. So he was probably hoping they'd cover Mark [Fletcher] and he could run it. But they left him open, so he spit it out to them. It was a great read by him.

Q. What did you make of Carson's [Beck] game last week, just how we played? COACH DAWSON: I thought he played very efficient. He took what the defense gave from the very beginning. He never put the ball in jeopardy. The ball was always going to the right place. Third downs were elite. Really. I mean, almost 60%, 55% against one of the top third down defenses in the nation. Part of that is him getting the ball out to the right spot very accurately.

The conversions of third down at the end of the game were key, and he met all the right checks. A couple of those plays, there were a couple different calls, and he had to pick the right one versus the right defense, and he got it right every time. Some of the stuff he did in the run game was elite, and it's been elite for the last few weeks, not that it hadn't been the whole season. But our receivers do a phenomenal job blocking, and he does a good job gearing them in the right direction. Our run game is a process. It's a process of communication and getting people to block the right people, and they do a good job working together and communicating together.

Q. You've said so much the last couple years about wanting the simple plays, the regular rep-by-rep plays to be perfect. Obviously, wanting to see the explosives, this, that, or the other. The way you guys are playing right now, is this what you like to see, where you're executing what you need to execute, and if the big play is there, the big play is there?

COACH DAWSON: A lot of the big plays are dictated by the defensive play. If you look at that game, the safety was in the middle of the field most of the game. So when the safety is in the middle for most of the game, you're not going to complete a post job. Corners were giving us some loose coverage for most of the game. With that, you're not going to complete a lot of go routes. A lot of the stuff we completed was underneath, based on that's what the defense was giving us. We have a bunch of routes that go down the field, and on basically every concept, but if the first guy is open and it just so happens to be in the shorter range, the ball is going to go there based on what the defense is doing.

I mean, I love taking shots more than anybody, but you can't just take it for no apparent reason. If they're there, they're there. There were a couple times we caught them in quarters or man coverage, and we threw the vertical to CJ [Daniels]. Corn [Elder] had made a good play. And then we had a route down the middle to Mali (Malachi Toney) that I thought – I mean, we caught him in the right coverage. He kind of got grabbed a little bit, so it hung him up. Carson [Beck] came off to Keelan [Marion] and threw the curl route. We had a couple opportunities down the field, but they did a good job of covering it up at the right times. I do stress the fact that I like calling shots. I like taking them when they're there. But if they're not there, checking it down and getting six yards. Second and 4 is better than a second and 10 incomplete ball.

Does that make sense? And that happened a lot in that game. I think eight or nine of the third downs were in medium or less. So that was a big emphasis from the A&M game to that game, was, hey, I wanted to get in third and manageable so we could convert them and keep drives going.I knew the nature of their defense, too. I mean, they haven't given up a lot of explosive plays all year. I think they give up around eight points a game. You've got to be methodical in those situations and take what they can give, and hopefully you make some of those deals underneath and make it a big play. But just so happened they tackled pretty damn good, too. It's one of those deals.

Q. Played against Ole Miss last year. Did you go back and watch that tape? Is there value to doing that? Do you have any takeaways from that game?

COACH DAWSON: I did. I've watched the last couple seasons of Ole Miss. You take things away from every game, obviously, but we have focused more on the recent history of them. But I do just go back and kind of peek.

Q. You guys have been good with ball security all year. Four fumbles the last few, lost two of them. How much more of an emphasis has ball security been in practice as of late?

COACH DAWSON: It's going to have to be even a bigger emphasis in the next couple days, because we got very fortunate. Our ball security has been good all year. But it wasn't great in that game.We turned it over one time in the red zone that would have cost us points. Points in those games were obviously vital. There was a couple times we put the ball on the ground and there were a couple times the ball got loose and didn't get on the ground, but we've got to secure the football. We make a huge point of when the football is in your hand, the program is in your hand. So you've got to take care of the ball. The one that Mali (Malachi Toney) had, it just so happened to bounce right back up to him, which was very fortunate. But yeah, we've got to secure the ball better, which we have all year. That game was not up to our standard, for sure. But it will be addressed. It's been addressed. Thankfully, we have a bunch of guys that know already. You don't really have to tell them. I feel certain that they're going to take ownership of it.

Q. Building a program through the offensive and defensive line, how much does having confidence in your trenches change the way you can call a game like the Fiesta Bowl?

COACH DAWSON: I think it gives you a chance. In those games where there was -- everybody left playing is pretty good up front, especially D-line. When you get in those situations where there's five minutes left to go in a game and we were up six with five minutes. In those kind of situations, it's hard to grind it out if you're not elite in the trenches. Really, from the beginning of the game, you could tell that we could handle them up front. Our O-line did a good job from the beginning. That's a good feeling for a play caller. It's been the other way a lot in my career, and when it's the other way, you know it. You can feel it, you know what I mean?It gives you some freedom to call the game in a certain way, and you can always know that, hey man, if we've got to lean on those guys at the end to grind it out, we have a pretty good chance.

Q. You guys have obviously played CharMar Brown a lot during the season, but I think you started that game-winning drive with Fletcher getting the first two carries. If you could speak to the decision of putting Marty in there in that spot. Did you make that call? Did running backs coach make the call? How did it come about? Obviously, a big hero in that game.

