Bruce Feldman reacts to Miami's firing of Josh Gattis

In the market for a new offensive coordinator, Miami has begun its search after firing Josh Gattis following his lone season in charge of the offense.

But what direction might the ‘Canes be heading?

According to college football insider Bruce Feldman, Cristobal might be choosing from a relatively small pool of candidates given his stipulations for the hire that essentially amount to needing a vision aligned with his.

“I think with Mario also what happens is there’s certain things he does not feel like, like he’s never going to hire an Air Raid guy,” Feldman said on The Audible with Stew and Bruce podcast. “He’s just not. He doesn’t believe in that as the fit of what he wants at Miami. Statistically when you evaluate some hires you’re going to look at yards per play or where they rank on certain things.

“And like it or not, and you can make the case, and I’m sure Mario is one of the people who thinks this, like, ‘Yeah, you can have a prolific offense, but what does it do to your defense?’ We’re going to talk about USC defense a lot because it’s underwhelming, just like a little bit of a chicken and egg. It’s like things don’t happen in a vacuum. You can have a prolific offense running it that way but it probably will affect how you practice every day because of what goes into it. It’s not like two separate entities. You’re not going to be the ’85 Bears on one side of the ball and then have Air Raid on the other. It just doesn’t seem to go hand in hand. So Mario has his philosophy on that.”

Miami looking for new offensive coordinator

The timing of the Gattis firing also potentially complicates things. It came less than a week before national signing day, meaning the remaining signees in Miami’s class might not know who their coordinator is when they ink a national letter of intent.

But it also creates some oddities in terms of what can happen with candidates, Feldman explained.

“He ends up getting himself into a little bit of a box where there’s only certain kinds of people that he’s going to want to consider at the end of the day,” Feldman said. “And sometimes I can imagine it can get frustrating because these things play out for a while, eventually they get leaked. Somebody leverages the Miami job or whatever because there may be a candidate, they probably haven’t been offered the job, but because it plays out for a while, it gets to be a really strange dynamic how that plays out.”

The other factor candidates have to consider is that they might not have as much say under Cristobal as they would other places.

That could have conceivably been part of the firing of Josh Gattis.

“I think when you look at it you can kind of get some mismatched parts, because if you’re an offensive coordinator you’re going to go to this and usually one of the biggest things for an offensive coordinator is, ‘Who’s my O-line guy?'” Feldman said. “Mario is involved in the offense and Mario’s guy, Alex Mirabal, has shown for years he’s a good offensive line coach, but whoever goes in there, you’re going in there knowing what the structure you’re working in may be a little different than what you were used to, so that is an adjustment.

“I’m curious to see what direction he goes in, because I know some of the people he considered the last time. I don’t think there’s a ton of overlap for the guys he considered last time for the guys there now. You have Alabama out there looking for an OC. I know Ryan Grubb from Washington‘s a name that has been considered. I’m curious to see if there’s kind of some overlap there, because I know there’s some really capable OC candidates out there, I just don’t know if they fit for what Mario wants.”