From the Opposite Corner: Hurricanes vs. Sooners, 3 Oct. 2009

Again, I’m watching the game in standard def.

The game ESPN is feeding the West Coast on their main channel (in HD) is USC-Cal. Understandable, yet no less irritating for that.

This is really grating on me, since I pay $120 a year for GamePlan, mainly to be able to watch my Miami Hurricanes; but between nationally televised games and games that ESPN doesn’t carry on GP, each UM game on GP would be costing me over $30 a pop if I didn’t also use it to watch players for the draft.

And for that $30 a pop, I’m getting games in fuzzy standard def—even though the feeds are in HD.

I hate **** like this that I just can’t do a damned thing about.

Jacory Harris…starting in only his Sophomore season, I’m already running out of superlatives.

Facing the toughest 4-game stretch in CF, he’s cool as the other side of the pillow ( ).

Facing Oklahoma in the last game of that series, he’s even cooler in bringing The U a 3-1 record when most people thought they’d be lucky to win even one of those games.

Up 21-20 in the 4th with -2:00, with his typical chill he executes a perfect play to keep the ball and run out the clock for the win.

And remember: he’s only a true Sophomore!

Great things ahead for this program.

Sub-4.3 players are, by and large, somewhat of a cross between urban legend and coach’s fib.

Oh, a handful of players have been timed electronically at 4.2X at the combine; Bo Jackson was said to have been timed at a 4.1X, but that was in The Dark Times before the internet, when the combine wasn’t televised. And I’ve never found any empirical evidence of it.

(A small boy looks up at his father, a look of horror draining the color from his tiny, innocent face; “Is that true, Daddy? Was the combine ever NOT on television?”)

But when you find a true 4.2X guy, you are a lucky Head Coach indeed; a guy like that can change your team…your career.

And the truth is that with hundreds of college teams, a lot of Head Coaches never even have a shot at a 4.3 player, let alone a physical marvel who can run faster than that.

Which brings us to the cautionary tale of Sam Shields.

I’ve heard of fast players failing before, so that’s not a new topic; speed and football IQ don’t always come in the same body. And the truth is that 4.3 players fail in proportions just as high as slower players.

But a 4.2X guy…I don’t know, man.

I would estimate that a guy like that will be the fastest player on the field 95%+ of the time. He will be able to outrun Defenses, coverages—hell, a guy with that speed can even outrun his own mistakes.

So how is it that Sam Shields, a purported 4.2X player—a Senior on a program that has lacked playmakers so badly over the last few seasons—can’t be any more than a bad Defensive Back for Miami?

Make that a HORRIBLE Defensive Back.

You see him out there, playing lost, so obviously out of position, so obviously not suited to his role, and wonder: how can coaches of a major college program, who are charged with teaching young men, bounce this guy around for FOUR YEARS and still not know what to do with him?

I mean, this isn’t just any player. How can they not find a kid with this gift one—just ONE—way to succeed?

And it brings me back to the one overriding criticism I’ve had of Randy Shannon since he was a position coach: that he DOES NOT develop the young men in his charge.

That he struggles to find roles for the most talented and physically gifted of his charges.

That his players have all-too-often underachieved at The U, but have then gone on to have success in the NFL—often as rookies, fresh from the program in which they often could not even find a POSITION, much less start.

Rocky McIntosh couldn’t start consistently in Shannon’s Defense; he spent his career in and out of Shannon’s infamous doghouse and left Miami with the label of underachiever, despite impressive physical skills and 4.5X speed on a 6’3” 240 frame.

Well, he starts for the Redskins and has since his rookie season, compiling 221 tackles with 5 sacks and 7 forced fumbles in three seasons.

Leon Williams’ career at The U mirrored that of McIntosh, as well as being a close physical match at 6’3 250—and running a faster 40 than Rocky. He didn’t start consistently either, always seeming to be at odds with Shannon.

Yet Williams also started as an NFL rookie, fresh from being a doghouse player; he has 165 tackles, 5 sacks and 6 passes defensed after being taken by Cleveland in the same draft as McIntosh.

Shannon seems to carry on a sad tradition of Larry Coker’s: that of not knowing how to use the most superb athletes laid at his doorstep.

Devin Hester is the prime example of that era, and more than anyone else Hester’s has the most parallels to Sam Shields’ case.

Despite Hester clearly being an electrifying and dangerous player, Coker never did find a way to get the ball in Hester’s hands an adequate number of times a game, even on a team as bereft of game-changing talent as Coker’s Hurricanes.

Hell, there were plenty of games in which Hester didn’t see the ball more than about 5 times. It was sad.

