In a conference call with reporters earlier this week, offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee spoke about the responsibilities of the Miami football staff and players building relationships virtually.
With a lot of new faces on the Miami football staff and roster, the Hurricanes lost out on the chance to build relationships during a full amount of spring practices. Instead of relationships being built organically in their weight rooms and on the practice fields this spring Miami is having to build them virtually.
Rhett Lashlee was hired to replace Dan Enos as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Miami football program in January. About two months after accepting the job with the Hurricanes, the entire team scattered across the country because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lashlee spoke about the difficulty of building relationships with social distancing being enforced globally. New Miami quarterback D’Eriq King has done his best to build relationships with his new teammates. King is a graduate transfer to Miami from Houston.
The Miami QB position will be significantly upgraded at QB on and off the field with the addition of King in 2020. Kin g is already showing great leadership by keeping connected with his teammates. With an outstanding 2020 season, King should be a Heisman Trophy candidate and significantly improve his draft stock.
On a conference call with reporters this week, Lashlee spoke about the difficulty of being in a new job and having to connect with players virtually. Lashlee also discussed how King is staying connected with his new teammates without being together physically. Lashlee had four practices for the players to learn his coaching style.
"“This whole distancing physically makes it a lot harder to maybe develop those relationships with a personal level, but I know he’s (King) stayed in contact with the guys, both in the quarterback room and at other skill spots.For all of our players, we can’t work them out, we can’t make them do anything, so a lot of this is on them to be self-motivated self-starters. Fortunately, a lot of our guys, I think, have done a lot on their own to try to stay in shape and stay ready.That’s what we preached to them is at some point this thing is going to break to the point they’re going to let us get back to work and get ready for a season at some point. We don’t know when that’ll be and we’ve got to be ready.”"
According to the Miami Herald in an article by David Wilson summarizing the conference call with Lashlee, Miami football players begin everyday meeting via Zoom with head coach Manny Diaz, their coordinator or position coach. That is followed up by a virtual meeting with strength and conditioning coordinator David Feeley.
Lashlee is now in the unenviable position of having to teach the new offense virtually. The fact that his system is built around tempo and less complex than most should be an advantage. The players getting in condition to play in a much quicker offense is the most critical thing ahead of the 2020 season.