FILM STUDY: How Louisville Exposed Miami’s Offensive Flaws and Confused Carson Beck Shows What Hurricanes Need To Fix

The Miami Hurricanes had a pick-your-poison attack heading into the Louisville game, with an adept passing game complemented by a three-headed power run game. The perception before Friday night was Shannon Dawson’s scheme – even if it was somewhat of a “we do what we do, good luck stopping it” – had too many pieces for any defense to really shut down.

Then Louisville happened.

Miami’s vaunted rushing attack got just 42 yards on 16 carries from the combination of Mark Fletcher, Jordan Lyle and Marty Brown. QB Carson Beck seemed unsure what he was seeing downfield and made some bad reads, winding up getting intercepted four times. The offensive line had issues with run blocking, and was just okay in pass protection.

Louisville no doubt used its bye weekend to take a close look at what Dawson likes to do – i.e. the inside run and quick perimeter pass game as “bread and butter” plays – and found ways to counteract it.

So now let’s go inside the film, because you know that future opponents are going to try and glean some of what happened on Friday night to incorporate into their own game plans. Miami will need to do its own adjustments to make sure the offense can once again click on all cylinders.

This is on Miami’s third play of the game, and yes its a third-and-forever but it speaks to how Louisville was defending these quick hitters that Dawson favors and we’ll see echoes of this play throughout the game. Here at the snap Louisville has seven at the line, showing blitz. But the Cardinals are essentially baiting Miami into this play because the strongside linebacker Antonio Watts peels off at the snap into the direction of Beck’s pass to Malachi Toney. In fact, the Cardinals only wind up rushing three and disguised it well. After the pass with the defenders peeling off it’s three defenders with only one blocker in front. While this was a third-and-25 and Miami’s not going to put the ball in harm’s way, the look UL showed laid the groundwork for what we are going to see moving forward into the game. It was a defense that showed Beck one thing and then covered the spot it showed him was available in his pre-snap read. And Beck was not good going to his second or third reads and became hesitant to throw as the game wore on. Dawson always has this play in his arsenal, so it’s good to note that Louisville was well prepared for it – Keelan Marion did his job as the lead blocker and the play is then designed for Toney to beat the one other defender in the open field to pick up yards. The Cardinals had an answer for that throughout most of the game, and we’ll see similar themes as the game goes along and in clips below.

This is an example of how Louisville is lined up to be strong against the likelihood of a first down run up the middle … and how Miami (Beck in particular) has to learn from what happened on this play. Miami is showing its two back look that oftentimes is a run right up the gut. As a result, look at where both the deep DBS are lined up on this play, almost right next to each other. The MLB and nickel are also packed in the middle of the box at a staggered depth. This helps a defense keep the spacing it needs to shoot into any gaps and make tackles. At the same time Louisville shows blitz with five at the line, dropping one at the snap after Beck drops back to throw. The Cardinals are initially showing one on one to the outside. So Miami does what it should – pass against this run stopping look. But the problem now is that Beck thinks he’s going to be able to take a shot with a defense intent on stopping the run that will give Malachi Toney one on one coverage. The issue, of course, is that the nickel and two deep DBs are in read and react mode, and once Beck drops back they go into coverage mode. Play-action might have helped here, but Dawson has both backs going out for passes. This isn’t a look you can take a deep shot against, and Beck is literally watching the safety backpedal toward where his throw is going before he unleashes it. It’s a mystery why Beck didn’t come off his initial read and look to the wide open checkdowns on either side that would have picked up big yards and first downs. There’s no defender within 10 yards of either them. Instead he launches a sky high deep throw into triple coverage. Beck has to learn from this, it just seems he was making a lot of pre-snap judgments and never coming off what he assumed he was going to see.

This is a stop-and-go route on which Beck fakes the throw before unleashing the pass … but the problem here is the defender has given Keelan Marion a seven-yard cushion at the snap. This is a sign again that Louisville has really scouted the Miami personnel well, since Marion’s really a deep go threat and hasn’t done much other damage this year. Beck sees the corner hesitate with the pump fake but doesn’t recognize how easily he can recover because of the huge cushion he’s given Marion. In fact, if this is a call where Marion cuts off the route to the sideline when he pump fakes it’s going to be an easy 10-yard pickup. Dawson didn’t adjust to how much room the defenders were giving his receivers on certain plays. This was designed to fail even in one-on-one coverage because of the above and it’s picked off as a result. The intermediate passing game needs to be put in the playbook more, it seems to be mostly quick hitters or deep shots, something Louisville was well prepared to handle.

