Mario Cristobal Press Conference
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It's the final regular season game for the Miami Hurricanes coming up on Friday. Mario Cristobal provides the latest information for the Canes and where things stand heading into the season finale.
Cristobal's opening statement:
“Had to get to practice right away with a short week, game on Friday. Traveling up to Boston. Good week of work, good day of work, I should say. Hoping to get a couple guys back early in the week.
"Definitely, Elijah Arroyo will be back. (Daryl) Porter looked pretty good today, Leonard Taylor looked pretty good today. (To the) team, we've made it very clear that it is challenging the entire organization to be prepared to the very best of our abilities.
"Traditionally, (it's) a game that's always been a tough game, a hard-fought game. Again, a very physical Boston College team and looking forward to a great opportunity for the twelfth game of the season.”
Miami players and the NFL Draft:
“Honesty and transparency. Making sure we gather and provide all information relevant to a draft status, share it with them; with families so that they can sit down and make the best decision for themselves. But making sure that everything we give them is very accurate. It's a very noisy world postseason for these guys.
“People come at them from all angles. Everybody wants a piece of them and their future earnings and their trajectory and all that other stuff. And it's important that, with everything as it relates to their education, their future life after football, that we're providing them with some really, really good information, accurate information from the right sources. So again, that they can make their best-educated decision for their future.”
If he and UM start the NFL conversations?
“We're always proactive with that. We always want to try our best to keep the main thing the main thing. Which is playing football, playing the season, and making sure that we have some mechanisms in place so that once the time is right to be able to speak openly and honestly about everyone's particular situation. Everyone is different. Everyone has different needs and wants. And certainly everyone has a different status.”
Players skipping bowl games:
“In my opinion, anytime you have a chance to play football, you play football. That's never gonna change. Do I judge people? I don't do that. I don't believe in that. We're no one to judge.
“But always I encourage it, push it because you never know when you are not going to be able to play again and you're not guaranteed another day of football no matter who you are, no matter what your status might be. I believe in closing, closing it out the right way. So hopefully that answers the question.”
Miami playing in the ACC:
“I know that having been in different conferences, actually three conferences in the last eight years. The teams in this conference are as good as the ones in any conference that I've coached at. And it's really interesting that the caliber of quarterback play is really high. I thought the level of the trench play in this conference were really, really good. Everybody has good three techniques, everybody has good edge rushers, guys that can play man coverage. The pieces that you look forward to establish a team like great running backs. But back to the other part.
“The pieces that you look forward to get teams rolling and give yourself a chance to win football games, just about everybody has them, in some way shape or form the other. Now some areas on some teams are a little bit more advanced than others.
“Certainly, we're putting our roster together and developing our roster from within with talent acquisition as best we can, but I think, top to bottom, this is an excellent league that can compete with anybody and I think the record shows that against other conferences.”
Elijah Arroyo’s injury and impact:
“I mean, he's one of our best players. He really is. And even last year when he was lost it drastically affected what we do and how we do things. He looked really good today, so we're very excited about his return. Just want to get to Friday and make sure that he's out there and everything goes as planned. He has been through a lot, being nicked up and being legitimately injured a year ago. But no, he's a dynamic football player and a great, great team leader. A great human being as well, so he's been sorely missed. Looking forward to having him back.”
Why Jaleel Skinner has not played more:
“Approach to the game has to be a lot more diligent. He's a really good young man. He's a talented young man. He could run, he's a little bit thin but he's working on his body. I think he has a really bright future. Just has to go all in on what it takes to be a great football player at that position. You have to be good at the line of scrimmage and you have to be good detached.
“You got to be able to have great balance and body control and track the football because if you're that size, you want to be able to make contested catches, those big body throws right, those back shoulder fades, and those deep balls where he just jumped over people.
“So we challenge him daily. Got to keep challenging daily because he has to get more out of himself and we need to get more out of him for him to be a productive player in our system. But he's a good young man.”