COACH DAWSON: Marty, every time his number is called, he's showed up. The kid's got a phenomenal attitude. At some point in your life as an athlete, things aren't going to go exactly the way you want it to go. How you handle those situations are vital, and he stayed extremely positive these last couple games when he wasn't getting the touches that he had been getting earlier in the year. At that point, Coach [Matt] Merritt does a great job of feeling people and feeling the game, and he felt that Marty was the one we would throw it to. If Marty needed a break at that point in the game, it's a physical game, and he went to him. He's been pretty spot-on through the course of his time here with who to put in the game, and I trust him with that. He did a heck of a job there, and Marty did a phenomenal job coming in and really finishing the game off, and the third down catch was really vital. Then the runs at the end were crucial.

Q. I was wondering, the defense has just made astonishing improvements year-over-year, statistically, analytically. Just how much has that defense really complemented your offense this season? From seeing it up close, have you ever seen something like this year-over-year?

COACH DAWSON: No. I'm trying to complement them, to be quite honest with you. They're an elite group, and Corey [Hetherman] does a heck of a job. There's been times in my career where we've had to score 40 points to win games, and there's been a couple times in my career that's been like this. There was one year in Houston where we were the fourth or fifth ranked defense, and we won 12. We were good on offense. We were efficient on offense. We weren't one of the top in the nation on offense. Ultimately, you do kind of conform to who the team is. There's no ego with me. Look, I just want to win the game, and I know that our defense is playing at an extremely high level. So there are situations in the game where I'm cautiously aggressive, because I don't want to put those guys in a tough situation, and I do trust those guys with everything. There's also times in the game where – when Ohio State came out the second half, and we were having some success with some tempo. They weren't really getting lined up. Then when Ohio State came out the second half and had a drive that was long, like an eight-minute drive. In those kind of situations, too, I've kind of huddled a little bit more and tried to grind out a couple first downs to give us some time to catch our breath. It is a complete understanding of how the flow of the game is going, and I do have it in the back of my mind about those guys over there when they are out there on the field a lot. It doesn't always work out that way, because heck, sometimes you do that and you go three and out and you feel like an idiot. There's nothing worse than going three and out when the defense was on the field for eight minutes. I thought there were a lot of things in that game, momentum changes and all the rest, but the key turning point in that game was – this is my opinion – when they came out the second half and scored, and if we get stopped there, then it's 14-7 and it's a dogfight. But we took it and drove down, we didn't score, but we kicked a field goal. 50-yard field goal, great kick. But that drive and that little turn of events kind of stopped the momentum a little bit, and then our defense got back out there and gained their footing. I thought that was a crucial turn in the game for us to go down and get some points at that time.

Q. I was wondering, Mario [Cristobal] just said that the team didn't really handle the success in the early part of the season well, and I was wondering from an offensive perspective, if you could speak to that and whether that kind of affected some of the inconsistencies that we saw with the offense around mid-season? And just locking in and eliminating distractions, whether that's helped with the efficiency we've seen from the offense here over the last six games?

COACH DAWSON: I agree. I think that our group, through the course of the year, didn't handle success the way you should handle success. The way you handle success is really you've got a clean slate every week. You can't let the pats on the back soften your approach, which basically is the hardest thing to do is to battle complacency through the course of a winning run. Really, I think it has a lot to do with just mental focus. Whenever you're dialed in and you're focused to the point where you have that edge to you and you're preparing the right way, you tend to be more efficient when you play and you execute better. That's one thing that we've stressed since that little rough patch, is just respecting every opponent you play. It's more about us and our edge and our mental focus than it is about the people across the ball. But I am very aware of the handling of success is way harder than handling failure. Typically, when you have failure, you bounce back because you go back to the ground and you start grinding and all the rest. But success will soften you, and you'll start thinking you're as good as the people that are typing on the keyboard that are telling you you're good. So ultimately, if you can stay somewhere grounded in the middle, I think you'll be a much better person, a much better player.

Q. You talked a little bit about not having an ego as a play caller and staying on schedule, not really forcing the issue with the way your defense is playing. Just how much does having an experienced quarterback like Carson [Beck], who is willing to buy into that and get the other guys to buy into that philosophy, how does that help you as a play caller?

COACH DAWSON: His mentality and approach to the game is -- every year is different. His mentality and his approach to the game is exactly what this team needed and needs. He sees football in a very different way, so he understands the makeup of this team. He understands our role. Now, with everything that's being said, I still try to score every time we get the damn ball. That's not ever going to change. But how we do it, obviously, changes, and the understanding of the flow of the game changes. But his understanding of taking what the defense gives is really what makes him, him. He really doesn't put the ball in jeopardy a lot.To go back to the previous question, that was really what bit us in the ass early in the year, was like, we turned the ball over, which it didn't really affect the game as far as points, but it took possessions away from us. We need possessions. I don't mind losing a possession like a Pick 6 for a touchdown. That's a great way to lose a possession. But when you lose it the other way, it affects the game in a very negative way.

Everything Miami's Offensive Coordinator Shannon Dawson Said Ahead of Fiesta Bowl

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