This reflects back to Clip No. 1 at the top of this analysis. Because Louisville is again essentially saying to Miami that they have a good shot at getting a quick hitter for decent yardage on this third-and-six play midway through the third quarter. The Cardinals have seven stacked at the line and as Beck gets set he has three receivers bunched to bottom with two DBs over the top of them and a one high safety on that side of the hash. But just before the snap you see Louisville is prepared for what is coming. Two linebackers peel off and sprint toward the direction of where the throw is going BEFORE THE PASS. Then once the throw is made they both charge upfield. Meanwhile Jabari Mack has beaten a CJ Daniels block to slow down Toney initially after he catches the receiver screen pass, and then it’s multiple hats to the ball and Miami’s punting. This is just Louisville outscheming Miami and appearing to know what is coming based on formation and what the Cardinals were showing to Carson Beck pre-snap. Just watch Mack as soon as the ball is snapped – he’s immediately charging upfield. The Cardinals have done their film study on Dawson’s offense, and now Dawson needs to have some wrinkles out of this look to take advantage of teams that are going to do this to him.

This is one of Miami’s, believe it or not, more successful runs in the game. Here you see Louisville with five at the line, and again look how they initially stagger the two defenders in the middle to help stop the run up the middle (Dawson draws one off a few steps by bringing Jordan Lyle in motion). There is massive soft coverage on Toney in the slot and the Cardinals are also giving Daniels a free release at the bottom of the formation. This is a perfect defense to beat by sending Daniels on a slant with Toney turning toward the sideline, right? At the snap look how much room Toney’s given? And with Lyle going in motion left to right a throw to him could have hit for chunk yardage. But it’s Brown running left on the handoff and charging upfield between the tackle and guard. He does a nice job powering through to set up a third-and-short, but you can see why it was tough sledding for the Miami run game vs. this kind of defense that’s basically daring the Canes to try and make plays through the air in the intermediate part of the field … which was not attacked often enough (Pro Football Focus noted 22 of Beck’s 32 charted passes thrown within nine yards of the line of scrimmage).

With the quick passing game such a major element of Dawson’s attack, especially with Beck not having great success on deeper throws, let’s take another look at what happened and how Louisville did a good job taking away gains on a lot of these “bread and butter” Miami plays.  Here you see Louisville rushing three (and the linebacker blitzes at the snap) with a one-high safety look. Marion tries to fake he’s going out for a pass with a stutter step at the line, not a very good fake, and Toney is trying to get out in front of him to block. Just one problem: Toney’s block is beaten by a hard charging Watts, who at 225 pounds has a 37-pound advantage on the Miami freshman. He blows Toney back into Marion. And Louisville does a very good job of staggering its defenders at different levels as mentioned earlier. So the safety and outside CB are also able to collapse inside onto Marion even if he had shaken free of Watts. It’s a play that never had much of a chance for a gain against this look. The Cardinals are basically daring Beck to throw downfield – look at the off coverage by both corners – and really the best way to beat these cornerbacks playing seven yards off the line is on well run intermediate routes that take advantage of the spacing. Force the CBs into backpedals, then cut off the routes to the sideline, etc. Then if they start pressing you can start beating them over the top. Dawson never found a way to take advantage of this off coverage, and on the flip side tomorrow when we look at the defense you’ll see how Louisville was able to make plays with Miami not pressing up on its coverage.

We will end with the above clips, as ugly as Miami’s finish. This is a key fourth down play midway through the final quarter with Miami down 11 points. There’s the issue up front here with both Matthew McCoy and Markel Bell beaten one-on-one blocking. The pressure from their men compounds Beck’s continued lack of awareness of what the defense is doing in the game – CJ Daniels’ downfield route has drawn both defenders and Elija Lofton is wide open in the left flat for an easy first down. But Beck just never recognizes it will be there or sees it. As the play starts, Beck takes a quick initial glance right in what appears intended to help keep defenders off either Keelan Marion or CJ Daniels on the left side where the play appears designed to go all along vs. the zone coverage. He quickly focuses on the left side but with the pressure coming he launches the ball nowhere near any receiver and is intercepted (we assume Beck thought this would be where the hole in the zone would be, but Louisville has taken it away with an underneath linebacker sliding over). Also unclear here and a mistake in retrospect is lining Mark Fletcher up helping out as an extra blocker on the right side, since Francis Mauigoa didn’t need any help on thatside and Bell/McCoy clearly did. Louisville only rushes four on the play, dropping into zone, and when you get pressure like that from four on such a key play it speaks volumes about Miami’s OL just not holding up the way we have been used to seeing. So, as we said earlier, bad all around and it’s a shame Beck didn’t recognize that with the defenders all peeling off into the secondary he’d have Lofton for the easy first down.

The bottom line from all the above?

It was a failure on numerous fronts on offense in the loss, from issues with play calling against a Louisville defense that dared Miami to adjust to playing off coverage on the outside while stuffing the run on the inside. Dawson just had no answers, and it didn’t help that Beck didn’t seem to understand what he was seeing at numerous points and had several checkdown opportunities for big gains that turned into interceptions instead. There’s a lot to correct as other teams are likely to try similar approaches. Now it’s on Dawson to make sure he figures out how to fix this and make sure Beck is on the same page.