So the moment Hester left for the pros, it was as if he cast off the chains of his small-ball enslavement under Coker, and he immediately flourished in the NFL as a rookie.

The sad part is that Shannon played no small part in that debacle, having been entrusted by Coker with the talented player’s development.

Randy Shannon is NOT responsible for all of the Hurricanes’ ills over the last decade; in fact he has presided over the program’s strong resurgence in recruiting

And now, Shannon finally seems to have a firm grasp of his responsibilities as an executive as opposed to a position coach or Coordinator. He has good, talented and capable men working under him to ensure the team is in good hands as far as the day-to-day.

However, it’s that insidious, annoying thread that runs through Shannon’s coaching career that hasn’t really changed, and it troubles me.

It bothers me because no matter how good your recruiting, you cannot win if you do not develop the young men in your charge to their fullest potential.

Losing 4 Quarterbacks in 3 years to transfer tells me that there is a problem relating to players on some level; losing 2 Quarterbacks in one day just this season tells me that we haven’t seen the last of this problem.

And now…random thoughts:

• What a sweet pair of hands Dedrick Epps has! Watch that catch on the left sideline @8:11/3rd; the way that Epps looks the ball into his hands and cradles it out of bounds is a thing of precise beauty.

• In fact, I said this a couple of weeks ago: I am SO impressed with the 180° turnaround in the way the ‘Canes Receivers are being coached; you can see it beginning with the way they catch the ball, the improvement in technique; but you can also see it in the way they run routes, in how they block, in how they seem to have their heads in the game.

• SUCH a contrast between now and the last few years, between the Lance Leggetts and his sleepwalking ilk and these well-coached kids on the team now.

• Good example: Travis Benjamin’s catch of a pass deflected off Epps hands over the middle @ 49/3rd; it hit his hands and bounced off because of the funky spin from being deflected, but Benjamin stayed with it and brought the ball in with his hands.

• Heady play indeed for another true Sophomore.

• Alen, I’m going to be curious to see if your opinion of Javarris James changed somewhat today. He seemed to have run like a man possessed today; I’d like to see what you think.

• Colin McCarthy…I call him out every week, and every week he brings at least 2-3 big plays to the table.

• Bad Defensive plays aside, the Hurricanes absolutely self-destructed in the 1st half on Special Teams. A long (not to mention beautiful) return by Graig Cooper is called back; then on a kickoff in which Miami manages to pin Oklahoma back around their 10, the ‘Canes are offsides…OFFSIDES! On a kickoff!

• Then @4:11/3rd: a personal foul for roughing the punter, giving the Sooners a 1st down and a subsequent touchdown…pathetic. Anytime you give away 7 points in a close battle like this you are just screwing yourself. Hard.

• Was it a terrible call by the Officials? YES, IT WAS. It wasn’t even running into the punter, as the Hurricanes’ Joe Joseph was already on the ground under the punter’s foot when he came down.

• But in a situation like that, ahead 21-10 against a ranked opponent, just getting the ball back is worth far more than overextending when you risk giving the opponent that sort of break.

• Okay, it’s getting annoying as hell to see Sean Spence making bonehead Freshman mistakes as a starter, yet Arthur Brown remains on the bench. If Spence and Ray-Ray Armstrong can play as Freshmen, why not get Brown on the field?

• That slobber-knocking tackle on the opening kickoff of the 2nd half plus the subsequent forced fumble by Miami, followed by Harris’ perfect throw to Epps for the touchdown was the pivot point of the game.

• The Sooners’ Offense imploding @10:43/3rd with back-to-back 15-yard penalties marked the point at which it sunk in for them.

• Sorry to be mean, especially to a fellow Hispanic—but I am laughing my *** off at Rich Rodriguez. I don’t dislike the guy, but I hope that throwing over a fine school like WVU for the “tradition” of Michigan comes back to bite him in the *** every time he faces a traditional rival.

• Fellow old-timers, tell me if I’m off: announcers used to have much better attention to detail and a grasp of the teams they were covering, didn’t they? Brent Musberger couldn’t BUY the correct pronunciation of a Hurricanes’ player…

• And he’s ancient, so you can forgive him on that basis; but Tim James can’t see that the first letter in Graig Cooper’s name is a “G”?

• And SERIOUSLY…Jarvis James? With 57 minutes already played in the game?

• C’MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNN!!!!!

• I wonder when we can stop seeing the “He’s coming back” commercial on ESPN? Can’t possibly be soon enough.

• And what a hideously distorted world it is when a media-hating, petty little man like Nick Saban can be such a stiff prick to the press for so long, but then be in a commercial for ESPN.

• I’m not bitter.