Mario Cristobal on his defensive coordinator: 'I always wanted to work with Lance Guidry'

The expectations seem as high as they’ve been in quite some time in Coral Gables, as all eyes are on Miami head coach Mario Cristobal and the Hurricanes this upcoming football season. On paper looking like their strongest team since Cristobal’s arrival that could potentially take the program over the hump.

Improvement on the defensive side of the ball could take Miami a long way in their turnaround, a unit that’s fresh off of their strongest season since 2019, thanks in part to Cristobal hiring Lance Guidry as his defensive coordinator last offseason.

In a recent conversation with Greg McElroy, Cristobal spoke about Guidry’s hiring process and what appealed to him about the fiery DC.

“I always wanted to work with Lance Guidry, dating back to when I was coaching at FIU and he was at Western Kentucky,” Cristobal admitted. “He just got guys to play hard, and aggressive, and cause a ton of negative plays. They played for him as if every single game was a title game.”

Between two individual instances as an interim head coach and three seasons as the head man at McNeese State, Guidry boasts a 22-13 record as a head coach. Also bringing a decade of defensive coordinator experience with him to Miami with a scheme and strategy that Cristobal became a fan of from afar, which paired with tenacious players makes things difficult with offensive players and coordinators alike.

“And then he was very difficult to figure out as well,” Cristobal added. “Disguises coverages really well, he wasn’t going to let you run the ball, but he wasn’t going to let you throw it over his head either. Just tremendous balance.”

“But they played with tremendous juice and I felt that he had answers. Like if he chose the wrong call that his players knew what that weakness of the call was and they rallied enough to be able to get a guy on the ground and play the next snap,” Cristobal explained.

The Hurricanes held opponents to just 22.1 points per game last season, their best finish of the Cristobal era. And that momentum in Year 2 under Guidry should help the Hurricanes improve even more defensively in 2024.

“I think he’s a complete defensive coordinator. He’s got a lot of experience, experience as a head coach, phenomenal human being. And he brings a lot of that Cajun juice, you can hear him from across not the field, you can hear him from across campus,” Cristobal concluded getting a laugh out of McElroy.