Discussing Miami’s wide receivers and how they improved:
“When you work hard, hard work works. I think overall as a receiver room, we got to keep pushing, we got to keep grinding. We have developed. We have certainly progressed and advanced. And when you keep pushing that, when you keep pushing working just as hard in the run game as we do in the pass game, because that usually is a difference in explosive runs, right, getting blocks downfield and whatnot.
“And so Restrepo definitely had a really good game last game. We want to see more consistency out of the entire receiving core. We want to push them more. Anytime we go over anything of the nature of improving, getting better, something that wasn't so well, we always say the same thing.
“We're going to work on it together, we are going to get better together. And that's certainly the case for that group. There's potential in there and we have to get more out of it.”
Xavier Restrepo and the slot wide receiver position:
“(Restrepo) works at it, certainly works at it. That position in this offense, Coach Dawson in his previous stop, that was a leading receiver in the country and certainly one of the better players in the NFL, one of the higher draft picks because if you find a way to create matchups or spots in the defense and the ball is designed to go somewhere on every single play and it's systematic where the ball is out and there is somewhere to go with it.
“And if you're very disciplined at that position, the ball is going to find you more times than not, so he's made the most of his opportunities. He's a hard worker, and I'm gonna push them to be pushed like everybody else, to continue to do everything possible to be the best leader he can be.
“And I'm gonna demand that of everybody because with all the things that we've done to progress and get better and us looking for that next step, and how to you've got to lean heavily on guys are producing and playing well and push them to get more out of them. There's more and everybody and we're gonna push that.”
Regarding talking to FSU head coach Mike Norvell about Jordan Travis’s injury:
“A lot of times I don't reach out to coaches personally just because of the hustle and bustle of the day. I can tell you that he is in our thoughts and prayers and personally in mine.”
How the Miami program is making progress:
“It’s the reality of progress. I think a lot of times, probably don't dive into it as much because it's not really my job or place to dive into starting points. Every program has a different starting point, and we came here a million miles per hour and that's not going to stop. And we left the program at a different starting point than the program we came into.
“And the fact that the amount of progress that has taken place over the course last 18-20 months has us really excited because it's real. There's n making up anything. There's no created narratives there is the reality of work. There's a reality of improvement. There's a reality of closing the gap. There's a reality of talent development. There's a reality of talent acquisition; assistants developing.
“All of a sudden our offense and defense are in the Top 25, Top 30. All of a sudden, it's a fourth-quarter game every single week and we're finding a way to win, win in overtime, or come up short. So everything is really disclosed in terms of that gap. And that is exciting because these are, I said this before, these are unfortunately steps that you cannot skip. We'd like to and we'd like to grab everyone, and we don't find constellation anything but that, but also been around long enough and enough of these processes to know what's real and what's not.
“This one is real. And I think it's reflected in our players, as hard as they play, the way they played at the end. It reflects in a way that we're continuing to recruit at a high level because people understand and see, ‘Woah,l Miami is really becoming different again.’ So it's pretty much that simple.”
Playing in cold weather at Boston College:
“I mean, we went right at it. We challenged the entire organization to be better and understand and realize that that's kind of the narrative right?
“Guys in South Florida don’t want to hop on a plane and hey don't want to mix it up and slug it out on cold weather on turf. There's an old saying at a place I worked at that, ‘There's no such thing as bad weather, only soft people.’ So you have a choice in this thing. And at the end of the day, that film is going to show who is a tough SOB and who was a real competitor, and who's going to buckle and fold.
“And we expect a great challenge and nothing but the very best out of Boston College and we expect nothing but the very best out of ourselves. We've worked hard, we've trained hard. We've had some really good moments, some other disappointing moments. The right guys are gonna be on that plane, and are gonna be on that field on Friday.”
Why additional bowl practices matter to the program overall:
“That's very important because, and it's using them the right kind of way because your team physically could be at different stages. Sometimes your team is relatively healthy, sometimes you're banged up. But there's a lot of things you could work on.
“You could work on situational football, you could dedicate full days to special teams, you could dedicate full days to two-minute drill, you could dedicate it to your one-on-one work, competitive drills. Which is always a game changer, when you just play the game the way you always play since you were a kid.
