Mario Cristobal addresses impact of injuries in spring practice

The Mario Cristobal era has officially begun at Miami, as the Hurricanes began spring practice on Monday. While Cristobal – who is back home to lead his alma mater after a successful run as Oregon’s head coach – has his hands full with rebuilding the Hurricanes’ program, he has said on multiple occasions that he is looking forward to the challenge.

One of the challenges for Cristobal – and for all college football coaches – is keeping their players healthy during spring practice. While injuries are bound to happen as it is just a nature of the sport, Cristobal is hoping that his Miami team doesn’t have to be without too many of their key guys during spring ball.

“Not having those guys … man,” Cristobal said. “From a performance standpoint, you like to see the highest level of performance by your team. When you don’t have some of your more talented players, some of your more experienced players, performance is going to suffer, execution is going to suffer some – but that’s OK because it will during the season also.”

Cristobal also mentioned that if a primary player goes down with an injury, then that allows up-and-comers to step up and fill the void.

“But there’s a tremendous positive to that – and that’s other guys get reps,” Cristobal said. “Other guys are getting tapped on their shoulder and being told, ‘Hey, man. It’s your time.’ We have to allow ourselves to be pushed – all of us. We all have to be challenged, we all have to be pushed to reach our very best.”

Cristobal shares goals for Miami during spring practice

Following Miami’s first day of spring practice on Monday, Mario Cristobal met with the media and shared his thoughts on the Hurricanes’ start to spring ball – pointing out what he liked, didn’t like and what he’d like to see moving forward.

“Day One for us is always going to be about mentality,” Cristobal said. “It’s going to be about physicality, identity, establishing all the things that go intangible with our program. Making sure our guys are starting to get a very good understanding of our systems and running those systems, as well a situational football. We combine that with technical work, fundamental work, processes – learning how to practice. We’ve gotta build really good habits – like really, really strong, hardcore, cultural habits that make us elite human beings and also elite football players.”