Best and Worst Case Scenarios for Miami Football in 2015
By Harry Kroll
Last July, I helped kick off our comprehensive and in-depth preview of the upcoming Miami Football season with a big picture look at the best and worst case scenarios for the campaign. I did this by breaking the schedule down and then doing my best to estimate a window for how Miami could do. I ended up settling on five to ten wins and tentatively predicting they would get seven. Not bad, right? Let’s do that again, keeping in mind that this is an incredibly general look at things and we’ll have an extensive, position-by-position preview coming for you down the line.
Just like last year, I’ve separated the schedule into the following categories:
Heavy Favorite: Bethune-Cookman, at Florida Atlantic
Slight Favorite: Nebraska, Virginia Tech
Toss-Up: at Cincinnati, at Duke, at North Carolina, Georgia Tech, at Pittsburgh
Slight Underdog: Clemson
Heavy Underdog: at Florida State
You may quibble with my categorization here and there, but regardless something that jumps off the page right away is the number of toss-up games this year. Those up the chain from me at FanSided are going to hate me saying this because bold, bombastic predictions get clicks, but anyone confidently prognosticating a record for Miami at this point is a fool. As scary as this may sound, the difference between another 6-7 (or worse) debacle and a respectable bounce back season may be largely luck-based. So let’s dive in to the best and worse case for what’s to come and then see if we can’t try to parse that down into a tentative prediction.
Best Case
The offense returns to the highs of last season despite the loss of Duke Johnson as Brad Kaaya takes a major leap from a solid quarterback to a legitimate Heisman contender. The defense largely maintains its play from last season and the team as a whole sustains its performance through the end of the year, unlike the debacle that was the end of the 2014 season.
In terms of results, the best case would see Miami sweeping both the Heavy Favorite and Slight Favorite categories and running off a 4-1 record in the Toss-Ups. Even in the best case scenario, it’s really difficult to see the Hurricanes taking all five of those. If you squint hard enough, you could certainly see an inspired performance leading to a win against Clemson or perhaps FSU, but not both. With all of that in mind, it’s still incredibly difficult to imagine more than 9-3 overall, 6-2 or 5-3 in the ACC as the ceiling for this team. That just might be enough to finally get Miami to the ACC Championship game though, especially if two of the ACC losses came to FSU and Clemson, both members of the Atlantic Division.
Worst Case
Obviously, the worst case for the scenario involves a major injury to Brad Kaaya. I’m going to ignore that scenario because that’s too depressing even for a section of this post that’s supposed to be depressing. So we’ll say he has a bit of a sophomore slump, with his numbers slightly regressing due to losing his two favorite targets from a year ago. Meanwhile, the run game sputters with no Duke Johnson and an uneven offensive line. The defense takes a slight step back after losing Denzel Perryman and Anthony Chickillo. Another loss to FSU, this time even earlier in the season, saps the Hurricanes’ collective resolve.
The worst case record is slightly uglier than last year’s. Miami isn’t losing to Bethune-Cookman or FAU and it’s incredibly unlikely that they’ll drop all of the toss-ups. So we’ll say they split the Slight Favorite games, go 1-4 in the toss-ups, and lose to FSU and Clemson. That puts their record at 4-8, 1-7 or 2-6 in the ACC. Yikes.
Takeaways
In terms of a thousand-foot-view, like last year, the Hurricanes’ window looks like a five-game spread, just one win lower. That feels about right with this very difficult schedule. To me, this looks like 6-6 or 7-5, and if I had to lean towards one I probably say seven wins is the number. That said, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Miami does better than that. There’s plenty of talent there and last year’s team showed that the Hurricanes are not far from being a dominant team when they can put it all together for extended stretches. At the very least, we can take solace in the fact that while we don’t know whether Miami will be particularly good, the Hurricanes definitely won’t be boring.