Mario Cristobal reveals standout players in Year 1

Mario Cristobal knows his first season at Miami isn’t what the majority expected, but it takes time to rebuild a program.

While it’s been disappointing to suffer as many losses as the Hurricanes have, Cristobal still believes there’s plenty of talent to build with for the Hurricanes, as he mentioned a myriad of players as standouts during his press conference on Thursday.

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“Wesley Bissainthe, Anez Cooper, you know, guys like Darrell Jackson played really well. Mitch Agude, Akheem Mesidor, you know they dealt with a couple bumps and bruises here and there. Kamren Kitchens’ done really well. James [Williams] has done really well when he was healthy. A lot of guys are doing that. Improving, maturing and we’ve got to just collectively get more and more development going.

“Just keep improving, everything from our internal development to our roster acquisitions and what not, just got to keep going.”

Indisputably, there’s talent on Miami, but Mario Cristobal and his coaching staff need to do a better job of unlocking it moving forward. If not, his dream of rebuilding the Hurricanes could go away like dust in the wind.

Mario Cristobal remains uncertain on Miami QB situation

In Mario Cristobal’s first season at Miami, there have been issues at the quarterback position. The highly touted returning start, Tyler Van Dyke, hadn’t been living up to expectations and then got hurt against Duke. Since then, he’s struggled to get on the field. Meanwhile, backup quarterback Jake Garcia has struggled when given the opportunity to play. 

Mario Cristobal knows that he needs to figure out the quarterback situation as quickly as possible. However, for now, the position still remains uncertain, as he explained that he doesn’t know who is going to start against Georgia Tech on Saturday yet. 

“I don’t know, yet,” Mario Cristobal said. “You’re right on that part, I probably wouldn’t tell you, and I say that respectfully. You know how that goes in terms of getting prepared for a game.”

“But, we’ve been preparing the guys that we need to play the best football that we can. Obviously, you know, our situation is certainly a challenging one, but one that we’re attacking as best we can and the players have responded really well at making it work.”

Along with Tyler Van Dyke and Jake Garcia, freshman Jacurri Brown has also seen playing time this season. Depending on the health of Van Dyke and performance of these quarterbacks, Brown could see playing time against Georgia Tech.

This is an incredibly important decision to get right for Mario Cristobal. The Hurricanes are just 4-5 with three games remaining. There isn’t much room for error if Miami wants to make a bowl game.