“So there's a lot that goes with that, but you have plenty of time to game plan and prepare for that opponent. You don't want to prepare for that opponent 15 days out. Unfortunately, people, human nature, is that you can get bored, right? And all of a sudden your sense of urgency declines a little bit, so they're used the right way.
“Some days are used for strength and conditioning. Some days are used for legitimate team activities, (and) legitimate connecting bonding activities. They're really valuable days. Think about it, spring ball is 15 days long. We don't have OTAs like the NFL does. So this is like an advanced calendar that allows you to do some of those things without wearing your team out.
How to mix up the bowl practices:
“I would say it's a little bit different because you have finals, you got to spread things out a little bit. Holidays might be in the middle or might be part of the bowl. You've got to be really selective, you got to really map it out. We have like four or five different maps depending on where we end up playing. And then the option to play a quality opponent and find out more about your team and go compete and go improve.
“Certainly, when the ball gets here, we'll be all over it and talking about the bowl, but right now every ounce of effort and focus is on Boston College.”
Tyler Van Dyke looking better:
“I thought when he took off with the ball and got us eight, nine yards. Stepped up in the pocket, take away the flat route, take away the corner route, boom 2nd and 2. That's being decisive. And that's just playing ball, right? That's understanding, at the end of the day, move the sticks, score points.
“Look, football is kind of unforgiving, right, and sometimes unpredictable. And sometimes guys go through rough patches, but you don't let him eat it all by himself.
“You make sure you take accountability and ownership as an entire program and reassess and go from there. And wherever it takes you, it takes you. But make every decision as it relates to what's best for the team. That's it. Nothing else important.”
What Van Dyke is like as a player:
“Tough competitor. Again, being a quarterback, you got to have thick skin. Quarterback in Miami, double up.”
How practices and meetings work during Thanksgiving week:
“On Wednesday, we'll do what resembles a Thanksgiving meal. We're very grateful for the things that we have. At the end of the day, that's the biggest challenge is making sure we all play for that ‘U’ that it's on all these chairs. That's what we all signed up for. And we have to show gratitude for that.
“And the best way to show it is by the way we play, by the way we go to class, by the way we earn our diploma, like being real. This is not just a bunch of independent contractors showing up to, ‘Hey, what can I do today for myself.’ It's got to be still about the program itself.
"And there's a lot to be grateful for. We'll do that on Wednesday right after practice. And Wednesday is really a Thursday. On Thursday, we will travel, get up there and do our normal routine. Friday, wake up early and go right to it.”
The challenges BC presents:
“I think it starts with their physicality. Both the offense and defensive line are big strong guys. They knock you back. Offensively they just give you a lot of different pictures.
“I mean, they can line up with nine offensive linemen or they can slip some tight end jerseys on linemen, or they can spread you out. The quarterback can run, he can throw. Their boots and waggles are challenging. Their quarterback run game is challenging. Their vertical play action shots are challenging defensively. Field fire, internal fires.
“When I say fires, (I mean) blitzes. Some of the corner pressure, (the) secondary pressures they bring. When you get down tighter and some of their stuff they'll pull the trigger and play cover zero, bring an extra guy and try to hit the quarterback.
“And they’re very disciplined. They understand their leverages, they keep them. They have really good eye discipline. And when they put together complete games, it's been really impressive. That's just a very well coached team, and a team that so I believe it's Coach Hafley’s fourth season. A team that you could tell has been together for four years.”
Cristobal playing against Boston College:
“I'd rather not relive that (Doug Flutie) game. I remember that. I remember playing up there. I remember being in a tight game up there. I remember, gosh, you name it. I mean, seems like every single game with Boston College was always a knockout drag-out type of game. So why would we expect anything else?
“Now our players haven't really had that opportunity to play Boston College, and that's what we had been emphasizing all week long. This is, in essence, this is a rivalry game. This is as always been like, alright, the guys up there up north and the guys from down South.
“Sometimes you got to play in the hot weather when you’re used to the cold, and sometimes vice versa. Well, we're going up there to their territory, their place. So tremendous amount of respect for them and looking forward to a great game.”
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