Miami Hurricanes relied heavily on defensive starters vs. Florida

The Miami Hurricanes used a short bench in their season-opening loss to Florida. The starters played the vast majority of the snaps for the Miami defense.

Aside from allowing a pair of big plays the Miami Hurricanes defense played very well against Florida. A 66-yard touchdown on a catch and run following a short pass and 65-yard completion following a missed field goal by Bubba Baxa that completely shifted the momentum of the game.

The positives from the Miami defense were not allowing long drives and forcing four turnovers. The Hurricanes defense limited Florida to 23:47 of possession time and 304 total yards. With few exceptions, the loss to the Gators was not on the Miami defense. One of the surprising things is how heavily the Miami defense leaned on their starters.

Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald listed the snap counts for the Hurricanes defense. Because of their dominance in time of possession, Miami limited Florida to 56 plays. That did not give the Hurricanes a lot of opportunities to play multiple players. Even with the limited number of plays Florida ran, Miami gave the majority of snaps to their starters.

Miami defensive snaps against Florida:

Defensive End:

• Trevon Hill and Greg Rousseau 14 snaps
• Jon Garvin 49 snaps, Scott Patchan 42 snaps

It was surprising that the snaps were not more even at defensive end. The Hurricanes coaching staff had talked about rotating them during training camp to keep the line fresh late in the game. Florida was on the field more than 15 minutes more than Miami. That allowed Baker and Manny Diaz to play Garvin and Patchan significantly more.

Hill was dominant at Virginia Tech last season and Rousseau has dominated Miami Hurricanes practices last spring and the last two Augusts. He suffered a season-ending ankle injury in 2018 that limited him to two games. Expect to see a lot more of Rousseau and Hill this season.